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Hitting the ground running on this thread! Happy to be here. CharlieBravo brings up a lot of excellent points, but as one of the hunting students I want to emphasize a few things from someone who learned this hobby as an adult. I don't like killing animals That's quite fair! I don't generally like wholesale slaughter of animals either. That's why I have moved my meat consumption away from the supermarket and into my own hands. I'm not quite at the point where most of my meat that I eat is from my own harvests, but I would like to get there someday. I'm deeply troubled by the meat industry's practices and don't have access to my own farm, so this is how I consume meat in an ethical manner. If I work hard, take responsibility and don't waste the animal, I know that they lived a good life. They were wild and free and if I did my job correctly they suffered only a swift death. Whatever I cannot take with me the coyotes will enjoy as a feast, but I try to take as much as possible. For me that includes the skull and skin for craft purposes or my own self-reflection.  I live in a place where there is no hunting, or I live in an apartment and cannot accomodate large portions of meat and parts in my freezer I live in the middle of suburbia, Southern California. It is absolutely one of the worst places to learn hunting in terms of gun exposure, thriving wildlife and spaces accessible someone who wishes to harvest from public lands. If I go eeeeh, an hour and a half away and do some hiking? I am suddenly in deer territory. You can learn by yourself! But I have had thread experts like Charlie Bravo helping me every step of the way, and learn immensely each year, or even every time I throw myself into the wilderness.  As for the freezer problem, this is the buck that my short self is helping to butcher in the OP.  This is a standard apartment freezer and he was flown home from Nebraska, quite easily I might add, back to the desert. All you really need is a working freezer, some planning ahead of time and the O.K. from any housemates. Not enough room then? I've found that my family and friends are quite delighted when I offer them some of my venison. They get a delicious meat to cook, I get to share a memory with them and there's suddenly more room in my freezer. I've never hunted or so much touched a gun! I wouldn't even know where to start  I'm an adult onset hunter. I only have one gun right now and grew up terrified of firearms and knives. The entirety of my firearms and hunting training is post-college. I'm also an extremely liberal individual who began to take my interest in hunting seriously upon reading the last thread. It's an incredibly amazing hobby and I have met several good people and friends while doing this, even like-minded individuals. It's allowed me to travel more than I've ever thought I'd want to and see more of our country and wildlife.  If you are truly interested, I'd read up and watch videos like what CharlieBravo linked. Some books that helped me decide that hunting is a new hobby I would like to try now own include: The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game Parts 1 and 2 by Steven Rinella Buck, Buck, Moose by Hank Shaw as my cookbook Call of the Mild: Learning to Hunt on My Own by Lily Raff McCaulou Also get OnX, absolutely. No way this is sponsored but it's incredibly useful to not getting lost in the dark and is great for taking visual notes and tracking.  Learn gun safety, take a hunter's ed course and go for some target practice. Soon enough you'll be ready to hit the trails. I don't know a taxidermist! I'm still a bit new on this but believe it or not there's plenty of things you can do yourself! European mounts, aka just the skull are easy enough to cook/boil yourself if you have some good soap and money to use on trashing a crock pot. Last year I learned how to properly flesh out a skin, but you can also tan the hide yourself with some practice. Those flesh-eating bugs are for rent in some places, too.  As a continuation of the previous thread, you can expect to see some dead animals and lots of hunting advice, gear talk and other stuff floating around. Don't be afraid to ask questions, and don't worry about knowing nothing. After all I'm only a few years into this hobby and started out in the same spot!  There are many other newbie hunters, and many methods of hunting. From bows to crossbows to shotgun slugs or whatever we can probably help you. And honestly, to me going on a hunt isn't about coming back with a trophy buck or whatever. It's about enjoying and participating in wilderness and sometimes, sometimes getting a cool meal out of it. If you go with friends it's pretty fun, too.  Not everyone is going to be a bleeding heart hippy like I am, sure. But I have found the previous thread an excellent source of inspiration and information, and I hope this one can be an excellent continuation. 
Chaosfeather fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 22:37
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Rodenthar Drothman posted:CA checking in. In the middle of the hunters education course right now, which I really really should finish. I want some pig! Woop! We have an excellent continued Hunter's Education system too, from what I hear. HamAdams posted:Jealous of your pheasant pics, my grandpa always talks about how great the pheasant hunting used to be in this area but they’re not really around anymore, certainly not in huntable numbers. Only way to hunt them around here is to find someone who breeds them and that just doesn’t feel the same to me. I like large game hunting in general. It's funny because I've spent much more time hunting Mule Deer than whitetail and have had 0 shot opportunities but that's SoCal hunting for you. Whitetail are my "gently caress it, let's go to another state and get some venison in the freezer while hanging out with friends" option. I'm also extremely interested in Elk hunting but likely won't get an opportunity to learn that one for a while since I need my points to accumulate. I'm also starting to save up points for Pronghorn and have tried going out for pigs a couple of times. I also enjoy small game hunting but to me killing one large animal for several meals is more satisfying than killing several small animals for several meals. Also on the radar is black bear hunting, mostly because I keep running into them while fishing. Wanna eat some bear jerky. Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Thanks for the excellent OP! I grew up around a lot of hunting but never did much until I started after college with squirrel and deer. I've fallen out of the habit, but I think I'll pick it up again this fall. We have way too many deer here and it drives me crazy that all the bubbas wait around for that big buck when they could have shot three does and helped the population and gotten lots of meat. I have some friends/family that are avid/rabid turkey hunters and I'd like to try that out in the spring maybe. I'd like to try rabbit too, but I've always been worried about tularemia or whatever. How big of a deal is that? Rabbit is delicious! I haven't encountered any diseased rabbits yet but giving the corpse a once-over to see how healthy they look is a pretty good idea for hunting in general. That and not eating the raw meat. I'd need to look up more about the disease itself but generally if it looks like heathy flesh it's probably okay for cooking.
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Jul 18, 2020 18:16
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I love hearing about happy dogs with a job. I worked as a veterinary assistant for a while and so many dogs go absolutely bonkers if they don't have a task they can thrive in. Terriers are excellent at hunting rats and I'm glad your dog loves assisting you (and enjoying a tasty snack). Hunting with dogs is great when it's good and worrisome when it's not good. I won't get into it but I have a horror story that essentially boiled down to someone trying to encourage me to 'wing' a dog with shot to teach them a lesson. No bueno. It definitely takes patience to teach a dog what the rules are (and teach yourself how to enforce them) but once both of you are trained it can lead to a much healthier human-dog interaction. Each state has different rules on dog use for elimination of animals (including pests, hunting and trapping). I haven't done a whole lot of research there but it's definitely something that people should look into if they are willing to train a dog. We have such a tight bond with that species it's cool to see how well we work together. Another animal-assisted way to hunt is falconry! From what I understand it's very difficult to break into (and you need the money/room/time to care for your raptor) but from the conversations I've had with people who work with raptors it can be incredibly rewarding. This is mostly for small game but I'm sure people have heard of the awesome badasses who hunt wolves with Golden Eagles.
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Jul 19, 2020 04:17
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As someone who is just dipping her toes into taxidermy and trying to learn on the fly I'm super interested in your work! Turn that skunk into a fancy lad or lass. The only time I'll probably want a shoulder mount is to do something heavily altered - like a mule deer dyed to be melanistic with gold eyes or something spooky like that. Then I could decorate it with a cravat and that's how we got Dapper Dracula Deer's AV. Otherwise I'm super happy with euro mounts and want to better learn the tanning process to do it myself (instead of just the skinning) Chaosfeather fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 19, 2020 23:48
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Sprue posted:When working deer I believe a fleshing knife to be ideal, similar to this and a big PVC pipe. You basically hang the hide over the pipe and then push off the meat and fat and connective tissue with the blade. Obviously it's a little more complicated than that, but other then buying a $5-10k fleshing machine, the only other real option is to dry it flat and use a sander, which is great for think hides like bear but would destroy a deer easily extra stout posted:Thanks for making this thread Charlie. That was my first deer skin, which I did nearly everything wrong and took to a taxidermist to save. I've only shot two deer so I'm by no means an expert at this point... Mistakes like salting at the wrong time, letting the meat and fat freeze on the skin, trying to skin with a havlon blade and more just made it...quite a disaster. Thankfully I know my taxidermist pretty well and he was able to fix everything up for me very nicely, which is what you see there. It has like 5 or 6 spots he had to stitch up. What I learned last season was the PVC pipe mounted a bit higher with a curved fleshing knife, peeling most of the skin away that way. I did a wrong and had salted it a little beforehand which made it a bit tougher, but this year I learned from our lovely sheep thread in Pet Island (or whatever it's called now) that you can use a pressure hose to flesh out the same thing. Which is great because I used the hose to flesh out the skull's brains so I'll definitely try that method next year. The PVC pipe method was great but I still would get tired or overeager and let the blade jump and that wasn't helpful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPUjKWwhXpk I also have gotten a lot better at skinning the deer itself, and enjoyed the fact that the warmer conditions made it basically peel right off really easily. Getting to the corpse before Rigor Mortis set in and skinning it was definitely key in making it easier, and honestly I did more pulling than cutting. Like peeling a very large, fleshy orange. Since I was staying at the Dapper Dracula Deer family household they were very kind to let me experiment in their garage. We played with dunking it in a solution and stretching methods so you'd need to consult him on what it was. I can't tan at my apartment because we have no outdoor space so I've been sending the taxidermist the half-done skin to finish off, but have dried some bird skins to use for fishing ties. Can confirm just using salt gets you a stiff jerky-like skin, which is good enough for that but not what we are looking for in a good blanket. I'll let you know when I learn more, but for now I think Sprue is going to be a better source on tanning info. I've gotten to the point where I'm doing euro mounts on my own though, at least for birds. But with all the tiny flesh pockets and trouble scooping out the brains honestly I might just rent those flesh-eating bugs to do it next time. Since working more in the ecology side of things I've met a guy who keeps them and it's much cheaper than sending it to a taxidermist, you just go "here let them eat this" and wait a little while. Side note: I've got a deer foot in my freezer from my last buck. I'm intending on making it a paper weight for my dad as a part of a family in-joke but need to figure out how to properly hollow it out and cap it. Let me know if you folks have any ideas?
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Jul 20, 2020 03:44
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Archery! Badass! So you ready for archery bear yet? Kidding aside that's super cool and I hope you get another opportunity after some practice soon.
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Jul 20, 2020 22:16
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Boliver_Shagnasty posted:The backpack I use isn't specifically for hunting. I'm planning on using the pack I've used for backpacking for a few trips here and there over the years. It's just a basic internal frame that's pretty big with separate compartments. I didn't want to invest too much in gear right off the bat. Gutless is faster and less messy, and you can get to the tenderloins with the gutless method with a little blind uh, extraction. My first whitetail hunt the thread can tell you I brought a jansport backpack. Not an ideal situation but it worked in a pinch. Your state hunting regulations will tell you what you need to do. For instance, some places you can't break it down in the field, no quartering, so you need to bring the entire deer to the check station. Some want proof of sex attached to the corpse, some just want the head. Most states have a Hunting Digest for each year and it'll describe to you all the regulations including how you need to present the deer, which will dictate how you carry it out. Those Kuiu bags are excellent, by the way. Easy to wash, easy to spot and super affordable for the nice bag you get. Last year's whitetail took 3 trips, and only because I insist on taking the whole skull/head and skin which is shockingly heavy for what it is and takes up substantial room. Dracula Deer hauled two trips in the time I took for one, because I am out of shape. Which is funny because when I think of the average hunter I think of the overweight uncle who shoots in his backyard. That deer was...eh, like 2.5-3 miles in, I think? With some hills. Nothing awful, but it becomes a lot harder when you add weight to the equation. Also something that I like doing since I skin the animal: Use the skin as your tarp on the ground while you clean! Keeps the meat out of the grass and you can roll it around a little easier with the leverage.
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Jul 21, 2020 04:11
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Well, in the lull before the season (but while it's super hot to scout) I talked to my taxidermist and mentioned the area my tag is in. His response was "Oh, there are some massive bucks over there but it seems like it's that or absolutely nothing." So my odds are still low but if I do find a buck it may be a decent sized critter. Been looking at some maps and I'm not super happy with my options so far, gotta look for the guzzlers that are planted and see if I can find good access between them and a bedding area. I was able to do this two years ago, so hopefully I'll find another guzzler out in this area. It's pretty much the only water that wildlife has at this point in the season, and we typically don't get rain before the hunting season starts. I might go out to scout with some shot and be ready to take a jackrabbit or a coyote. Still want to try cooking those. We'll see how it goes.
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Jul 31, 2020 19:16
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Re: bun chat, if you hit a standing rabbit with a shotgun spray you gonna lose like...half of your rabbit. Definitely aim for the head if they are still, and if you can make them break and you're confident in your shot go for it. Also be ready to hunt them in low light. I've found them most active *right* before shooting times close for the night. Edit: Hoping to have something good to contribute in a day or two, I've been spending most of the week doing amateur taxidermy work on some birds I got last season. So far things are going well but we are on the second drying stage so let's see if it rots or not.
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Aug 7, 2020 06:36
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I'm especially interested in archery chat, too. I vastly prefer rifles and shotgun slugs to an arrow, but mostly because it's harder for me to gently caress up in a way that makes the life of the animal absolutely horrible with a huge bullet over an arrow sticking out of a critter. Props to the people who can do it on public land, I'm much less impressed by people who hire a guide or do it on private land. I mean sure, you get an animal and it counts, but you're really not learning all you can about the animal before making a single shot attempt. But I'm super biased. Also it costs $$$$$. I've been a little slow to catch up but I have learned a couple of things. Behold!  This spring I had the pleasant opportunity to go hunting with fellow goons Andamac and Ryanrs, in which we pursued duck, a single coot, and a handful of pheasants and chukar. Since I botched the preservation of my first duck a while back, I let the professionals handle my second duck. Pheasants I have had the pleasure to take a few times though, so I was ready to play with my own attempts.  As of right now this is as far as I've gotten on the skulls. I'm used to cleaning deer skulls and I am incredibly frustrated by how delicate many of these bones are. As you can see I managed to punch a hole in the back of the eyesocket to the brain case on the middle skull, which is a chukar. Although it made cleaning the brain case much easier it is definitely a damaged product now. Whoops. I did find that cleaning the brains out with a q tip were much, much better than trying to scoop them out with toothpicks. Definitely cooked these babies twice so far - once to cook everything to make it easier to de-flesh, and a second time to further degrease it once I removed the brains. This is achieved with some dishwashing powder for the degreaser and some extremely hot water. Just boil em in the...bird head soup... for a bit before continuing.   So I have two pheasant corpses, one skinned whole and one in pieces. Since I use the feathers to tie flies for fishing I'm much more practiced in parts, and since I intend on giving these as a gift to my friend DapperDraculaDeer I wanted to try both methods. If I pull off the whole skin it'll be much more impressive, but the parts are a good fallback.  All of these parts had the benefit of being frozen asap after leaving the bird, so in order to thaw them I gave them a bath in lukewarm water. Once they were properly thawed, I gave them a bath in warm water and liquid dish soap - degreasing, cleaning up the majority of blood, feces and other debris from the body parts, and overall giving it a nice clean look.  Now I'll admit I've had a problem here before - if you let the feathers dry on their own they get all gross and scraggly, which is something that doesn't happen on a live bird. After looking up some youtube videos on how museums do it for their specimens, I've discovered the magic of the hair dryer.  A hair dryer on a low setting takes a while to take care of all of the downy and underlying feathers (each one of these attempts takes hours depending on how wet they are) but the gentle setting of low keeps the feathers from being blown off of the skin, and the less intense heat means I can move my hands around to better angle the feathers for the ultimate fluff. A living bird would normally do this themselves getting sun-dried, with lots of minute adjustments on their skin and fluffing up once in a while. Simulating that really got these dry, and I dried a bit of the skin itself for good measure.  Q-tips have been essential to packing salt into the hard-to-reach pockets, such as the legs and the wings, but have been quite effective at salting these. I pack them with as much salt as I can, ziplock baggy them and place them in the dry outdoor closet I have in my apartment. Salt does need changing though, as it can only absorb so much water. I leave the first salt in there for 24 hours, then completely trash, blow-dry the corpse again (you'll find it has gotten wet in the attempt to suck all the moisture out of the body), re-salt and re-seal it. The next salt application I left for a week.  The parts (including the deer hoof) have gotten impressively dried, to the point it's starting to be difficult to position them. I've repeated the unsalt-drying-resalt method, but this time with the parts I've positioned them and am leaving them open in their arid environment. I've placed thin nails and pins between the feathers and talons in order to encourage them to harden in this pose and hope it'll look quite impressive when done.  The full skins continue to suck out a lot of moisture, which I suspect is from leaving the legs and wings attached and hollowing out those limbs in an effort to dry them. Since the process seems slower I've re-bagged them packed with salt after the drying today and will leave them in the bags for another week and check on them. So far no rot, no smell past the 'animal skin/flesh' smell and honestly blow-drying it makes it smell like I'm making bird jerky, so it makes me a little hungry. This is the most adventurous I've gotten in apartment taxidermy, and I'm thankful my roommate is tolerant of my habits to allow this to happen. I know a huge encouragement in this case is 'gets the dead animal parts out of the freezer so we can put more food in there". Hopefully I'll leave them alone for a week and they'll be much closer to being ready to go, but I'm not quite sure how long it will take to get all that moisture out of the full bodies.
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Aug 11, 2020 02:37
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Very nice hunt! As much as I'd love to get a bull tag one day I am getting more confident that I need to get my elk meat from cow hunts. Congrats to both of you!
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Sep 24, 2020 18:39
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Love your photos, as usual. WIth my cell phone fixed I can use Onx again, and unfortunately I'm figuring out that exactly all of the places I have hunted or scouted before in SoCal are now closed due to fire damage or out of precaution. What a bummer, but it's good to have this tool back.
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Sep 30, 2020 04:20
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As I mentioned in the other thread, I'm jealous, thrilled that the three of you filled four tags and exhausted just thinking about dealing with all those miles and the rear end in a top hat competition. Congratulations all around. One day I'll do a similar hunt to the elk one, but I oughta get used to hiking crazy distances at high elevation. It's just another good reason for me to go fishing at high altitudes as practice.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:12
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Hey CA Buddy! I'm in SoCal but I've gone up to central a couple of times to hunt with goons. For local goons you need to talk to Andamac and Ryanrs, who are really into duck hunting/turkey hunting and small game hunting respectively. You have a lot of newbies or adult-onset hunters in the thread here so you are in good company. I love that your wife calls MeatEater Meatmeat and I'm adopting that. Although I'm in socal I'm finding myself to prefer bigger game such as deer. I encourage you to try various accessible hunts to you and see what you like! I'm just getting into turkeys down here and it's super fun. For deer I have a lot of trouble locally so I tend to go out of state to hunt bucks, which seems counter-intuitive until you realize that it's pretty hard for me to get a decent local tag. OnX subscription is a good thing to have, thanks for reminding me that I need to renew mine. Definitely hunt the X zones if you get a chance. I'm 5 points in on deer and I'm probably going to be waiting at least another two years for that. Black bear is a good hunt in this state, I have yet to participate but they are pretty dense in some of those X zone areas from my experience. Don't hesitate to ask to borrow a gun when you go, too. I think I was hunting for a year before I bought my shotgun, and I'm only lining up to buy my first rifle this year after figuring out what I enjoy shooting.
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Oct 26, 2020 18:53
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Holy cow some good bird hunting recently, great work everyone! Also always appreciate pictures of good doggos. As for re: borrowing firearms in California to learn, I've been having a hard time figuring out the legality of it nowadays. I think the trouble comes with ammo (because you can't be gifted ammo from non-family members in the state anymore) but I am not sure who to ask. When I've borrowed guns it's been 1. Through a learning program or 2. at a firing range, a few years ago. I'd be almost willing to say this is one of those things that you just be careful about but I'm pretty scared of the legality of suggesting stuff online. Just don't do anything extremely stupid and I don't think anyone will care? I still borrow guns for out-of-state hunts but that's another story. What I do know is the vast majority of laws talks about carrying around loaded guns (don't until you're in the field and ready to hunt) and pertains to handguns, not long guns (Can't carry handguns in certain areas, etc). I see things about the borrower having a hunters safety or a firearm's safety permit up to date, not exceeding 30 days, stuff like that but I'm having trouble finding the actual letter of the law.
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Nov 2, 2020 18:40
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Crosspost from the old thread! Annual Nebraska Report It's been an unusual year for everyone. COVID, Unemployment, Financial Instability, Civil Rights Movements, the Election, the list keeps going, and the year has yet to end. I needed my break, and DapperDraculaDeer needed one too. To keep everyone safe, I took my little honda out for a long stroll through the desert.  A 21 hour stroll through the desert.  It was quite nice, actually. I miscalculated and landed in TX at the crack of 3am. Sorry Dapper Family. Things have been a bit crazy this year, so when we struck out to drive up to NE, we had the following plan: We would take the Dapper family Minivan up to NE Sandhills. We would explore a new area this time, camping for a few nights out in the open before re-assessing the situation. If things went poorly, we would switch to our old haunt by Monday, and camp at a nearby campground there. We had food, water, and a backup plan of carcamping in the van if we needed to. Things went...mostly to plan. We arrived late Thursday night, setting up the tent in the ever-present wind after searching for roads the van could handle. On the way in we saw a huge mule deer buck on a nearby farm chasing three doe right next to the road. How promising! Unfortunately most of the region is offroad dirt, and the minivan can't quite take it. We took a fork off of a road we could camp on and set up camp in the wind, re-heating some delicious butter chicken and tucking into bed. Unfortunately as some of you already know, we are from very warm states, and our camping gear is definitely summer gear. My sleeping bag isn't geared for anything under 40F. The temps were hovering around freezing. Not the worst, but certainly uncomfortable for a big baby like me.  In the middle of the night I lay awake thinking about our plan, excited to scout in the morning, when I noticed something was off. Dapper snores. So do I, that doesn't bother me. What bothered me was we were in a grassy valley and I could hear what sounded like an echo. Then the snores staggered, and I knew the truth. Something was using our tent as a windbreak.  The note I have on my phone is, and I quote: I am freezing my tits off (Dapper) is snoring and so is somerhing outside the tent lol and i have to pee. Eventually I relented and the smallish creature scurried off. Feeling better I went back to sleep and before Dapper woke up that morning, I turned on the tent heater and came back to the living world. The tracks outside the tent implied it was a raccoon, but it could have easily been a fox or a skunk. Whatever it was, I was incredibly amused since we weren't in bear territory. Friday we took a late start, a little after dawn, and set out with our food and coffee for a full day of scouting. After crossing several hill ridges, a fence line and a few miles of kicking up prarie chickens we decided on a spot that looked like it would be promising. There were cows about a mile away but there was a good water source, some shelter and a great field of view. We headed back to camp to zero in our rifles nearby and things started to take a frustrating turn. First I was a smart cookie and wore cloth shoes on this venture, and collected so many burrs that when I went back to camp a good mile away Dapper could hear my yelp of pain from extracting a few inches of needles in my foot. Lesson learned I went back out with my boots. Zeroing in was a bit frustrating, but we got the job done well enough at 200 yards. On our way back it was getting dark, so we had our head lamps on. Around a quarter of a mile left to go back to camp Dapper brought out his phone, checked some calculations and placed it back in his pocket. We never saw the phone again. After frustratingly looking for the phone in the dark and reporting back on my phone, we went back to town, picked up a few supplies and let Mrs. Dapper know the damage. We went back to our camp and settled in for the night. I had insulated my sleeping bag with spare clean clothes and managed to stay warm enough to get a good night sleep this time. I woke up again early the next morning. Warming up the tent, Dapper got the coffee ready and we headed out a little later than I had hoped, but not a problem. Dapper commented that he had never seen deer this early in the morning anyway. Not a valley away I spotted the biggest goddamn mule deer I've ever seen in my loving life. He was easily 800-900 yards away on a nearby hillside, quartering towards us as we crossed the valley. The sun wasn't over the ridge yet and to be completely honest I didn't think I had seen a deer at first. First he was a tree in the wind, then he was a cow. Then, with crazy realization, it was a very very dark, big buck. Neither of us were prepared. Dapper told me to go ahead and try to get the drop on him around a foothill, he'd take care of my pack. I shed my hunting pack, took the gun I was borrowing (Which I am a nerd and have nicknamed Crow) and tried to stay out of the deer's line of sight, cutting my vision from him as I went around the foothills. As I rounded the last foothill, wind in my favor, I realized that the droning sound of someone driving was *much* closer than I had anticipated. I turned and saw an ATV tearing through our valley - the valley we hiked to specifically because it was a no-vehicles only zone. Now there was a dirt trail going through it to access the cattle but we had hoped that no one would be using it. We were wrong. Perhaps I had spooked the buck before that point, but going to the crest of the hill to check where he should have been if he was going in the same direction as before would have placed him rather close - within 200 yards of me there. Nothing. He was out of my life. I was angry, frustrated and tired, but the encounter brought hope. We had seen almost everything in the region other than deer the day before, but had spotted plenty of tracks and scat. This was confirmation that we were at least looking in the right direction. Meeting back with Dapper I strapped my pack back on and we made our way to the spot we had scouted the day before. Strike two was finding about 4 cows right below the hill we were trying to scout from. We decided to try it anyway, since based on my experiences back home deer don't tend to mind cows so much. Unfortunately they also do so to access good food sources - when not forced to I learned they would steer clear of the bovines. We bumped a skunk, a coyote and some birds on the way in, and outside of another coyote and 8 more cows on the backside of where we were hanging out we saw nothing. Frustrated we decided to go back to camp. We had a phone to find and we'd be out in another spot by dusk. We could also pick some more stuff up in town since we needed more water. We had vastly underestimated how much water we would consume via coffee drinks. It was now starting to sprinkle, and the clouds looked dark. It was time to move. Back at camp the wind was relentless. I found the spot we had stopped at on the way back to camp, but no phone, and it was raining at this point. We had a good laugh and mentioned that we might want a hotel if it gets much worse, especially considering that the tent was now leaking, and one of the spots was right onto my sleeping bag. Dapper was feeling a bit under the weather and I wasn't feeling great either, so we went back to town to update our families and get more supplies. Supplies gotten, it started to snow on the way back to camp. Wuh oh.  It wasn't much, but between the cold and the wind this was enough for us to submit with our summer-weather campground equipment. We elected to stay out one more night, break camp after the morning hunt across the road and get a hotel room. We struck out again in the evening and spotted a very wary coyote that we could have easily taken but had elected not to at that point, as we were hoping for a deer still. The sun went down and we hiked back to the camp at dark. That night I had the erm, unique experience of crapping in a cathole under the stars. Very romantic view, but very cold on my rear end. It's not often I get to see the milky way's arm.  Anyone who knows cold weather can laugh, but this was way too much for a couple of people who live in areas that get no snow. The next morning we woke up, crossed the road and got semi-lost in the hills across the way. I say semi-lost, I let Dapper go ahead, lost track of him and kept following what I thought were his tracks. They weren't. By the time we reunited and settled in the hills dawn was here, and we saw plenty of birds but no other movement. We had not scouted this place the day before and saw some hunters in the distance working a treeline, and a buck weaving in and out. No idea if they got him, they definitely tried but I think they missed. By midday we went back to camp, ate, rehydrated and broke camp. We reserved a room at the hotel in town and went back to our old haunt, noting that almost everyone was gone by the mid-afternoon. Hiking in I saw two doe on our descent into the valley we wanted to check out, about 700 yards away. They clearly had seen me but I was super tired and Dapper was ready to fill a doe tag. I voted to stay there and watch (and signal if he got busted) while he went to sneak up on them. It was like watching a very slow-action horror movie. He'd disappear, the doe pair would disappear by bedding down in the grass, he'd pop out again and I wouldn't be able to see poo poo. There they were, but where was he? It went on like this for a while.  Then, I see him get ready, and line up a shot. I can't see the does, but he's pointing towards where I last saw them. Surely he would get one. I held my breath. I heard a gunfire right as he shot a second time. I watched towards where I had last seen the does. Nothing. A third fire. Fourth. Right before the fifth gunshot reached my ears I saw the does break out of the tall grass and run away, out of sight and over the hills in no time. I flagged Dapper with my hat but he clearly knew he had been busted at that point and made the hike back to me. When he got back, he mentioned something was wrong with his gun, and that he didn't trust it right now. He'd try to fix it tomorrow during the lull in action once we were set up, but I would have first shot for the next day for now.  On our way back we listened to happy coyotes celebrate their leftovers in the distance and discussed constellations and navigation. It was exhausting but pleasant. After we cleaned up and unloaded at the hotel we nestled into our proper beds and slept until the morning.It was Monday now, and we were getting desperate. I had a blister on my foot but my first aid kit had a zip tie on it, and in trying to open it I split open my thumb something nasty. After a half-hour of cleaning and clotting the cut, three butterfly bandages and a good solid wrap over it I was ready to start the day, wide awake. We decided to go after any legal animal at this point, because we were worried about getting skunked. We went to our favorite spot from previous years in the middle of the marsh, set up and waited.  It seems to get brushier every year, but that's okay. Unfortunately most of the deer had been pressured further in by this point.I set out to stalk a doe to the south of us when she got spooked into our lane, but after an hour of searching the spot once we got there and Dapper watching the entire time, we have no idea where she went. Do deer crawl? Probably not, but the grass she disappeared into practically swallowed me whole. We decided that at some point she had snuck out, but unfortunately I don't know when I busted myself if ever. It's entirely possible that she had 'dropped down' suddenly and what we thought was her bedding down was her going down a ledge and she never stopped. One buck once came about 500 yards away, and a doe came into my sights around 350 yards. I was watching her with the scope and ready to shoot but, after some hushed whispers with Dapper, decided that I wasn't super confident with the shot. I was confident in my aim but the way she was quartering away meant that even if I hit her it was unlikely to be a clean kill. This was maaaybe about 1pm.  Dapper left for a while, seemed to fix whatever was going on with his rifle and came back, but outside of a buck chasing does across the valley we never got a good opportunity to even stalk anyone after that. We went back for consolation pizza at the drive-thru pizza hut in town and slept in the next morning. We packed up, checked out of our hotel room and set out for a late start in the same valley as yesterday, but in a different spot. We wanted to try closer to the private property and as such heavily used Onx maps to make sure we were staying on the public side the entire time.  We found some good spots! There was another marsh hidden back there, where I immediately spotted a doe at about 400 yards with her two older fawns. Not wanting to be a literal disney villian I signalled Dapper to come back as I was busted and watched her and her little ones sprint back onto private land for safety and disappear. It was super cute watching the fawns consider why their mom was running, look at each other confused and around, and with a tail waggle hop on after her. We watched a trio of doe over the next ridge for some time, with Dapper trying to get closer and coming back when he aborted one attempt. My final attempt was in the dying light, trying to chase a frightened doe who had been bumped closer from a gunshot in the distance. As she slowed down I hastily got into position to shoot, and at the last second she looked at me and bolted around the hill. I knew immediately what had happened, and although the initial pang of regret was there I knew that even if I had taken the shot I was going after a very fast moving deer. It wasn't safe. I turned around and saw Dapper being incredibly disappointed that he busted me, but in all honestly you kept me from taking a really skeevy shot. Thanks man. Tuesday night was falling, we trekked across the valley back to the trail we are familiar with and spotted stars again that night. From there we drove back to TX. Or rather, Dapper drove most of it. I was just so exhausted I slept most of the time, and when I did drive it wasn't the most safe of conditions.  We got back to the Dapper houshold exhausted and were couch potatoes the next day. We nursed our egos but all in all had a great time. We learned 1. Get the proper camping gear, dammit. 2. Tag out in a familiar place first, then explore new areas on following days so you at least have something in the freezer 3. The new area was a completely different ballgame, and next year I think we will be more ready for it. 4. Don't underestimate rest. I think I would have been better if I was more fit like last year, but the lack of sleep from being cold certainly didn't help our efforts. If I need naps I should take them. 5. Cuddling with cats while drinking tea is a great consolation prize.  We weren't done with our trip, and still had Texas to hunt, but that's another post.
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Nov 30, 2020 01:43
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Oh my god a double post? People must be out hunting, or perhaps in a coma from Thanksgiving. Texas Weekend Hunt This year is a very exciting year in the Dapper family. Mr. Dapper loves hunting TX for whitetail and for pigs, but also is learning to take squirrels and rabbits to pass on the lessons to his kids. Mrs. Dapper is learning to hunt and drew a cool whitetail tag this year that we wanted to attend. This would be a combination hunting/camping trip in warmer territories and thus, our gear was perfect for this kind of thing. The whole Dapper Family sans the kitties would be there!  They would be keeping the house warm and be expecting some sort of food when we got back. Being a weird year, we wanted to make sure everyone was happy, healthy and ready to go for the camping weekend. As such since not everyone was raring to go on Friday we set out on Saturday. It would be an overnight camping trip, and Mrs. Dapper would be going out with me to look for deer. We didn't end up going to the hunt that she pulled for, but this area was closer to home and was familiar since I had hunted the WMA with them before. Here we could keep an eye out for pigs as well as deer, and Mr. Dapper would be back at camp keeping the kids occupied. Unfortunately we moved slowly enough that we only got to set up camp at dark, but that was okay. We enjoyed a delicious meal of roasted hot dawgs over the fire and ate smores, telling spooky stories. I love what kids decide is scary and that a story is automatically more frightening if you add more details, like blood and bats.  After evicting a couple of bugs and spiders I settled in and enjoyed a nice, warm night in comparison to the week before. It started raining in the middle of the night, and between teaching the kids where to use the restroom and other factors we decided to sleep in the next morning. My alarm was set! But it was going to be an easygoing day and we wanted to make sure everyone was rested, warm and happy to make this a positive experience. As such breakfast was hot ramen noodles, a can of spaghetti-os and various other heated tasty things. The adults enjoyed the cots and the kids enjoyed running around in the rain in jackets way, way too big for them. I was super thankful for my tiny tent setup that they let me borrow, meaning I was close enough to talk but had enough privacy to settle into my sleeping bag without fear of spilled noodles. When the rain let up Mrs. Dapper was still feeling a bit sluggish, so Mr. Dapper struck out with the kids to look for squirrels.  Anyone who knows small children will know that this meant it was about 20 minutes of Squirrel Hunting and 40 minutes of a fun hike through the woods, but that's okay. We emphasized gun safety, some cool critters, tracks, fungi and plants we saw and the kids enjoyed crunching leaves and running around on the trail. Not a great hunt but a good family outing! Lunch was some leftover curry when we got back, a delicious meal that shockingly the kids liked, too. All warmed up we agreed that if Mrs. Dapper wasn't feeling great, the deer would still be out there next time. We broke camp, the kids and Mrs. Dapper went home and Dapper and I struck out to have our last attempt at deer for the weekend. Now here is the time where I say I cheat - For whatever reason I have a pretty decent sense of direction after getting lost many, many times as a child and Dapper, in an attempt to lead me to a promising spot he found, nearly went in a circle in the woods. I didn't mind at all, this was an easy walk compared to what we were doing last week, but it made the tracker on onX show a bit of a weird squiggle in this part of the forest. After we oriented ourselves correctly a few minutes in and Dapper suddenly drops, readying his rifle. He whispers that he sees a deer, and it's pretty darn close too. Sub 50 yards, but I was having a hard time determining exactly what I was looking at when he first reported it. I took out my binocs and looked at what I thought was a mount of dirt. Then a tail moved - that was a deer butt. On the other side of the tree I saw two ears, two eyes looking right at us in an alert posture, and a metric fuckton of sticks. "Is it a buck?" "I can't tell" - It's the least helpful answer I could give, but it's the truth. I needed the deer to move their head or neck just a little so I could see if any 'sticks' moved with it. After a few seconds I got my response - an ear flop to the left and a slight head tilt. No dice "Doe. It's a doe." I watched through the binocs and Dapper watched from his crouched position, and the doe warily kept an eye on us while listening to gunfire in the distance. After perhaps a minute or two, she decided that she was absolutely done with our poo poo, gave a snort and bounded off back and to the right. Goodbye, doe. It was a super cool encounter, and probably the closest encounter I've had with a deer in hunting season to date. I was super excited. We settled into the spot Dapper found, he planted the pop-up blind and we waited. The sun sank below the trees, the wind picked up at the tops of the trees, and squeals of pigs could be heard in the distance. Some bird that I am not familiar with and cannot identify spent most of the time trying to deter me from our spot. They would dart between the trees, come out to come closer and yell at me, then snap back into the trees and shrubs. After perhaps an hour of this the bird decided that I was either a stubborn rear end or no longer a threat and decided to ignore me, but that little friend kept us company while night fell. No nearby activity enough for us to pursue anything, but with our light setup it was easy to navigate back to the trail with OnX and get back to the truck. Our hunt was officially over. Cheerfully we discussed the doe encounter, how small she was compared to the Nebraska ones we saw but how striking she was once we spotted her. I commended Dapper's ability to see animals in the trees- I'm not used to it so I wasn't quite as wary as I should have been. We headed back to starbucks, took an order in the drive thru and The Dapper Truck broke down. This was why we took the van up north in the first place, as the Dapper Truck is an old, hardy creature but has been acting a little sassy recently. After pushing the truck through the drive thru, picking up our drinks inside and getting the truck started again we headed home, where some sleepy cats were eagerly awaiting attention.  With the family warm and happy, we took an easy day on Monday, Dapper baked a Cherry Pie that was amazing and I set out to go home on Tuesday. All in all, this was a very fun trip. We had a lot of lessons, some harsher than others. But ultimately I am super pleased with how this season ended up. Even though I didn't get to take home any game meat I am now at home, self-quarantining to be extra sure that I am not taking anything exotic back to SoCal while I reflect on the good times. I had taken for granted the art of tagging out on opening day the previous two years in NE, which nature gently slapped me on the wrist for. Next time I won't make that mistake again. More opportunities opened up, we got to explore new lands and share our love with friends and family. Thanks for reading my effortposts, I hope everyone had a fantastic fatbird holiday and please stay safe for the coming end-of-year celebrations!
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Dec 2, 2020 03:00
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Slung Blade posted:
Dammit, that's a couple of bucks I would have been pretty happy to shove in a freezer. How long is the turnaround period for the CWD tests? Although I've been told the prions only affect the nerves and similar tissues (like brains) I think you're making a good call on not eating that meat. Prions scare the piss outta me. Unfortunately I think it's a great demonstration of the fact that you cannot tell if a deer is infected simply by looking at it. A big hefty guy like that would take a while to waste away, and you wouldn't know it until the final stages of the disease. Even if the meat is wasted at least you are taking it out of the population. Small, but still helpful in the long run (I hope). Do you have a recommended way for curing the hide? It's the part of the process I'm still getting used to and didn't know if you had a favored solution for it. I love that the Magpie was harassing that moose. Great pics! At least you took both of the siblings. They are reunited in death (and in your freezer).
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Dec 3, 2020 02:27
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charliebravo77 posted:Downy woodpecker Love your stories and presentation! And you know I have a soft spot for critter photos. Shame that buck didn't invite his older friends but you've got a good spot with lots of potential in the future! Verman posted:I went up with a buddy for late season blue grouse in the snow. He's been wanting to get up to this location in the winter for a long time to see if the grouse are up there this time of year. The last time we were up there, we saw a cinnamon bear and a cub and I got the only grouse we saw with one shot. I'd love to see more grouse in here. We don't have any in my immediate area and they look like such a cool variety of birds. At least the outing was fun!
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Dec 15, 2020 07:15
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Chaosfeather posted:For CA's stuff, here's what you need tags vs no tags for: Good luck on the boots. I just went for some small hiking boots with some water resistance and I've been very happy with my little wolverines.
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Jan 15, 2021 22:27
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That would be awesome! Hope the stars align in your favor or whatever voodoo needs to happen for that to work out. I'm going to try to do spring turkey this season. I just got my schedule so I should have 2 days a week that I can do it, and both are weekdays. Hopefully that will avoid the crowds. We'll see how well or poorly I do, but last time even though I didn't do a great job and came home empty handed I had a wonderful set of mornings. I always apply for a nice mule deer CA tag, but I have yet to get an X zone or the Mojave draw. I hope to apply for that again this year and try for San Diego zone again as a plan C. I also would like to try to get back to NE for the whitetail/mule deer hunt and harvest something this year. As usual I apply to at least 2 states for bull elk, but I know that's going to likely be a long wait. I'm also planning on either applying for a Pronghorn tag or just taking a point in WY for next year. Now that I have my own rifle I am extremely excited to get out there and do more hunts more aggressively. I plan on having the stock customized to my size this spring so it'll be more than ready for when fall comes around.
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Feb 27, 2021 03:08
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Mzuri posted:I just want to say that my wife has gotten on board the "let's get a dog" programme run by myself and the kids, so we're getting a retreiver from a reputable breeder in our town later this year. Hell yeah Excellent! I'm super excited to internet-meet your new pup and see pictures. That dog is gonna have so much fun with you folks.
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Mar 3, 2021 21:20
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 I do wish to buy more elk points...
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May 4, 2021 05:19
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I have a pronghorn point or two for WY as well. I'd be happy to take a doe or a buck, so hell yeah let's do it. Edit: Somehow I completely missed that you hit a deer with the truck. RIP, hope you can limp home okay. Wrong time of year for antlers, did you get to keep a charm to ward off the others? Chaosfeather fucked around with this message at 23:54 on May 4, 2021 |
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May 4, 2021 16:49
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I saw a spike mule buck growing his antlers the other day on my way to work. A coworker saw it too and insists that he saw a whitetail because "mule deer are huge-rear end deer". Mule deer is the only species in this region, also the buck had satellite dishes for ears and the correct pattern. He then tried to convince me that blacktail deer are around here (which they are not, this is Southern California). We have coastal sage scrub, not coastal forests. Sorry bro, really arid climates and hot hot summer temps mean your local deer are a bit smaller. It's not their fault, there just isn't as much food as up north. The buck was super cute though. Edit: In WY chat, I think I'm going to put points in for antelope and elk in WY one more year before applying for antelope. Unless we want to try to do a goon antelope hunt this year? But if that's the case lemme know ASAP so I can start planning. Chaosfeather fucked around with this message at 16:56 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 16:54
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Well it's a bit late, but I'm all recovered and ready to share! Time for another huge effortpost! Texas Wild Pigs 2: Electric Boogaloo So a while back I went hunting with Coffeebooze/DapperDraculaDeer for pigs in Texas. We both agree that public land hunting for pigs is the way to go, seeing that purchasing a chance to hunt pigs in TX is partially contributing to the problem. It's very messy and cyclical and I think we agree that we would rather go on public land and try to get rid of the invasive species, risking failure. It was a very fun hunt where I got to explore a much more lush environment than I am used to, but Dapper felt bad that we didn't get a pig on that hunt. I dunno, I thought it was fun. So we arranged to have another hunt this spring during shotgun season to go for another attempt. Sadly, I couldn't find my very elderly camera before the trip. I blame my recent clean-up of my room. So there are fewer pictures of lower quality. Sorry, thread! After driving a little over 1,400 miles to show up at the Dapper household, I was greeted by a very happy family, a comfy bed and a set of plans. We were going to spend two days in a new place for me, but one that Dapper had been to a few times before. It was public land that was in many small pieces, so if we didn't have luck in one unit we could hop over a street or three and try another region. We would get up bright and early and try to get into some piggies. We encountered several whitetail crossing the streets on our way in. It's not whitetail season but we discussed the possibility of Dapper trying his hand at archery deer here. They definitely look nice and healthy and are bigger than my local mule deer (but that isn't difficult). We stopped at a little pull off on the side of the road and as we pulled in I saw a mysterious something dash into the bushes. Based on the size, I would have to guess coyote, but by the time we investigated it with our packs and shotguns it had left. It was partially cloudy, a bit damp and comfortably warm already. Dapper led on through the tall-ish grass and we went looking for pig tracks. After following some game trails we found a nice water source, assessed the wind and decided to rest by an old treefall and watch what comes by. Interestingly enough we had gone in a large circle and had almost ended up back at the truck. Although we didn't see any large game, the butterflies, wildflowers and birds were in full colors and we were endlessly entertained by the numerous colorful friends. Painted buntings flitted by, a female hummingbird (probably black-chinned) came to check out what we were doing, and we enjoyed coffee, tea and beef jerky for a few hours. Spiders made themselves comfortable around my legs, a very strange behavior from a tiny green caterpillar inched across my knee and we both had at least one pee break before we decided to move. The next place we stopped at was raining lightly. It had been drizzling on us off and on but this area was a bit muddier. My initial impression upon going into this second unit was how densely packed it was in the foliage. It was a sort of rainforest with all sorts of crisscrossing paths, many of pigs, some of people, additional paths thick with cows. We ducked and weaved around my old friend the greenbrier and made our way to follow one of the thicker pig paths. Some of the prints looked quite fresh and it was pretty humid with dead air in the trees. It got very hot quickly without a crossbreeze and the rain continued, so we pressed through. While following the path, we encountered cows. Or rather, they encountered us. We had paused by a puddle of a very life-rich pond when we heard trampling through the trees behind us. Standing still we observed some cows and calves start to come close, balk at us, and then take a detour around us through some of the trees. Unfortunately with the active and very noisy cows we decided to go past them and see what might be over there. It was private land! We hit the fence and tried to follow it but found the growth too thick to pass, so we backed out the way we came, carefully avoiding bovines and going path to the primary path through this unit. Now back to open sky and grass under our feet, we took a couple of breaks and headed up to a choke point in the unit that looked promising to Dapper in the past. On our way we encountered more cows and a bull. I got to look like an expert in telling them to 'git' and thankfully they were chill enough to simply walk off of the path and let us past. Cows would be a reoccuring theme of this trip. We get to the choke point and find - you guessed it - more cows. These had another bull and several calves and were busy showing us how big and intimidating they were when I told them to git. So instead we 'git'ed off to one side and took a break, trying to figure out what to do. The wind was not in our favor, but the spot gave us a nice view down the hill and onto private land. At the bottom of the hill part of the way through this sit a coyote rounded towards us, caught our scent, saw us and immediately turned around. Of course I didn't see this first part, I just saw him getting the hell out of there before Dapper asked if I was interested in taking a yote. I'm game, it was exciting! The hill had some shrubs and small trees around the bottom, so I tried to use them as cover as I rounded the hill parallel to where the coyote was to see if I could get a good shot on him. Sadly it was too little too late. Our swift canine friend snuck under the barbed wire onto one of the three private properties around the unit and I decided that eh, I wasn't super into taking a long shot and trying to negotiate how to retrieve that body. Upon returning to Dapper we decided to take a break from Cowtown and get some snacks at the truck. We took a brief detour when we smelled something foul and followed it to find a mostly-rotted cow carcass. It stank like nothing else but was incredibly interesting to see what parts various critters had absconded with over time. After this smelly encounter we headed back to the truck, passing somewhat near another cow carcass on the way back. The near-constant wet condition sometimes varied from drizzle to rain, but was still pretty tolerable. As we were discussing our plan to find pigs a Ranger decided to pull up and check on us. Apparently Dapper has ran into this specific Ranger before, who briefly asked us what we were looking for. He felt that another unit was better than this one for Pigs and gave us some advice on looking at a specific spot, which was very kind of him. We agreed after he pulled away that was a good spot to try tomorrow and went back into the Texas Jungle that we explored this morning. We set up on the other side of the pond we encountered the cows by earlier and I briefly saw two (or was it one really fast?) squirrel in the trees. Unfortunately I had slugs loaded, so by the time I had the proper ammo in the squirrels had disappeared into their hidey holes again. No squirrel and dumplings for us this time. Finding a spot that had a good view of one of the large looking pig paths we settled in for a long wait. Before the rain got really harsh and the frogs decided to begin their choir, I briefly had an encounter with a tick that I didn't recognize. Any tick I don't recognize is immdiately going to raise red flags, and we agreed that more permethrin was in order when we got back to the house. Maybe all the rain and mud had been washing it off? When we got back I ID'd it as the Lone Star tick and thanked many, many stars it didn't bite me. I could live with a red meat allergy but I wouldn't be super happy about it. As the hours passed, the sun sank and the rain got more and more intense. Some squirrels argued back and forth above our heads but never came out for a shot opportunity. It was just warm enough to be comfortable temperature-wise, but I sorely wished that I had warm-weather waterproof pants. Oh well, ultimately it was fine, just next to no movement in the woods. We cut out around 8:00pm, so a bit before sundown, and took our mud-soaked selves back to the truck. I was tired from my 22 hour drive and the hunt day, so we both agreed that day 2 we would try the unit the ranger had told us about and would sleep in a little to regain some rest and sanity. Dapper said the unit appeared small - About a mile squared - with mostly level terrain. It wasn't one we had looked at before so we were eager to try it. My first impression when we got there was was - More cows. A lot more cows. They were in the unit near the truck area, but thankfully not on the path. We walked past the cows with our game plan and proceeded to the wooded areas. Second impression was - This place is gorgeous.  . Seriously if you showed me that picture I would guess Hawai'i, not Texas. We found a game path going towards the area we wanted through the woods, so we followed it. We would do a handful of creek crossings while scouting this unit, each one was a little bit of an adventure. I mean, I never get to pull out my Quicksand 101 knowledge, but I did on this day! This unit was chock full of life. We saw many frogs, a handful of skinks, plenty of birds and could hear a pack of coyotes off in the distance towards dusk. It was exciting!  By midday we found the place the ranger told us about and the tracks everywhere looked incredibly promising. It was another place surrounded by private land, but this one had telltale pig crossing tunnels going through the shrubs, past the fences, all over the place. We set up on the edge of a meadow to rest and I couldn't help but think that we had definitely done at least a mile there. Maybe because we have been weaving back and forth it seemed longer. While we rested there was a very close encounter with a male black-chinned hummingbird, which was exciting if brief. The rain had let up at long last, but it stayed mostly overcast for the day. A small blessing for our skin!  We admired the blooms and decided to look around more of the unit while it was midday. After rounding another corner of the unit and taking another break, Dapper suggested going back to get snacks, which I had to halt him for. At this point not only was I incredibly footsore but very tired, and asked if he was cool going to the truck unladen and coming back with the snacks. We agreed on this and I had a nice rest on a hill with my back to a tree.  I had a lot of long-ranged view, not a lot of short-ranged opportunity, and got to watch lots of interesting bird activity by the time Dapper came back. I had to laugh when his tracking on OnX revealed the true size of the unit to us: He had done something like 7 miles already that day. No wonder we were so tired! After a good refill on food and water we made our way back to the Pig Spot and settled in for a good wait.  We certainly could hear a lot! No pigs, but lots of birds, the pack of coyotes, some people and animals on the farms surrounding this property. Sunset was enjoyable and comfortable amongst the blooms, and after last light I did my horribly inaccurate coyote call and confused the hell out of someone's dog in the distance. Even if no yotes reacted to it this time it was very fun to have something react to a call of mine. On our hike back we had our final Cow Encounter (tm). It was the herd from before, but all the cows, calves and at least one bull were now between us and the truck. After several minutes of being loud, giving them as much room as possible while trying to hug the fence and go around them enough of them moved out of our path enough for us to get through. Pigs 2, hunting duo 0. However, I'm still incredibly pleased with this trip! It was a lot of walking/some mild hiking, I got to spend a great deal of time with Dapper and his lovely family, we hung out, had tasty food and I learned a lot more about hunting Texas Public Land. To finish us off Dapper offered to help show me how to clean the interior of my gun. I had never taken it apart in my five years of having this shotgun, just had cleaned what I could from what the kit could reach. It was due for a good thorough deep clean. Oh my poor gun. It needed it. Badly. Aside from the tiny flecks of rust starting to form from our weekend's shenanigans, I spied on the inaccessible part of the trigger a fair bit of that color. Determined to get to the trigger to clean the somewhat significant rust off, I took apart all the fiddly bits inside the gun and slowly made progess while everyone went to bed. After two youtube videos, some proper sleep, an exploded diagram of a mossberg 500 and several hours of effort my gun was clean of rust, cared for properly with the right coatings and put back together by the middle of the next morning. I sorely do not want to do that again, but at least now I have some basic know-how on a proper cleaning of the gun, especially after some adventures in the wet. It was a very good learning experience! Also I learned to hate three very specific springs. Dapper is much more experienced with closer-range hunting than I am, especially in dense foliage, and I hope to have a chance to see how to take game in that setup one day. Although we didn't take anything it was a lovely trip, the humidity was nice on my lungs and I got a free car wash out of it, too! I greatly appreciate the semi-regular reminder that I need to do more cardio and can't wait to try again some other time. I had a very exciting drive home involving a thunderhail storm, but with the power of coffee and a nap in AZ, made it back safely and in a timely manner. Thank you once again to DapperDraculaDeer for hosting me and teaching me the ways of how to hunt on Texas Public Land! I am anxious to get out and try again. One day I will bring some bacon home. One day.
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Jun 6, 2021 03:16
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Definitely refresh yourself on state laws re: gun inheritence and feel comfortable with the gun you are going to shoot before you go out there. I'm sure things will fall back into place easily but it doesn't hurt to be safe and make sure everything is legal and working as intended.
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Jul 9, 2021 07:30
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Not that it will help with any excuses or queasiness, but I haven't broken down a large animal by myself yet. It's relatively similar to breaking down a small animal, just a much larger scale and larger weight. Bigger ice boxes, more ice when you pull into a gas station, etc. Whatever you leave in the field will not truly be wasted. I encourage you to take as much as possible, be it meat, hide, skull and bones, antler pieces, whatever. Scavengers are an important part of our ecosystems and will absolutely find and go to down on your kill once you are done - or even before you are done, if you are taking multiple trips! I always enjoy when I go to my favorite deer hunting place and at night I hear all of the coyote packs yipping and howling in excitement over the wealth of food they have access to.
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Jul 10, 2021 07:24
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What an excellent point to that butterfly, friend! Hope you can get some relief for your back ASAP. Unfortunately sometimes taking a season off for your long-term health is best, but it's not fun.
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Sep 2, 2021 07:21
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Chernobyl Princess posted:My toddler was thrilled with both the animal and with dinner. He has never seen Bambi and now probably never will. Grats! Xbow is something I want to try out at some point. I'm so glad when other people eat the heart (or just eat their kill in general). Bambi is a very good animated film but is also incredibly old by this point. I think outside of having access to Disney+ you can't even get it legally anymore? Either way, he'll see several Bambis, hopefully shortly before bringing them home to the table in the future.
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Sep 12, 2021 14:58
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I have my NE hunt in Nov that I normally tackle with CoffeeBooze. I just moved to the East Coast so I don't have any solid plans until I can figure out the laws here, but it looks like I have a little time to look for public land and work on my aim for deer. In the new year I'd like to either chase ducks or turkey again, it's been a while since I've shotgun hunted at all. My poor tiny shotgun needs attention, too. I'm sad that I'm not in muley nor elk territory over here but I think I'll find an excuse to go back to that section of the country for that sort of trip maybe in a year or two. I'm trying to accumulate points for an elk hunt and have been chipping away at the CA mule deer X zone hunt for about 6 years now. One day I'll get that draw. Until then (maybe next year) I'll think about going after coastal blacktail.
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Sep 17, 2022 15:27
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Outrail posted:Update: I got out a little later than I'd like but first day and all that. Man good luck. Sending vibes for a giant rear end bull to be hiding just out of sight for you until like 2pm today or some weird poo poo like that. Go get em.
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Sep 17, 2022 16:50
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I'm super stoked too, congrats to everyone on the hunt, it sounds like it was a great day.
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Sep 18, 2022 22:10
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As I mentioned in the other thread, I love your photography and write ups and am super pleased that everything went so smoothly and well for the trip. You and Flatland are both great mentors and I appreciate seeing you both succeed. It's especially sweet to see the father-son duo so happy.
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Sep 21, 2022 11:34
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