Pygmy

I have eaten lots of them over the last 55 years...I shot my first one in the early 1960s... They are a dark meat and are nothing like pheasant, grouse or turkey.... I have said for years that if you took an indistinguishable portion from a breast of woodcock, wood duck, domestic pigeon and dove, I would have trouble telling the difference...…. If you have never eaten any of those birds, I don't know what to tell you...

Hmmmm..I KNEW there had to a good reason why Biz was jealous of you...Ive seen a picture of his drop dead beautiful wife, so I knew THAT wasn't it..... I finally decided that it was that handsome picture of yourself that you display in your avatar...

Okay, it's a go then....I'll get it set up and tell you where to send the check...This is going to be FUN...We can do some real male bonding...

Ducks ?? Are they WHITE ones ??...

That hunt was going to be my next AK hunt, when my divorce came along and screwed that up.....Hehehe.. The bucks have relatively small racks, but their beautiful capes more than make up for it...Definitely the prettiest deer species.. I have also heard that the meat is the very best venison of all the deer species... I'd love to do a boat hunt for them, but it's no longer an option at this stage of my life.. That would be a perfect hunt for you, Biz, with your passion for taxidermy...You could come home with a beautiful Sitka Blacktail, ( how many of your neighbors have one of THOSE mounted) plus 3 or 4 different species of beautiful, exotic North Pacific duck species ….In fact, if you pay my way, I'll come along to cook, cape and butcher your deer and sing to you in the evenings...I might even shoot a duck or two myself !!

In Alaska, nonresidents need a guide to hunt, grizzly, sheep, and I think goats....An exception is if you are hunting with an Alaska resident who is first degree of kinship, such as your sibling , your child or your parent..

Everyone should hunt bull elk during the rut at least once.....

Nearly all of my hunts in Alaska and the lower 48 have been DIY...In most parts of Canada, non-residents are required by law to hire the services of a guide and/or outfitter to hunt most big game species..

Happy Birthday, you Old Fart !!….<< GRIN>>….

Cool....Super cub drop ?....I love those little airplanes...Amazing how small an area they need to land and take off...

Bionic's better half is drop dead gorgeous....But who's the ugly bastard in the lower left corner of the picture ?

You got anything against sheep ?? Some of my best friends are...….Well, never mind....

Whatcha doing in Alaska ?.....

Perverts.....My ex wife and my daughter are both southpaws...I used to harass them about being handicapped....Hehehe...

The bolt is STILL on the wrong side of the receiver....I keep telling you about that...Must be you have your negatives backwards...

Not unusual at all.....Same as whitetail bucks still engaging in rutting behavior in January ( or later) as long as there are still receptive does around...

Reminds me of one of my girlfriends when I was in my early teens....She was covered in down, and then I GOOSED her and before I knew it she was fully feathered...

I beg to differ....Gobblers will respond to receptive hens up until early summer...Lots of hens get their nests busted by nest predators such as coons, skunks, fishers etc..And many will re nest...While they are laying a new clutch they often will seek company of a gobbler... I have heard active gobbling right up into early July....

If they can fly up to a limb, they must be close to 2 weeks old...That is a big milestone...When they can start roosting in trees instead of on the ground, their survivability increases exponentially..It also means they have feathers rather then down, which helps them survive wet/cool weather...

Yeah...25 years ago there was a thriving hunting industry on the barren tundra of NWT for Central Canada barren ground caribou.. Sadly, within a few years the population dwindled, and non resident hunters can no longer get a tag there , like Quebec...

Yes, Chris is Doug's son..He does taxidermy also....Doug is gone now..He was a tin knocker for Corning...A great guy, but what a character !!

As an aside to Tracker...The streamers I had were Wally Allen type woodchucks.....Tied by Doug Stowell SR...Don't know if you knew him, but you may very well know his son... When we flew into camp, we talked to the guys who had been in there the week ahead of us...One nice old gent happened to be the owner of the Colorado Rockies baseball team, and he was a fly fisherman...I asked him what patterns the grayling hit, and he told me it would be a challenge to find a dry fly that they WOULDN'T hit...He was right...They hit anything that remotely resembled a bug...The only fly I tried that I did not get a hit on was a green inchworm....But then I only tried it for about 5 casts...When you are catching fish on nearly every cast, it's tough to stick with something that isn't working....Hehehe..

Oh, I LOVE it when you talk dirty.....Hehehe...

Something different probably does not mean s**t unless they are in the mood to gobble... However, if you don't hear roost gobbling, go for it !! Crow call, yelp loud and excited, and cutt like crazy !! Season is nearly over, so what do you have to lose ?? If you are hearing NADA, act like a sex crazed nymphomaniac hen !1 It just may work...

Buy yourself a cheap 9 foot tapered leader and cut 2 or three feet off the tapered end...That should be stiff and heavy enough to turn over heavy streamers and bass bugs....If not, shorten it up a little more.. Time for a true Pygmy story...I was up in NWT, Canada on a caribou hunt...There was a channel about 100 yards long of fast water between two lakes..It was full of arctic grayling, and it was hard to make a drift with a dry fly WITHOUT getting a rise....Lots of fish in the 16" to 18" range and a few bigger.. However, several times I was playing a grayling and a lake trout would come up off the bottom( the water was only 3 or 4 feet deep ) and CRUSH the grayling, breaking my leader....After this happened 3 or 4 times, I cut my leader back to about 4 feet ( probably about 20 lb. test) and put on a big pink tandem streamer that I had brought to try to catch pike on my fly rod...About my second cast,,a huge laker took the streamer..I estimated him at about 15 pounds and released him...I proceed to work the rest of the 100 yards of fast water between the lakes and caught a total of 18 lake trout in less than 2 hours... Lots of boulders and pocket water...It was like fishing an Adirondack stream except I was catching 5-10 pound lake trout rather than 10 inch brookies...True story....Little Marten Lake, NWT Sept 1994...BTW..It was also the most awesome caribou hunting I ever experienced.....