Tyson Goes OutsideEverything outdoors and adventure!

Mar 13th Late Season Grouse Hunt

I’ll never be sure, but I think grouse hunting is my favourite hunting. I like it because there really are no bad days. You take your gun, which absolutely does not have to be a fancy one, or your bow, and go for a walk. You tend to walk through some of the most beautiful country and often in great weather. It tends to fill me with great optimism because, in my mind, even if I come home empty handed I still got to see this landscape. It’s low speed, short range, and no stress hunting. I have never heard of anyone being sad because they missed a Boone and Crockett grouse. Also, grouse tend to rely heavily on their camouflage so if you miss a shot at them, they tend to stay very still in hopes that you do not see them, so its pretty forgiving. This confidence in their invisibility often means that you can make all the noise you want when you are hunting since they don’t vacate the area when they hear you coming.

This last fall season for me was a busy one, and not in the field. I found I was working and going to school at the same time so I got some weekends that I decided to dedicate to deer hunting more than grouse, I also tried goose hunting one day. Goose hunting seems like it would be fun, if you could find them. At any rate, once deer season ended, Christmas arrived along with its insanity. After Christmas I ended up with nearly a week of time between new years and going back to school. I decided to go to my moms for a few days and try my hand at hunting grouse, something I had previously only done in September and October.  I was told this time of year they tend to spend more time in the trees as snow slows their movement too much on the ground, however the unseasonable warmth of this winter has keep the snow to only a few inches deep.

I decided to take with me my old savage 29B, one of the first guns to come into my possession. In this case it came in pieces and needed a touch of restoration. Its an old pump action .22 that shoots quite well but I find its prone to jamming if you don’t rack the action hard or as I say “with authority” I also found after a few years of casual testing, subsonic ammunition works best, I guess sometimes slower is better. With regular ammunition I can hold about 14 rounds in the tubular magazine that runs under the barrel. If I use shorts, I can fit about 20 and the gun becomes a novelty circus act, at 75 yards with shorts I have time to lower the rifle from my shoulder before hearing the impact on the gong, personally I find it comical.

My Savage 29B

The best place, in my mind, to go grouse hunting, is by an old trappers cabin on a quarter section of land my step-dad’s brother leases, just west of my parent’s farm. Not sure why, but this area has always been my favourite area for hunting, I think I just like the trees and rolling hills, its used for pasturing cattle so there hasn’t been much for land clearing, and it seems like there is always a new little creek, clearing, or game trail to discover.

I parked my little car at the entrance gate, loaded my rifle and set out walking. I walked the familiar trail to the old trappers cabin, passing areas where I had often seen grouse before. I also stumbled into an abundance of deer and coyote tracks.  From the, now dilapidated, cabin I walked north along a trail that looped east and led to a small south flowing creek in a big valley, I walked along the creek and was spat back out right near the cabin where I had started. Along this trail I found only a single grouse, but it was far too deep in the bush for me to ever get a bullet to it, also the thought of retrieving it from the dense brushes pulled me off that idea.  From the cabin I did another loop along another trail, this time along a trail east of the cabin in a counter clockwise direction. The trail took me up a steep hill to a narrow spruce-lined trail. I had walked there many times before, to me it looks like a perfect place for a bear to be lumbering around, though I had never seen one in there. On this trip though, I did see a grouse, up in a tree. I pulled up my old gun and trained my sights on it, I pressed off the safety and squeezed the trigger. The little subsonic bullet let out a gentle “Psht” noise like an air compressor hose disconnecting. The grouse fell out of the tree and out of sight. I walked quickly toward it and found it and another grouse on the ground. I took a follow up shot at its head, in hopes of not damaging the meat, I missed… then missed again. At this time the second grouse flew into a nearby tree. I settled for a body shot on the first grouse and it fell down. I then took aim at the second grouse and again tried twice for a head shot, on the third I decided I best just take a body shot. The grouse fell and flailed as it hit the ground. I shot it a second time in an attempt to alleviate any possible suffering. I then gave each grouse an additional shot in the head as an additional insurance against suffering. At the end of a rather exciting minute, I did the math and realized it took me ten shots to down two grouse.  In the back of my mind I could hear my dad laughing at me, him being a rather accomplished “1 shot one grouse” hunter. No doubt I need more practice with my old rifle, especially in field conditions. Maybe I should just do more grouse hunting.

Hard Days Work

The Grouse and The Gun

Dec 6th 2017 Fall Hunting Report

Nothing quite hurts your pride like running a hunting blog and not filling your tags, but that is exactly what happened to me this year. I still had a fantastic season despite the fact that I had already written it off as a “maybe Ill go hunting this year” kind of a season. That was the result of me going back to school this fall, meaning that my free time would be weekends only and it would be a delicate balance of employment, homework, and hunting. As it turns out, luck was on my side and I was able to go out hunting every weekend this season. I put on a lot of mileage this season, averaging about 15,000 steps, or about 12km a day. My typical hunting day was get up at 615, walk out to my spot and wait for a deer to come on out, once I got tired of sitting I would walk around my parents farm and slowly make my way back to the house for breakfast, then in the evening I would go to “The Lease Land” and hike in to an old trappers cabin, long since collapsed in, and wait until dark there. This season I didn’t see much for whitetail deer, which is all I had a tag for. But, as you could imagine, with that much time and mileage outside I managed to see some pretty neat things. So maybe let me run down a little list here:

A rabbit – You just dont see lots of those in that area

A few grouse – not rare but they still manage to get your heart rate up when they seem to thunder out from under your boots

an impression in the snow from where a bird of pray picked up a small rodent

4 Coyotes – the first was in an open field in a snow storm about 60 yards from me I stood up and moved  to try and get a better look at it, it had no idea I was there despite all my noise making. Another was the biggest coyote I had ever seen, it was easily the size of a golden retriever. Someone said it may have been a wolf but it looked too thin featured for that to be correct. I also saw what I thought to be a cougar but turned out to be a coyote. I was just coming through a fence and in the distance I saw something tan coloured that ducked down and slinked away in a very fluid cat-like fashion. I also could have sworn I saw a long thin tail waiving behind it. I walked up to where I had seen it and found only coyote tracks… maybe theres something to those old native stories of coyotes being tricksters and shapeshifters after-all.

a herd of 17 mule deer- I was walking across the eastern portion of my parents farm and spotted a small group of mule deer so I had a seat in the snow and pulled out my binoculars to watch, they were about 500 yards away. At first it was a large buck with seven does. As I was watching, a coyote snuck out of the bushes near the group and was immediately run off by three of the does. I continued to watch the group and slowly more and more mule deer started to show up. At first it was a much smaller buck and a single doe. This was all mind blowing to me, then even more showed up. By the end there were at least 3 very large bucks and two or three spikers and forkers. All mingling together, I would have though with mating season so close they would have all been fighting each other but no, they just moseyed and ate. I would have never believe that mule deer would herd up in that large of a group.

3 white tailed deer- I saw all three on the last two days of hunting. The first was in the morning when Erin and I were sitting watching a spot that had a lot of tracks and rubs, way off to my right was a rather portly whitetail doe. I wasnt in a position to take that shot and I wouldn’t have wanted to anyway, for a few reasons; first it was on a ridge meaning a miss would send that errant bullet miles away, the second was she was standing in brush which can deflect or slow a bullet causing a wound instead of a kill, lastly she was quartering away meaning a proper placed shot at her would almost certainly result in the loss of one of her shoulders minimum. The next day after my morning sit I went for a walk and stumbled into a buck and doe pair again shrouded by bushes, in hind sight I may have had enough fire power to cut through the branches and hit that buck, but he wasn’t very big and my freezer isn’t very empty so there was no real purpose in risking it beyond giving me something to write about, but if the day comes where I fall into the hole of taking an unethical shot just to give me content for my blog I think it will be time I shut this website down.

I dont know if I would call this season successful or not. I learned a lot, saw some amazing things, and spent a great deal of time outside. Its hard for me to call that a failure but at the same time I’ve still got my tags tucked into my binocular case… there is always next year I guess.

Some bird got lucky hunting which also means some mouse had a bad day. That dark dot is blood.

Erin snapped this when she headed back to the house and I took the long way back and ran into all those mule deer. Notice my left hand, I never go too far without a snack handy.

I was using a cell phone and binoculars at 700 yards and you can still see a bit of the antlers on the one in the middle, he was quite large.

Mule deer buck (far right) and does. These were 500 yards away on a hill we routinely shoot at from 1km away (long range shooting is not used for hunting purposes)

Me glassing the tree line, it was on the ridge in the background that I spotted that first doe. I spend more than a few hours at this spot leaned on this tree this season, I would be lying if I said I felt that time was wasted.

I hope your season was as fun as mine and maybe even a little more fruitful and if not, just remember, next year will come and there will be deer then too…. and they will be bigger. We’ve just gotta find them.

Dec 9th Doe Hunting and Illegal Outdoorsmen

I was sitting in a ground blind placed along a row of bales. I was on the hunt for a doe that I had missed a 40 yard shot it with my bow a few weeks earlier. I was still working on my archery skills, I am good out to 60 or so yards on a target but I found when a deer comes into range I tended to get a bit of “buck fever” which is strange because I have shot some nice bucks in the past without so much as a tremor. For some reason, when a doe wanders with 50 yards I get my heart thumping so bad I don’t bother risking taking the shot sometimes, tracking an arrow wounded deer is a terrifying prospect that would cause me loss of sleep. This particular day I was trying two new ideas. First I was using a ground blind instead of just sitting motionless against the bales. I had found that deer would come to within about 20 yards of me but would naturally spook and flee as I tried to draw my bow to make a shot, a blind seemed a simple solution. The second tactic was that I had a decoy doe out in front of my blind. I did some quick research the night before and found that putting out a doe decoy early in the season will bring more does in and that is what I was after. The plan seemed rather fool proof since every time I sat in that area before I had a few deer within range but just nothing that would stay close enough and still enough while I drew my bow. Many hunters pride themselves on certain strengths; some are amazing shots, some have a never quit attitude, some can stalk silently, others can think like a deer. I think mine, were I to toot my own horn for a moment, would be my ability to learn. Cold hard research works for me, reading about tracking deer got me my largest deer to date and I am always on the prowl for more information. This set up I had concocted with the use of various internet resources was sure to be a hit, the decoy would lure them in and the blind would conceal my movement as I drew the bow. It was nothing revolutionary but it was two tactics I had never needed to use for rifle hunting.

As I sat waiting for the deer to start wandering out, I heard a truck come down the dead-end road that led to the corner of the field. The truck came to a stop and in the silence of the October afternoon I could vaguely hear their conversation. “Oh look! a big whitetail buck!” I immediately started looking out the windows of my blind, all I saw was my big doe decoy. Is it possible there is a big buck behind me? There was some more chatting and some shuffling in the truck before it occurred to me that they might be lining up a shot on my decoy! I was watching the truck through my binoculars but the cab itself was obstructed by some trees so I couldn’t quite see if they were leaning a rifle out the window. Suddenly I heard “wait wait, there is a ground blind by those bales!”. The truck immediately made a U-turn and vacated the premise, almost as though they were doing something they shouldn’t, somewhere they shouldn’t be. A few minutes later I heard the report of a rifle from the direction they had gone. It upset me that I wasn’t able to get a license plate number off of the truck. It got me thinking, doing things the right way is not that hard. In fact, to me it almost seems easier. All I have to do is sit in my field and wait. If they are doing what it looks like they are doing they have to drive around looking for deer, shoot one that is likely running away from the noise of their truck, then retrieve it and leave the area before the fish and game department come running to the sound of a rifle shot out of season. Then they still have to make it home without getting stopped. All at the risk of their hunting rights and ANYTHING deemed an accessory to their poaching, including the automobile in use.

Hundreds of years ago, when all big game animals were considered the property of royalty and the common men and women of the land were left to starve, poaching might have been considered noble. The story of Robin Hood has him as a poacher, technically. They had to outwit animals, and the royal guards, all at the risk of their own lives, the pay off being food for their families. In modern-day North America poachers are usually people trying to do things the easy way, and its shameful. Poaching gives us all a bad name, and believe me public opinion of hunters is not high right now, we do not need anyone making it worse. In my grumblings of people breaking the rules, I was reminded of a time when a close friend wanted me to break a law they didn’t see a use for. A friend of a friend had said she would pay $700 for a bear’s gallbladder because her grandmother wanted it for “medicine”. As coincidence would have it, I was bear hunting that spring.  In Alberta, as well as in most places, it is illegal to sell any part of a hunted animal. At the time I flatly refused simply because I didn’t want to break the law, despite $700 being a considerable sum of money in my fast nearing empty bank account. My friend tried to talk me into it with the reasonable arguments of “you aren’t going to use it anyway, better to sell it instead of throw it out” I was tempted, lordy I was tempted, but I stood strong. The subject was dropped and never really came up again because I failed to fill my bear tag that year. I realize now that I made the right decision for more reasons than the law. Upon further review I think encouraging ancient traditional medicines that use parts of animals is a terrible thing for a hunter to do. Sure it was just a black bears gallbladder, but its the same ideology that is leading to poaching and extinction of rhinos. I am glad I chose not to be a part of that. Poachers, and those that encourage or enable poaching destroy what hunters try so hard to create, they also often get lumped into the same categories as hunters by people who don’t care to do any research on the subject. As hunters we need to do our best to separate ourselves from poachers, even if its something small like selling a gallbladder or shooting a deer a week before or after the rifle season, all of these little things add up and contribute to big things, big things we don’t want to be a part of.

I sat in my blind going over how I hoped those guys were just scouting and that rifle shot was someone else getting sighted in for the upcoming rifle season. Suddenly two does wandered into the edge of the field about 90 yards out, one was noticeably larger than the other. They slowly made their way toward my decoy, I was relieved to see that my plan was working, maybe… at the very least it wasn’t scaring the deer away, so I am counting it as a success. In my mind this was the doe I had missed a 40 yard shot on weeks before, lucky it was a clean miss and not a wounding shot. I was trying to range her as she approached my decoy,  knew she was somewhere around 30 yards but my range finder was having trouble reading through the mesh windows on the blind. Finally it spat out a number, 25 yards. I decided my best bet was to put my 20 yard pin just high of center on the kill zone and any drop would still be where I want it to be. I slid forward onto the edge of me seat and came to a full draw, I checked the level on my sight, I was dead on and my heart was pounding. I took aim and released, the deer reacted to the sound of the bow and crouched down a few inches, the arrow flew clear over her shoulder. I had missed again, and to add insult to my injured pride, I had lost the arrow into the tangle mess of the fields stubble. The deer looked around, unsure of what happened and trotted to the edge of the field, I looked at her closely with my binoculars. Not a mark on her luckily, a clean miss is by far better than a bad hit. I think my problem is I need more practice shooting from a sitting position and I definitely get too excited when an animal walks into range. It’s nice to know the excitement of hunting hasn’t worn off on me, but it also gets a little infuriating, especially since I am actually a really good archer… when there aren’t deer around.

Nov 23rd Button Buck

I was sitting in my blind… The same blind I had been sitting in day after day for the past few months. It sat on the edge of a pile of bails in the corner of the field. I had started there sitting on pail with my bow across my lap, by now bow season had come and gone and I had along the way upgraded to a ground blind and a folding chair. I had also upgraded to an old Steyr-Mannlicher rifle chambered in .270 win that my aunt and uncle had given me. They had decided that they didn’t want their guns anymore and gave them all away. I was more than happy to accept it. When I first got it, it had a scope but I found it didn’t shoulder very well with it on because the scope sat too high. So I took it off and sighted it in at 100 yards with the iron sights, just as the factory intended. That old gun with those iron sights made me a little nostalgic for something I never had… I love to read, especially books about the old adventure hunters in the early and mid 20th century like Capstick, Corbett, Bell, and Selous. They all used open sights, mostly because optics technology was in its infancy, and partly because the reliability of sights. They were all also prone to fancy European rifles. Holding and shouldering this rifle, every time I blinked I could imagine standing in a humid jungle waiting for the Man-Eater of Kumoan to walk around a rock. Needless to say, I am fond of this rifle and am prone to waxing poetic about nearly any rifle. So lets move the story along.

New Rifle

A close up of the action

There I was, sitting tired in my blind. I had faced crushing embarrassment and disappointment during bow season. I had missed four, yes 4 shots, at does with my bow up to that point. They were all clean misses and they were all my fault, for four different reasons. The first was a forty yard shot, that is a distance I can easily shoot in practice with field points, but I didn’t realize that broadheads fly drastically different at that range. I grouped my hunting arrows and found that beyond 30 yards the group just opened up too much to be reasonable. The second miss I was too excited and rushed, it was buck fever, plain and simple, well except for the fact it was a doe. This was really starting to drain on my confidence since I am usually a very talented marksman. The third and fourth happened back to back on the same deer. First I misjudged my distance and shot clear over her back. She snorted and circled around and stopped 20 yards from the blind, a perfect broadside shot was looking at me.. I drew my bow, took a deep breath, and steadied the top pin right perfect behind the shoulder. My release was perfect, there was a strange flump sound and the fletching grazed the bottom of her ribs. She looked at me funny, and trotted off unscathed. I sat flabbergasted staring at the hole in the side of my blind. I had been holding my bow too low causing me to shoot through the side of the blind, thus slowing my arrow and ruining its trajectory…

After these misses I started to think I should sell my gear and take up golf. I remember what an old co-worker of mine once told me. He was an older fellow and had certainly been around the block a time or two and was undoubtedly the best salesman I ever knew. He once told me, all he ever wanted to do was be a farmer he said “I tried and tried for years to be a farmer, my wife and I bought a place and we worked it right down to our last dime. We had rainy springs, drought in the summer, and falling grain prices. I tried and tried, and God simply wouldn’t let it happen.”. Now I am not a particularly religious man, but you’ve almost gotta believe in divine intervention to miss those kinds of shots. Maybe I just want meant to be a hunter.

My wife, of course, figured I was just being silly and gave me a pep talk.. Or maybe she saw how much a set of golf clubs is worth? Either way, she reminded me that that is the nature of hunting and if it were easy I probably would have a different hobby. I had the whole month of November off and she had no intention of letting me and my wounded pride sit on the couch. So I packed up and headed to my mom and step-dads farm, I had historically had good luck there and this year I was awarded a tag for a mule deer doe. I spend just over a week sitting in my moms house hoping the weather would drop. It was simply too hot to go hunting, anything I shot would spoil before we could butcher it and get it in the freezer… My options were to go north to my dads where it was colder, or go look at golf clubs, at least then I could enjoy the heat. I opted to go home for a day and then head north to my dads.

I packed my new to me .270 and headed north. I immediately changed into my hunting gear when I arrived and went to my same old blind that had caused me so much doe frustration during the bow season. I sat for a few hours with my rifle across my lap hoping something would walk by. Finally, just after sunset before last legal light, a doe wandered out to the edge of the field, about 100 yards out. I watched her with my binoculars, she wasn’t small, but she certainly wasn’t big. There were also two more deer behind her, I could barely see them in the trees. I was losing light fast and had to make a decision, I flipped the safety off on the gun, then she turned. I flipped the safety back on and waited.. This happened a few more times. Finally I decided that’s it, now or never. I flipped the safety off shouldered and aimed. I could barely make out the black steel bead on my rifle against her sides in the darkness. Finally she turned broadside and I squeezed off a round. It sounded like the blind was going to launch into orbit, my ears were ringing, the shoot-through-mesh in front of me shredded and the blind filled with smoke. I chambered another round and looked at my doe on the ground. She was thrashing a bit, as they sometimes do.. it hurts to see and I considered shooting again but it would be at the cost of meat which was my purpose for shooting her.. Then she stood up again, and I realized I hadn’t made a very good shot. I quickly shouldered and shot, she went down this time without a twitch. I set the timer on my watch. I like to give deer at least five minutes of peace and quiet after I shoot. I need that time to organize my thoughts, let what happened sink in, calm down, and make a plan. I also like to give that animal a few minutes of peace in their final moments. If they are still alive, I dont want to scare them or have them jump up and run. I never take my eyes of the deer during this time. I had a friend who told me he once shot a beautiful white tail buck, it dropped like a bag of hammers. So he got up and did a victory dance, complete with a spin or two and when he turned around, his deer was gone, never to be seen again, no blood trail, nothing. Don’t get cocky, and do not take your eyes off the prize.

The shredded mesh in the blind.

I dug out my tag, texted my dad to come get me with the truck and then headed over to the doe. I walked up from behind and touched her eye with my barrel to ensure she was dead. This, I am told, is the best way. If the animal is at all conscious it will blink, so its an easy and clear test, approaching from their back also ensure that if they are alive and they get up and run, they wont do it over you or give you a quick kick. I looked at my shooting, The first shot was high and far back and the second shot was a little higher than I wanted. It had hit both lungs and the spine. It was the absolute highest I could have hit and still be considered “kill zone”. I also noticed that it wasn’t a she, it was a he. It turned out to be a very small buck, his antlers were only little buttons hidden under his fur, hence being called a button buck, so it still counted as an “antlerless” which is convenient for me.

The safest approach is from “above” always assume its still alive

I was relieved to have some meat for the freezer. I was also reminded persistence pays off and that shooting iron sights is not as easy as it seems. Like many things, it is slowly becoming a lost art. I found that with that course sight the entire kill zone disappeared behind it, yet I have seen people shoot amazing groupings at much farther distances with similar sights. I guess more practice is warranted. I also decided to try butchering this deer myself, it went well, but it was obvious I need much more practice at it.

Completely deboned and butchered