Hunting Life Begins Again!

Happy upcoming spring you people! It has been a long, long winter for the nation, and it hasn't stopped yet for most of us! Until today we had over thirty inches of snow on the ground and we've had that and more all winter. So, that only means that I did very little hunting here at Long Ridge, and the few times I went out coyote hunting I did not get one. Below is deer camp a few days ago. We have no place left to pile snow and if I did not have a bucket loader, we'd have been doomed this winter. So in a way in spite of my love for winter and snow, I am glad to see it begin to seriously melt today.

It has been a terrible few months for the local deer herds. Below zero, and +30 inches of snow for most of the winter spells a high mortality rate if things go as usual. The ones we see look to be in good health, but that is illusion usually. Some look well, but are severely stressed, and their fat reserves are low, and their bone marrow gone. The coyotes will be killing them by the dozens, especially now that they are whelping out their pups. Below there are some tracks coming out of the deep snow to our trails, and below that, a watering hole they use all winter. There are two separate groups of deer visiting the small pasture up behind the house. The land slopes steeply up out there, facing South and there is a thin patch of open ground by the stone wall. Yesterday a group of seven came through and while they were feeding we noted a large doe with a severe wound on her upper withers, a gash about eight inches long and quite deep into the flesh. It was open about 3-4 inches wide. To our astonishment, when she turned around to go back, we noted an almost exact duplicate wound on her right side, same place. Clearly she was attacked by something with a large mouth, or long claws but escaped. Though the wounds were deep and long and red, they were no longer bleeding, and she was moving and browsing OK. Bear? Coyote? What do you think?

   

                                    

Yesterday I went out on snowshows with dogs and trimmed up six wild apple trees scattered around our fields. I left all the branches right there on the ground and today I found they had been heavily browsed by two deer over night. They came down from the Far Ridge so not part of the groups behind our house.

After last months post about my coyote hunt, I did get a comment from someone categorically stating 'You can't kill dogs with # 6's'...referring I suppose to my mention of using my shotgun. Well, I know this follower to be wrong, but it did give me an idea for a fun project - find out what the best patterning load, with decent penetration I can find using 40 and 50 yard coyote targets. I have embarked on that project as you can see below. Once I find the best load for my shotgun with extra full choke, I will run that load through several different chokes, and pass on the best combination I can find. There are places in this country where it is illegal to hunt with a rifle, but there are coyotes virtually everywhere. So for those of you who chose or must use a shotgun, I will post my result in the future. Below you see a target shot offhand at 40 and at 50 yards with no. 2's (steel) Note, even with a 2 3/4 inch shell, there are 37 hits! I counted only good body hits.

                                     

Below is a full size Delta Coyote target that I shot at the same distances with a BBB magnum 3 inch shell.  & vital hits at 50 yards, and 14 at 40...pretty decent...      

                                                                                   Here is the Remington model 11-87 I use. It has a red dot mounted on it for turkey and coyote.
                                     

                                        I have actually taken more coyotes with my truck gun, a Ruger Mini 14 Ranch with a 4x Leupold on it. Not a tack driver but 3 inch groups regularly. What I do NOT have to worry about, is it banging around my truck. It is as rugged and reliable as any gun I ever shot, and the flash hider keeps the wet floor and salt from reaching the muzzle. It has been indestructible for 29 years!

                                     

I did get away last week for a day's foray into Massachusetts where I spent hours at the New England Sportsman's Show at the Big E in Springfield Massachusetts. I have posted a ton of neat pictures below, but I will state this caviat...this show was a huge disappointment. The pictures you see are of outfitters - there had to be a hundred of them, and I love that part of the show. Every conceivable critter and geographic location on Earth is represented, and it's all so neat. But for the rest of the show, a bust. Not a single ATV manufacturer bothered to show. Only Savage, and Smith&Wesson (Thompson Center Arms) had their firearms displayed. Incidentally because I actually picked up a TC Venture Predator, I am going to purchase one. But that's a different post...There were some bass boats on display, and the typical tables of cheap Chinese manufactured goods, a good mounted white tail racks display, and a caged live grizzly bear that amused no one except ignorant adults and kids who know no better. In all, I enjoyed talking and visiting with the outfitters from all over the world. Other than that, not worth your time. I would have learned more by taking an hours walk in the woods.

I never knew that Warthogs were as huge as they are!

                                                                               

The gents below were selling all kinds of beautiful furs...mink, fox, bobcat, lynx, you name it!

One of my favorite animals is the Wolverine. Our Fisher, though smaller, are exactly the same in spirit and temperment...

The size of this elephant mount truly took my breath away. I cannot imagine being under full charge of an enraged bull elephant. This reminded me of the biggest one ever shot, a fully stuffed speciman in the Museum of Natural History in DC that is 13 feet at the shoulder!!!

For my Connecticut friends, I have included this picture of the Connecticut Trappers Association. They had an interesting exhibit.

The heads shown below were all taken in New England states. Some truly magnificant bucks.

The ones below, from all over the US...

This is the first time in twenty years I have attended an outdoors show such as this. The last I believe was in Chicago, and my memories of it were much better. In short, I won't be going again, and if you want to see everything I saw, and have more fun, and without an admission charge,visit a Cabelas' superstore.

jackzeller@myfairpoint.net

Post Holiday Hunting Lull !

It is 12 degrees below zero as I start this post, and like the rest of the world we have a good 24 inches of snow on the ground. It will be here until May, because the snows started late this year and the frost is 18 inches deep. Before the snow came it was actually dangerous to walk on a lot of our trails. Huge chunks of frozen frost and ice had heaved the ground, and when the ground looked OK, you could still find yourself plunging fifteen inches down. I fell several times, and stayed off those trails unless on an ATV.

Below you see several pictures of a great buck, taken by rifle about 10 miles north of here. A real keeper, and good for that New Hampshire hunter!

Mid December is the time to get out and take down the deer stand foam seats/slings and what have you, because the squirrels get right to them for nest material and ruin them. The two I did leave up because I wanted to hunt coyotes from them have already been destroyed! This is the only way to easily traverse the trail just before snow.

This is the trail leading out of LRDC to the Christmas tree plantation and hunting trail network. As you can clearly see, snowmobile is the best way to break and maintain the trails in the winter. With below zero temps the trails harden up like cement and make great walking or skiing trails. It also benfits wildlife, and we see many tracks following our network. We look forward to, and love the blizzards. We are equipped and prepared for them, both relative to vehicles, and to clothing and tools. I know that unexpected snow in a lot of the country has severely impacted the lives of folks who do not normally get harsh winters, and we hate to hear that. The only downside to tough winters here, can be the impact on wildlife. If it stays as cold as it has for the past month, the deer herd will be noticeably impacted. And at -10 degrees, farm chores always take twice as long.

Before I forget it, here is the bulletin board in deer camp. The eight deer pictures are the deer we took this year. Not pictured are the four deer taken in West Virginia. These pictures stay up until next season. If it looks warm and cozy in camp, don't be fooled. It was 10 degrees in there. My Scent Killer sprayer is frozen hard enough to use as a club.

When not on snowmobile I use these Sherpas to get around the woods. In several feet of powder it is slow and hard going when you are alone, because there is no trading off the trailbreaking. But I am seldom in a hurry in the woods anyway, and snowshoeing is a great way (and healthful) way to spend a winter's afternoon. It is also the only way to get out far enough for good coyote hunting.

Winter mode of transportation in New Hampshire. For those of you in the southern climes, these Polaris Classics can forge through three feet of powder, cruise at 85 miles per hour, and can go all day long on a tank of gas. We put saddlebags on them, and can take groomed trails all the way from our barn yard to the Canadian border about 200 miles by trail away. (allow two overnights to do the trip in comfort!) The best way in the world to see moose, coyotes, and deer yards up to a 1/2 mile across. You will never see more wild game in the North Country, than you will cruising along at 20 mph on a snowmobile. Guaranteed!

Now that the twelve days of Christmas are past, I will begin taking up coyote hunting again. Actually I have been out twice this month, but could call in nothing except a fisher, which was kind of cool! It would not come closer than about forty yards from my remote. Below is the camouflage I wear while hunting 'yotes' in the snow. Because I am hunting in heavily wooded areas, and shots rarely are afforded past 50 yards, I use my 11-87 with a red dot sight on it. For ammunition I am using 3 inch magnum # 6's. I prefer the Hevi-Shot, but they are ridiculously expensive. With an extended xtra full choke the sixes work fine out to 50-60 yards.

This is the last coyote I got on cameras before taking them down for the winter.

The last picture shows a post season doe standing below the Far Stand. She is exactly where the doe I took with bow was this fall. Just behind the beech tree leaves to her right you can see the ladder going up to my stand.

As I finish this post it has gone up to seven drees F. above zero. Like summer, and time to hit the trails!

jackzeller@myfairpoint.net

Alas, the Hunts Are Over!

Camps are over and done with at Long Ridge Deer Camp as of last Sunday. Always a sad and lonely moment for me, as the last hunters pack their gear and drive away in the dark of a Sunday evening. We have had a farewell drink, but as the last hunter there, I wander around camp, marveling at it's sudden unclutteredness, pour another glass of wine and step out onto the porch to watch the fireplace sputter to a still coolness. The stars are bright, and it is cold. I can hear owls in the distance, and imagine huge bucks strolling along the very trails we hunted hours before. I am high with the waning hunt, and absolutely sick over it's ending. But as I place my glass in the sink, and gather my goods and the pups, I take a final look around the dark deep camp - I relive the stories, the laughter, the told and re-told adventures of life, and work, and play, and hunting by good friends. Just momentarily I look upward, and remind myself as Richard Nelson said " I would rather live as a rock on a hillside, than having lived this life without knowing the (hunter) animal inside me".

Below you see camp as it is today - quiet, forlorn, the two cords of wood long burned in the merry fireplace. No pickups, no hunters, cooking till next year!

It is December 9th as I write this, and it is cold, nasty cold out, a chilling 4 degrees F with a decent wind. Rifle and muzzle loader season is over now, and bow season goes for another six days. I will be out there as soon as the weather breaks. I know there are archers out there that hunt in full heater suits with bow in this weather, but I am not one of them. With the end of rifle season, I have been hunting close to 80 days, and my lips are badly chapped, the skin on my hands resembles that of a 100 year old, and I am kinda beat. Three camps we had, with nine of the 17 hunters affiliated with camp actually hunting here.  (to be sure, most dropped by for a day, or an evenings drink by the fire) These were, excepting two of us, rifle hunters only. I took a deer early with the bow, and several hunters scored with bows on other land, or with muzzle loaders. In all, seven of us took twelve deer, one being taken in Montana, along with a 6x6 Elk!. Still another of our group shot a marvelous bull elk in Colorado with bow at 30 yards! That is a nice shot at 9000 feet!. Two cops from the group took a road trip to West Virginia where they scored four more Whitetails. So in every respect it was a beautiful deer season, with Elk, Whitetail, and other wild meats on line for next years game dinners. With that said, it was a wholly differerent season this year. Deer were as hard to spot and find as any year in my memory, and that held for most of New Hampshire. We hunters saw 22 deer during the three camps, about half as many as usual. No one took one here after muzzle loading season, although some hunters passed up lesser deer. I have an eight point minimum requirement here at LRDC after doe season ends, and we saw not a single deer that met these requirements. They were nocturnal all summer, and remained so during the fall. Not a single daytime picture of a large buck did I get on three game cameras. I did jump a giant basket rack just at shooting light the last camp, but did not try a shot. So no trophies this year, but great hunts, and a lot of fun!

Below you see the G5 Montec broadhead and five inches of arrow that the processessor found in my doe. As I surmised in an earlier post, the arrow went through the top of her right lung, center of her left and sunk deep into her left shoulder, breaking it. I will reconstitute the broadhead for another hunt! We did have some of her round steaks at deer camp, and it was some of the most tender venison we ever had, literally we cut this meat with forks!

Here you see a young buck rubbing a Christmas tree 150 yards from camp. ( a.m.), and he didn't seem worried, perhaps he knows the eight point rule!

Below you see a young buck on the far Ridge Stand. As he was stiff legging it across the plot I was in my stand watching him. I could have shot him, and the large doe he was with a bunch of times. It was still doe season, so I let them go hoping they would migrate to a stand lower down for hunters that hadn't scored yet. Instead, they hung out til dark, skunking us all. The doe was right underneath me, upset, pawing, but refusing to leave...

This crafty red fox certainly appears to have scored a rabbit or something, and his condition tells me that he scores on a regular basis! He is in the right place because we regularly get rabbit pictures on this camera.

And, if you check my last post or two, you will see that I said I had posted a picture of a spring fawn attempting sneak a drink from Mom in the fall. Well I posted the wrong one, so here it is!

Below is a picture of the one antlered buck I posted earlier in the summer. Well a LRDC hunter got him about two hours later, and 3/4 of a mile away, on this same date. You see him here, just before his demise scraping and sniffing a spruce just 100 yards from deer camp porch. He was taken at 40 yards with a patched round ball while he was with three does. He was a tiny guy, dressing out at 113 lbs!

The last picture here is of a bobcat coming from the same direction as the fox was going with the rabbit in his mouth. Apparently this is a honeyspot for predators!..It should be, as the last buck we took from this stand was in 1998!

In any case, now we can take a (very short) rest and then start hauling wod, planning improvements, checking out equipment for next year. I am hoping to book a bear hunt soon, and will keep you posted on that!. In the meantime all you hunters, I hope you had great hunts, whether you got deer or not, and that the coming new year happens as it should! Merry Christmas! Jack  jackzeller@myfairpoint.net