wolc123

Thanks, I did not know that. I wasn’t sure if they would sell primers to an American, so my plan is to put on a Blue Jays hat, say “A”, every other word, and use some Canadian cash that I have saved up in a box somewhere from when we used to vacation up there when I was a kid, to pay for the primers at the counter. it wouldn’t be the first time that I pretended to be a Canadian. Long ago, on a moose/bear hunting trip to Quebec, a couple Americans aborigins (people I don’t know) stumbled across the spot I was watching across from the lake camp that 3 of my friends and I were staying at. They must have been staying at a different camp. My buddies were all hung over that morning so I had motored over there alone with my 9.5 Evinrude on one of the old wood camp boats. I was always the “serious hunter” of the group, and the only one who got a kill on that trip (that is another story). When the aborigins asked “if I had seen anything ?”, my reply (in my best broken French accent) was: “no English”. They quietly departed after that. The spot I was watching was where a bush plane had crashed the year before. There was still a bit of wreckage around. I don’t know if I will be able to score some primers when I go over there but at least our kids will be able to look at the fish in the tanks.

Fortunately, the Dingbatocrats have no influence on the ammo situation over in Canada. That’s where I am going before I run out of primers.

I noticed the same thing, up here up in the NW corner of the Adirondack park. My first day up, I checked out a spot where I have always found scrapes and rubs during early ML week, and nothing there this year. Tracks in the sand vollyball courts, at the edge of the summer camps, were less than normal also. I have been staying out of that hot spot until opening day of gun on Saturday. Hopefully, the local bucks are just off to a late start this year. There is now one less mature doe on the opposite end of the ridge anyhow. Hopefully, there are still a few over there on the end where the most scrapes usually show up.

I use the biodegradable stuff that they sell expressly for that purpose. It also works well to tie off the rectum after deploying the butt out. “Leave no trace behind” (long term anyhow).

The rain has arrived on schedule and I am comfortably nestled in, 40 yards downwind of the Tuesday’s gut pile, up on the ridge. If that smell don’t draw in a bear, maybe the hot cider will. The only thing I know I forgot this morning was my electric tape so I just sacrificed a “little finger condom” from one of my gutting gloves. I don’t have enough cash for another butcher fee. If a bear does show up I am taking the hide, head, and heart out on my first trip, then coming back for the back straps and butt roasts. I can smell those guts, since the rain has been falling. Hopefully, a bear can also.

Another little tip about tracking deer that you have shot at in fresh snow: Don’t expect fresh fluffy snow to always show bright red blood on top. Hot drops of blood burn thru that, often showing no trace on top. One time, I shot a large button buck (imagine that) dead center thru both lungs, behind the shoulder from 75 yards away with a Federal 12 ga lead sabot slug. He promptly bolted into a thick patch of brush like there was no tomorrow (in this case there wasn’t). In the 50 yards that he covered from the impact site, to the brush patch, I found just a single, tiny drip of blood on top of the foot of fluffy snow. He made it another 20 yards into that brush patch (right next to the gut pile of his momma who had piled up there a week prior from another of those Federal sabots). The momma was much tougher for me to find, on opening day the week before, because there was no snow there then and it was pouring rain. I had to grid search the area that she disappeared into and she was also double lunged similarly. I would have shot jr then and there (I had two dmps) but I always go for the biggest one first and I was not 100 percent sure that she was hit, so I kept my gun on her until she disappeared with him. I love hunting in snow but it is not always the best indicator of a hit. Another time, I prematurely gave up the trail of a buck that I had shot at at long range with my 50 cal T/C Omega. I placed too much confidence in the snow indicating a hit. Finding not a single drip of blood, in over 200 yards of following his tracks from where he stood when shot, I wrongly assumed a miss. That brings up another good tip: Never ASSUME a miss until PROVEN. The only two ways I know of doing that is to kill the deer with a follow up shot and count holes. I will continue to fire if I an able until the deer goes down. Then I will hold my gun on it for about 5 minutes, until it is not moving. Finally, when I walk up to that carcass I will stick the muzzle of my gun into its eye and only bring out my knife if it don’t blink. My uncle lost the biggest buck he ever saw by skipping that step. Every so often I can learn the lessons the easy way (from someone else’s mistake), but most of the time it has been the hard way (by making the mistakes myself). That was the case with the snow and that ML buck. He got to feed the coyotes. I didn’t find him until 2 weeks later with the help of the crows. He had made it into a little brush patch about 20 yards past where I had given up his trail in the snow, loosing it amoung a bunch of other deer tracks. i probably shouldn’t have skipped Church that Sunday morning to go hunting.

None have gotten away from me since 2015, unless they were supposed to:

I am getting ready to sneak up and try to catch a bear feeding on the gut pile from Tuesday’s doe. It was warm enough yesterday to make it ripe, and the wind is right this morning.

I just went into my pack and tapped my “secret weapon” (a pocket King James Version) for a screen shot to simplify things for those who may have missed the point of Colossians 3:17.

Did you find her ? The compass tip is a good one but the best advice on that video is the Bible text written across the screen when you first tap the link. That one gave me this DRT on Tuesday:

I bow hunted for about 30 years and had some very limited success over that span, killing and recovering 6 or 7 deer, not missing any, but striking and loosing almost an equal number. Most of those loses were high hits (several shoulder blades and some high backs) caused mostly by the deer “ducking” at the sound of the bow’s release. It is likely that most of those deer survived the wounds. I know for sure of one that did, and only one (Hit too far back) that surely didn’t. That recovery percentage is horrible and archery season never contributed much to my family’s food supply (up until 2014 when crossbows were legalized for the last 2 weeks). I mostly just used archery season as scouting for gun season, which always provided the bulk of our meat. I am a “meat first” guy to the extent that FSW is an “trophy anter” guy. I can still picture the last buck that I shot an arrow from my vertical bow at, back in 2012, like it was yesterday. We were over at my sister’s house, which is built near the front corner of my parents farm, with our girls for a Halloween party. I am the only one in the family that hunts and my attention was drawn to a young 4 point buck that I saw standing back by the woodline. I left the party on foot about an hour before sunset, and walked down the roadside, to my parent’s house, on the other front corner of the farm. I already had my camo on for the party. I grabbed my bow and arrows out of my truck, and headed to a stand in a hedgerow, that was on the back property line. I wasn’t up in that stand 15 minutes when I heard crunching and sticks breaking behind me, in an overgrown field that hadn’t been farmed in about 10 years, on the back neighboring property. The owner had died and that land had been in tax receivership and was not posted, but I could not shoot that way from my tiny uncomfortable hang on stand. The buck was headed right for me though. I drew my bow as he crossed the hedgerow, thru an opening, right next to my stand. He had been walking at a brisk pace, but must have caught a glimpse of my draw 15 feet above, or heard it. He stopped abruptly, about 15 yards away, at a quartering away angle. I put my pin on the sweet spot, a little far back behind the shoulder due to the angle, and touched off my release. I can still see what happened then, as if it was in slow motion. He reared down and back, taking the arrow, with an old mechanical o-ring style broadhead, thru the neck, just below his head. He ran off with it almost centered and equal lengths of shaft sticking out both sides. i soon heard crashing sounds in the thick brush, about 50 yards away. That crunching sound went on for about 5 minutes, then all was silent. I waited the typical minimum recommended half hour (about until sunset), before getting down and walking into the brush where I heard the noise. I found him there, bled out, after taking that 2” diameter cutter across his jugular vane. I gutted him quick, went up for my dads wheeler, hung him from a tree behind their house, cleaned myself up, and was back to the Halloween party in time for the kids breaking of the candy filled pinyata. That was the last arrow that I will ever launch at a deer with a vertical bow. Thanks to the crossbow, my archery season efficiency has improved tremendously, now making up about 30 % of my total meat harvest, since 2014. That has been a real time saver, not needing to waste any beating up my shoulders and trying to maintain proficiency with a bow, and with archery season now just two weeks, instead of almost two months. As far as the tracking lessons learned, all but one since the crossbow became my only archery weapon along with mechanical broadheads, has crashed down in sight or easy hearing distance. I got fooled off the blood trail, by a crash I heard in the adjacent thick brush, on that one. That must have been another deer and resulted in that recovery taking about a half hour longer than it should have because I wasted that much time grid searching that brush patch. When that came up empty, I returned to last blood (which I had marked with orange biodegradable ribbon I always carry), soon finding my double lunged 8 pointer, about another hundred yards away. That will be the last time I sharpen and re use a mechanical broadhead. They have never gone over 50 yards with the factory sharp new ones. Sorry for the length, but you asked for lessons and that’s all I can think of right now. It is very comfortable here in this warm bed. My freezer is almost full, thanks to the early antlerless gun season at home and ML up north so far. I am in no big hurry to get out there with my ML on this predicted rainy day up in the Adirondacks. i almost forgot the most important lesson that I have learned in my 40 years of deer hunting. If you want to be the one who orchestrates the deer ‘s trip to “deer heaven” (mankind’s food supply) then you got to keep things right with He who determines “where every sparrow falls”. If you ignore that, you will need to buy some more chicken from the store and you might feed some venison to coyotes, and those will be the least of your problems.

It was too windy and warm for me to try to kill a buck this afternoon, so I went fishing instead, catching about a dozen smallmouth bass. The biggest one was my biggest of the year up here so far, and just 3” shy of the 22” I am looking for to mount. It looks like the wind will be from the south again tomorrow, so it will be back up to the gut pile again for me in the morning. As warm as it was today, that scent has got to be getting intense and I hope it will draw in a bear. There is rain in the forecast, but light winds, so the tree umbrella ought to work ok. I am also packing a plastic bag, so I don’t loose another heart. I wonder if pickled bear heart would be good ? I am going to give the rattle bag a shot, if it’s not too painfull on my blistered hands (from pile driving the snow fence stakes this morning). The last time I rattled up there about 4 years ago, I didn’t fool any bucks, but I did fool the guy from the end of the lake who thought he was walking in to a real buck fight. At first I thought he was a bear, on its hind legs, coming up out of the swamp. His chartreuse hat gave him away. He will need to ditch that for blaze orange or pink per the new rules this year.

I think Robin and his son are supposed to be up in the 5 ponds area this weekend. That looks like it is about half way between where you are going and where I am. It sounds like you are really going to be roughing it ala Robin. I hope you have a wonderful adventure. It looks like it is going to cool down over the weekend, which should get the deer moving. Getting an Adirondack buck with a bow and no snow has got to be one of the biggest challenges in hunting. I have been up here hunting with my ML since Saturday and have yet to see any signs of a buck. I am switching to my rifle on opening day Saturday, and will keep trying for a buck until around 10:00 Sunday morning. The butcher thinks they will have my doe done in time for my drive home at noon on Sunday.

Too windy for hunting this afternoon and afternoon deer action has been lacking anyhow. I went out in search of the elusive 22” smallmouth for a couple hours. No luck trolling (I took about 15 minutes to fabricate a rod holder), but got about a dozen on the old reliable 1/8 oz bucktail jigs. All but 2 were hard fighting 12 to 14 inchers. The lean 17 incher in the second pic didn’t fight as much as the smaller ones, but the stout 19 incher in the last pic might be the fight of the year for me. She jumped three different times and made a few long runs, taking almost 10 minutes to boat on 6 pound line. She still looked pretty healthy when I released her. Maybe she will make 22 next year and earn a spot on the wall. I am going to try for a bigger one again tomorrow Friday and Saturday. That might be it for the year unless it is warm on Thanksgiving weekend when I come up.

Maybe he is real fast with the trigger and riddles them, on center of mass in close, with 5 or 6 round bursts. That would fill them with more lead than a 12 ga load of 00 buckshot and that takes a lot of deer with dogs down south.

I didn’t see anything up by the gut pile this morning. Only the flies found it so far. No luck finding the heart either, walking up there and back. I had one yesterday’s doe’s tenderloins with eggs for brunch. It tasted good but was a bit chewy. She was probably 4.5 years old and it was likely near max rigidity from rigor mortis at 10:00 this morning. I asked my mother in law to save the other one raw in the fridge until Sunday. By then it should delaminate a bit. My hands are blistered from pounding in those 30 snow fence stakes across the end of the lake. I don’t think I will be up for a lot of casting m this afternoon so I guess it will be trolling for bass. There is a good west wind and a nice chop on the lake, so I hope the big ones are biting. I also got the heavy Honda stroke outboard off, chained the barge to a tree, and got the docks ready for winter. I probably won’t be using my new waders for hunting or fishing yet this year, but they worked good for that. Most of the work is done now so I ought to be able to “relax” hunting and fishing until Sunday.

Fresh filet mignonette and eggs:

Nothing but flies hit the gut pile up until 9:30 this morning. I made two last checks for the heart and liver on the walk up and down but no dice. Back in the house for brunch now. I will be putting a gallon bag in my pack prior to my next hunt. Thanks for the reminder Fletch.

Yep, I usually do too but I blew it there this time, and it cost me a nice heart.

I am going to hunt till about 9:30, go down and have brunch, then work driving snow fence posts the rest of the morning. It is looking like it will be a nice afternoon for fishing out on the lake. Old long tines better show up by 9:30 or he is safe from me until tomorrow morning.

That looks similar to where I am sitting right now but I didn’t see any rubs, just a bloated doe stomach about 40 yards up wind. The swamp is 200 yards to my left. It feels at least 10 degrees warmer today than it was yesterday at this time.

You still got to cringe just a little bit with every trigger pull, wondering about depleting your supply and where replacements will come from. Even if you reload, where are you getting primers and what are you paying ? I am thinking of making a run up to Bass Pro in Niagara on the Lake Ontario on Super Bowl Sunday like I always used to do and picking up a 100 pack of those. That is only about a 40 minute drive and our kids like to look at the fish. I am being very careful with the 30 or 40 CCI 209 primers that I have left now, but I am pretty well stocked on triple 7 powder. I am glad I didn’t make the switch to Blackhorn 209 because I hear that is especially hard to find these days. Runnings in Lockport had a jug of loose Triple 7 a few months ago, when I stopped and I dropped down to 100 grains, so my supply of that should be good for a few years with rationing. I will switch to loose when my last 40 50 gr pellets are used up. One thing I really like about the pellets is that they push out easy and then can be reused with minimal cleanup, loss or fouled breech plug threads. That was always an issue with the loose powder.

The wind is from the sw on the nw corner of the park where I am at. I would prefer that if was from nw because I don’t like going to the same spot on consecutive days. It will be ok though, if I can catch a bear at that gut pile, or scarfing up my lost heart and liver when I sneak in this morning. I am guessing I will run into the two orphan fawns and have to shoo them away. Just about time to head up. Good luck to you today.

My plan is to make every shot count, until the ammo situation rectifies. I don’t see that happening until the Republicans regain the White House. The reason I say that, is because I hear that there is no ammo shortages or price gowging up in Canada, where they don’t have Dinbatocrats in charge. With my current ammunition, powder, primer, and percussion cap supply, I should be able to hold out 50 more years or so, if it takes that long. I am using just a shot or two to check the zeros on every weapon each year, and 2 to 7 more to get the meat that I need or will donate to others who could use it. I no longer bow hunt, but any meat (deer) that I can collect with my crossbow subtracts from that total and extends the life of my current ammunition supply. I will continue regular target practice with my adult stocked Daisy Red Ryder. So far, the bb supply hasn’t been effected by the Dingbatocrat nonsense. I will be damned if I will pay a penny more than need be for ammo. Doesn’t it stress you guys out practicing and sighting in with “real” ammo ? It sure does me, which is why I switched most practice over to the BB gun years ago. It was also relatively stress free practicing with the crossbows last week.