10-25 thru 10-31-2011

10-25 thru 10-31-2011
Weather: The weather was very seasonable the entire week. We did have a little precipitation almost daily.
Location: The cabin at Moose Junction
Bagged: Grouse 1, woodcock 7, and two deer (Tupper got the deer and grouse and three of the woodcock).
Partners: Jake Tupper

Comments

It was my yearly late October hunts up to the cabin, and this time I had company along. We hunted birds and deer. I did not have very good luck myself, but Jake did do okay. Fritz did a pretty good job of finding woodcock for us one day, but after that he was wore out.
Fritz will be twelve in another month and I decided that it is time to retire him from the field. He is still worn out and it has been almost a week since he last hunted. Besides the birds he pointed, he also helped us track the two deer that Jake shot. It is really sad that Fritz will not be accompanying me on any more hunts. I have harvested many birds with his assistance over the years and we have shared countless days in the field and marsh.
Jake shot two antlerless deer on Sunday morning. He shot both deer around 9 am and by the time we ate breakfast and tracked them, the larger of the two was three quarters eaten by wolves, and this was in the time span of about two hours. Jake also almost made a drastic mistake on the other deer we tracked. Fritz tracked the deer for about one hundred yards and found it still alive. Fritz basically held back and Jake asked me to hold his bow. I was thinking he was getting his release on, well instead he thought he would play Neanderthal man and cut the very much alive, deer’s throat. He quickly found out that was a mistake, as the deer was not quite ready to throw in the towel and be neck sliced. The deer effortlessly bounded off and Jake was left dumbfounded and holding a clean knife. Luckily when we came back about one half hour later it was dead and still intact.
One morning on bow stand I had a rather interesting encounter. This stand is located where I had shot several deer and seen many others over the years. I did notice this year there was a very nice trail going right past my stand location and up into the oak woods. I figured it was some hunters either bear or rifle deer hunting that had cleared a path to make the oak woods on the hill more accessible. Well I was not even close in my assumptions!
Sitting on this stand at daybreak on Friday morning I heard a convoy of cars and trucks traverse down the road and then stop about where Jake had dropped me off just a half hour earlier. I soon heard voices, laughter, dogs barking and dog bells jingling. I had heard rumors of a field trial for English Setters, but I did not expect to be involved with it. Next I heard the dogs being unloaded and the laughter turned to serious conversation with the sound of dog bells crisscrossing the thickets and tangles between myself and the road. As the bells and voices got closer and closer it became apparent to me that I was parked right smack in the middle of a trail that was carved out by this group of field trialers. After about ten minutes I got my first glimpse of a bird searching machine of a pointer. The dog was covering ground at a frantic pace and leaving no bush un-sniffed. About twenty yards from my location I saw a grouse run in front of the dog and take sanctuary in a downfall. The dog immediately became rock solid and looked as steady as a statue on point. Several minutes later the second dog of the brace came upon the other dog on point and also came to a rock solid point. It took the handlers and judges several minutes to get to the brace and grouse. As they approached I was definitely looking to see if they were armed with shotguns and bent on killing that grouse. Seeing them unarmed and not bent on killing a bird and possibly spraying me with pellets, I became less concerned. I relaxed and watched the show, with the idea of startling the group of twenty or so trialers with my presence once the bird flushed. The handlers came in and flushed the bird and its escape path took it within feet of my undetected location.
As the spectators and handlers were re-grouping I now had the opportunity to surprise them. As they neared to within ten yards of my unseen location, I hollered out and said you could have at least pushed a deer past me. There were definite looks of surprise and disbelief. One female handler came up to me and graciously apologizes and informed me that they would be running the same course the next couple of days. I told her that the county forests are for all to enjoy and I was not upset and that I had the best view in the world of two fine working dogs doing what they so love to do.



Observations:

There are plenty of deer around this year: which is very apparent by the amount of sign in the woods and the deer along the roads at night. The grouse numbers are very much down, and I would rate the numbers at about a three out of ten. If Fritz was younger we would have done great damage to the woodcock this year. I saw no ducks and only one flock of about twenty geese. The rut does not seem to be in progress yet, there are plenty of rubs and scrapes but we did not see any buck chasing does.