Just Passing the Time

since I was not able to make it out to the field, I have no updates or stories for you this week. So I will pass on the story of my fathers hunt this weekend as it was told to me. Between prong horn rifle season and rifle deer season their isn't much to do so he go duck hunting to pass the time. Just east of town is Orman rec area and he stumbled onto a "honey hole". Honey hole: place of continous hunting and or fishing action. This island on the north end is litered with ducks of verios asortments from widgen to the beautiful wood duck and buffle head, and all day action. I fouund this place when I was trolling around fishing for wallie. Yesterday I probibly spent 7 hours and never a dull moment!

When I had my limet I pulled into my  inpromptto boat ramp and a covy of hunns jumped up and took off up the hill. How could I resist such an opertunity? I had my lab with and we fallowd this group of hunns around this hillside and got 4 flushes out of it. you have to love limeting out on two kinds of birds in one day. This next week I'll be out scouting a river bottom, and I'll show you how to get info on deer movements without making an impact on their movement.

Good luck and good hunting.

Phesent Heven

Nothing can compair to this experince. Wild, free range, phesents flushing anywhere and everywhere all at once. Thousands of birds filling the sky symeltaniously! This is the story of the most fantastic hunting experance of my life!

Getting off work at 9:30, I jump in my truck and fly down to Winner. I get there at about 3:15 and the land owner left me a camper in his "shead", wich seemed to be more of a barn to me. From head to toe this hunt was first class, the camper was more like a house with wheels, the chow was all home cooked, they did my laundry and suplied me with the best shells I could ask for. I wasn't paying for this hunt, I was invited by the land owner just because, well he needed someone that could shoot I guess. I wake up after about 3 hours of sleep and frends of his start pulling up in camarows and vets and super stacked Dodge 3500's. They start talking to me like they knew me and it wasn't too long untill they actully did. We all kinda wonder into the house and there's a huge stack of eggs and probibly 8lbs of bacon and sausage and tons of frute and juce. They serve themselfs and sit down and I'm still awe struck by the feast before me. for some strange reason the law says no hunting before noon.

After a relaxing morning and an amazing breakfast we all hopped onto a traylor and the land owner drove us out behind his house about 200 yards and we started walkin away from the house. Birds just start flushing left and right, the sky blackend with birds and all I can hear is the cackle of birds tacking wing like a bunch of collage kids at a frat party! I downed my three birds right off and sling my shotgun over my shoulder because I had shot my limmet right? NO! becaust we were "group hunting" everyone in the group had a limet of three birds and they all get put in a pile and everyone takes home three birds. Everyone is yelling keep shooting! Well at this point I'm out of shells, I figuted 5 shells would be more than enough for me to kill 3 birds.

franticly people start giving me shells because I was one of the few that was sober enough to hit anytheing. I'd down two more birds with my over under and people would hand me shells and so on. I generally try to stay away from people when I hunt just as a rule, but this group huntng thistng I can get used to. The best part is when you get to the end of the walk and thousands of birds fly at once, this sight is unimaginable and unbelivable even being there and wittnessing it I still have trouble beliving it. Then once we are all the way through this milo patch we turn around and walk it back the way we came with the same result, thousands of birds and nonstop shooting all the way. At this point I have shot something like 10x my personal limet in a 20min walk and saw more birds in 30sec than I've seen the rest of my life combind! All the old guys want to go watch the game the game and dreink so they say they'll pay us $3/ bird to clean their birds. This was little inconvinance at $3/bird and in two hours I had made plenty to go to town and buy the 4 boxes of shells i would shout the next day. Wounderfully this shedgal continued through the next three days. I was trully in phesant heven!

Good luck and good hunting.

New Hope and a new Beginning

My best friend and I went on his first big game hunt. Last year he started to gain interest in what I was doing all winter and all my stories about hunting and killing. I helped him pick out a rifle and soon we were mounting a scope and reloading. This long wait kept a lot of his excitement bottled up.

I took him to NewlLake just north of Newl because there is a ton of walk in ground and reclamation land out there. I personally have never been out there but on the topo map it was clear that debatably two fantastic spots to go in this 13 square mile chunk. We parked at the boat ramp and walked down behind the dam and found a huge march and a low crick bottom.  Out at the 900 yard mark I spot three does working their way from a hay yard down one of the forks of the river coming out of the dam. Working the low spots and staying out of sight we worked our way into 200 yards and settled on a small rise. Nervous he starts breathing heavy. I explain to him how important breath control is when taking the shot, “take 3 full breathes each one slower and deeper and on the 4^th only exhale half. This makes it so that your heartbeat will not move your sights and yet you still have enough breath to not starve your eyes”. The first place to suffer when you hold your breath is your occipital lobe, this is the portion of your brain that interprets your vision.

He folds out his bipod and I hear him breathe, he wispers, “middle”, meaning he was going to take the middle one. He lets drive and this doe didn’t even fidget, he dropped her like a bad habit on a Sunday, so fast infact that he didn’t even see where she went. He ejects his shell and looks at me and says, “well, you’re turn”. So I settled down and pulled a little lead on the lead doe and smoke her right through the bread basket. Later I ranged it and found she was at 290, and running like that, ya I was happy with it.

This kid went nuts! He was pumped out of his mind! He jumps up and asks the same questions time and time again, this quiet kid turned into a bundle of energy; and talkative! We walk up and words cannot express the joy in this new hunters face, everything came together and a year of preparation came to a head in this moment. I couldn’t be more proud.

We went back to the top of the lake and fallowed the crick that feeds the lake uphill. This gave way to a deer haven! There were willows and cotton woods and tullys with green crick bottom, and the tracks were all over! Deer must trample this area frequently in the low light times and go out on the prarie during the day because the tracks from a few hours before covered every square mile of that place but not one deer was there when we arrived. We walked probably 12-13 miles by 1:00 and figured we had hunted all there was to hunt there so we went home and hung the does in my garage and he went to work. I went in the house and crashed.

 My boss woke me up with a call, he wanted to know if I could come shoot one of the deer that frequented his ranch house and eating his lawn. He assured me that I would be more than satisfied with him as a trophy and man was he right! This buck is a STUD! From a distance he looks like an elk, he ‘s twice as wide as his ears and almost a foot and a half tall and plenty’o mass to go around.

I’m hooked I only saw him once and he ‘s the deer I want to put my archery tag on this year. I sat on the edge of his house pasture on a rim rock and watched his does filter in across the ravine and feed in the lush river bottom, just as I was getting ready to leave I glassed once more and saw him at last light. This gargantuan of a mule deer waddle over the mountain and to the top of the ravine on the opacte side. It was too dark and I decided that I couldn’t shoot him now and in the hour it would take him to get to me it wouldn’t get any lighter so I backed out and found myself surrounded by his 30 does they were all around my truck and his house. As I drove off I know I scared them but I hope they didn’t change their patterns because this guy is worth chancing all year!

However this next weekend I will be traveling to Winner to hunt pheasant in the pheasant capital of the world, eastern South Dakota! This will be my first pheasant hunt since I moved here from Oregon and after 5 years it’s about time!

Good luck and good hunting.

Meet In The Freezer

Finally a hint of success! My goat hunt couldn’t have gone better! I’ve been shooting all summer on the prairie at thousands of prairie dogs, and this time everything falls into place.

 I get out to the place I’m going to hunt and just as daylight brakes I see this guy driving down the road towards me. I was told that I had the west half of the ranch to myself. This guy was all lost and he came from a town about 20 miles away through fences and gates to find that he thought he was traveling west not east. So I directed him back to the highway and he found his way just fine now that it was light. I wasn’t mad that he had spooked all the goats from the last 20 miles to my ranch. That was actually pretty dang sweet!

So with 45 goats in a pasture that only holds about half that on a good day, I was pretty excited. I drove on further west into a deep drainage and parked. The plan was to walk down the drainage and take a look around. Now remember the rut is still in full swing and with this meany goats in one pasture there’s going to be some fights! There’s bucks chasing all over the pasture and does watching, I could’ve been wearing a clown suit and they wouldn’t have paid any attention to me, I had my pick of any buck I could see, it was out of this world!

I finally find the buck I want and he’s beaded all by himself, so I pop up to the top of the ridge and steady up on my bipod. I decided just to chill and wait for him to get up and stretch. Finally he stands up and he’s facing away from me and just slightly to the left. I’m steady, I got the wind figured, and I’m squeezing and nothing. Ya I had my safety on, amused by my silliness I settle down and shoot for his far shoulder and let drive. Through the recoil I saw him take the hit and stumble. He runs off to 200 yards and stops facing away.  I see 6 other goats pop up and run toward him and he turns broad side so I center punched his right shoulder and hamburger the off shoulder. He falls like a bowling pin and when the others reach him they stand around him like they didn’t know where they were going to go. So I figure I got a buck and a doe tag my buck is down right there why not a doe? The lead doe is usually the biggest and most mature, they also start to separate themselves from the heard first. This makes the lead doe not only the prime target but she also gives you a clear shooting lane by separating herself. I stand up and swing on the lead doe and she’s half way between a full run and a trot so I swung out in front of her and shot her in what I call the bread basket. The bread basket is hi on the shoulder; this shocks the spinal cord thusly dropping them like a bad habit wile also sending massive injury to the lungs and shatters the shoulders. The cool thing is at her current speed instead of simply dropping she rolls ace over teakettle! When I got down there I found that both of them were on a road going through a cut.

Hunts that go perfectly like this don’t happen, so when you get a victory, even if it didn’t go just how you planed, cherish the moment because you never know when your last hunt will be. I had a killer riffle antelope season and I hope you did also. But if you still have tags to fill there’s still time so go get’r done this weekend. This next weekend I’m taking my best friend out for his first deer hunt.

Good luck and good hunting. 

Meet In The Freezer

Finally a hint of success! My goat hunt couldn’t have gone better! I’ve been shooting all summer on the prairie at thousands of prairie dogs, and this time everything falls into place.

 I get out to the place I’m going to hunt and just as daylight brakes I see this guy driving down the road towards me. I was told that I had the west half of the ranch to myself. This guy was all lost and he came from a town about 20 miles away through fences and gates to find that he thought he was traveling west not east. So I directed him back to the highway and he found his way just fine now that it was light. I wasn’t mad that he had spooked all the goats from the last 20 miles to my ranch. That was actually pretty dang sweet!

So with 45 goats in a pasture that only holds about half that on a good day, I was pretty excited. I drove on further west into a deep drainage and parked. The plan was to walk down the drainage and take a look around. Now remember the rut is still in full swing and with this meany goats in one pasture there’s going to be some fights! There’s bucks chasing all over the pasture and does watching, I could’ve been wearing a clown suit and they wouldn’t have paid any attention to me, I had my pick of any buck I could see, it was out of this world!

I finally find the buck I want and he’s beaded all by himself, so I pop up to the top of the ridge and steady up on my bipod. I decided just to chill and wait for him to get up and stretch. Finally he stands up and he’s facing away from me and just slightly to the left. I’m steady, I got the wind figured, and I’m squeezing and nothing. Ya I had my safety on, amused by my silliness I settle down and shoot for his far shoulder and let drive. Through the recoil I saw him take the it and stumble. He runs off to 200 yards and stops facing away.  I see 6 other goats pop up and run toward him and he turns broad side so I center punched his right shoulder and hamburger the off shoulder. He falls like a bowling pin and when the others reach him they stand around him like they didn’t know where they were going to go. So I figure I got a buck and a doe tag my buck is down right there why not a doe? The lead doe is usually the biggest and most mature, they also start to separate themselves from the heard first. This makes the lead doe not only the prime target but she also gives you a clear shooting lane by separating herself. I stand up and swing on the lead doe and she’s half way between a full run and a trot so I swung out in front of her and shot her in what I call the bread basket. The bread basket is hi on the shoulder; this shocks the spinal cord thusly dropping them like a bad habit wile also sending massive injury to the lungs and shatters the shoulders. The cool thing is at her current speed instead of simply dropping she rolls ace over teakettle! When I got down there I found that both of them were on a road going through a cut.  Hunts that go perfectly like this don’t happen, so when you get a victory, even if it didn’t go just how you planed, cherish the moment because you never know when your last hunt will be. I had a killer riffle antelope season and I hope you did also. But if you still have tags to fill there’s still time so go get’r done this weekend. This next weekend I’m taking my best friend out for his first deer hunt.

Good luck and good hunting.