Al and Jeff after a successful hunt

Living in Huntsville offers a little shorter hunting season compared to most deer hunting to the south of us. Once Dec 15/ 2010 had passed, I thought that was it. I had come to grips with the fact that 2010 just wasn’t my year. Well, that would all change after getting a call from Al Cavers.

Here it was the 2nd last day of deer season and my buddy Al and I decided we would giver one last try. Both of us had hunted pretty hard and we had seen a lot of deer throughout the season but the right opportunity for me, hadn’t quite presented itself. Al had harvested a deer a few weeks earlier and honestly, I thought my deer hunting days for this year were over.

Al lives down in Manilla Ontario, west of Lindsay Ontario and his deer season didn’t end until December 31. The purpose of Al’s call was to invite me to his place to hunt. He said that he had a couple of climbing tree stands and that he had permission in a couple of spots where there had been a lot of deer activity.

Al and I go way back. You know when you can say you have one, maybe two best friends if you’re lucky in a life time. Well, he’s one of those guys. He’s actually a brother! He’s a real bushman and he knows plenty about the outdoors and especially about hunting and fishing. So when you get a call from Al and he thinks we might have a good chance of getting something, you don’t hesitate. You get in your vehicle and go!

I arrived early in the morning on Dec 29th. We hunted all day in two different spots but came up short.

The next day Al had to leave. He and his family had to head down to southwestern Ontario but not before a last ditch effort morning hunt. So, there we were dragging our sorry butts out of bed at 4:30 AM, driving down a country road and hiking back into the bush in the dark. We hiked through the snow with our bows in our hands and bulky climbing tree stands strapped to our backs.

Now, I’ll be honest, I was a little skeptical about the whole climbing tree stand thing. After all, I had never used one before. I wasn’t skeptical about how they worked or if they worked. I knew they did. I just knew that picking the right tree meant picking one with minimal branches which also meant a tree without a whole lot of cover. I had been busted by deer in the past in situations just like that. In fact, that very morning as daylight fast approached a doe and two yearlings looked right up at me and I swear they grew wings. What ever it was I don’t know, they didn’t like something and in a flash they were gone.

Once again, I thought that was it. I sat down in my stand and not 20 minutes later in full morning light I heard what sounded like deer movement in the snow. I looked to my right and there he was just lightly feeding on small saplings. He began to move away from me and it was at that point I realized I forgot my grunt call. I don’t know if you’ve ever practiced grunt calling with your mouth. But it’s just typical. I can grunt call all day long using my mouth when I’m not deer hunting but stick me in front of a deer in that moment when it counts the most. Well, lets just say my grunt calls that morning weren’t the best.

Call it fate, call it luck, I might even have myself believe that my feeble attempt at calling turned that deer around. What ever it was, he did turn around and began heading my way. At first he approached directly towards me and that wasn’t good for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because there wasn’t a whole lot of ground cover between the deer and me. This can make it difficult to draw your bow. Just when I thought he was going to walk straight in on me he decided to take a little detour behind a small group of  standing cedar.

It was now or never. I took the opportunity to draw my bow. I held until he was open and broadside at about 15 yards. It was at that point after triggering my release, between the shaking and trying to draw a normal breath, I knew I had made a solid hit. After all, the WHACK sound was unmistakable.

How good of a shot was it, I wasn’t sure. Then I looked down at the snow. The red blood trail that followed him into the bush was proof enough that I must have made a good shot. After the shot, he ran and crashed through the bush and dropped at about 50 yards.  What a hunt!!

You want to talk about a celebration between friends. I’m 46 and Al is 45 years young. We’ve known each other since we were ten. It’s moments like that that make you thankful for great friends and thankful to God to be alive!

-Written and submitted by Jeff Dupuis-

We heard the bull bugle at first light and snuck into his core area. When I hit a lick on my bugle, the bull sim­ply came unglued and stormed our position like a tank, crashing through brush and small lodgepole pines like they were match­sticks. Before we could react he was in our lap and we were pinned down, myself hiding behind a camera, too afraid to even touch the tripod for fear of my shaking hands would run the footage. All I could see of my partner wedged against a stunted pine was the tip of his undrawn arrow shaking uncontrollably on the rest. Before a shot presented itself, the bull smelled a rat and disappeared as quickly as he arrived. While this experience didn’t result in a dead elk, it did hopelessly addict me to calling them.

It seems that in all walks of life, be it the animal kingdom or humans, communication is a key ingredient for all social interac­tion. However not all living things communicate to the same degree. If you ask my wife, I am sure she will tell you I lack in the communication department, in fact I am sure she believes I don’t listen to her at all, but when it comes to communicating with animals I can barely shut up. Of all the animals I love to communicate with elk rate right at the top.

By nature elk are very vocal. The uninitiated often simply think of bulls bugling, but cows, calves and bulls make all sorts of noises year around. If you encounter a larger herd of elk while you might not hear a thing from a distance, if you get close you will hear lots of subtle vocalization. Most of the time these are sounds of contentment, but depending on what’s happening the vocalization reflects it. Elk can convey contentment, danger, curiosity, or a cow in heat. Bulls for instance only bugle primar­ily in the rut, but they also communicate to establish a pecking order. After spending a considerable amount of time chasing the mighty wapiti, I’m convinced every elk in the herd knows each other by sound alone. This happens with the cows as well as the bulls and based on my evaluation somewhere in this mix is the deadly secret to calling elk archery-close.

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

It seems that the more vocal a herd the better the odds are for success at calling them. Some cows call subtle, while others are loud-mouth ladies actively looking for a date. By listening it gives you a better opportunity to imitate the particular tones and intensity of the herd.

By calling we are automatically intruding into the social club without an invitation. The closer we can sound to a known elk, and match that intensity the better the odds are of filling a tag. Even though we may sound like an outsider to the herd, luckily for us, love crazed bulls are not looking to be intimate with just one or two cows they are looking for all the love of every cow in the world, so taking advantage of their sexual frustrations and promiscuity is what we aim to do.

It doesn’t take a world champion elk caller to trick bulls within range. By simply paying attention to the herd and under­standing simple elk rhythm, tone and more important volume when calling, a hunter can depend on an elk call to be a valuable asset to dulling broadheads.

Public Versus Private Land

Since I started hunting elk 16 years ago, on private as well as public ground, I have realize that comparing these two  different types of ground are like comparing night and day and it is all about the amount of pressure each receives. Generally speaking private ground bulls are way easier to call than public ground animals, but this is not always the case. Some private land does get a lot of pressure, which can make for some pretty tough calling duels with elk that can serve you up a humble pie every time you bust out a call. While conversely some public land either through sheer remoteness or hard-to-get tags is like calling the best private land in the nation.

Hunting un-touched land and cow calling to bulls that have never heard a Hoochie Mamma would obviously be nice and it wouldn’t take long work­ing over these uneducated elk to start feeling like an elk calling pro only to be deflated the first time we went to the national forest and mixed it up with bulls so well-known by local hunters that they have knick names. However, regardless of where you hunt the basics of calling remain the same.

Start with mastering the cow call and all its various inflections. Your basic reed type calls are the easiest to learn as well as get proficient with. You will find two kinds; both are bite down reed-type of calls, one being enclosed and the other having an open reed or reeds. These calls make a very realistic sound and before your wife can run you out of the house you will master the basics.

I rely heavily on the cow call and think most of the time hunters are better off sticking with it over a bugle no matter where he is hunting. But learning how to make a basic bugle is important, especially for locating bulls at a distance before getting close and working him with your cow call. In addition, sometimes it is the bugle that finally provokes a dominant bull to commit, especially during the early season when bulls are still sorting out their peckin’ order.

Earning Your Public Ground PhD

Lets face it, unless you have deep pockets much of the private ground in the West is pretty much off limits, so you have to learn to hunt public land. This is not a bad thing as public ground comprises millions upon millions of acres across the West and happens to have some of the biggest bulls found anywhere. While it can be tougher than private, once you learn how to hunt it you won’t be disappointed. Over the years, one of my favorite places to hunt is the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico, and even though this is a trophy area tags are fairly obtainable through application.

In the Gila, the trophy potential is off the chart, sporting some of the biggest bulls in the country, but just because the big ones live there doesn’t mean that you automatically make one call and they come running to get in the back of your truck. These mature jokers have a PhD in avoiding hunters.

Over the last six years I have hunted this area religiously and have had the op­portunity to shoot some nice bulls all by using elk calls as an aid to close the coffin.

Notice I said, “as an aid”, meaning the call was just one thing in a bag of tricks to help smoke these monarchs. My biggest bull that came out of the Gila was a 378 P&Y bull that had earned the name Professor because he always seemed to take you to school when you applied too much pressure. However, this bull was vocal and would bugle his butt off. He also seemed to be fairly easy to find, not only by his gnarly, raspy bugle that set him apart, but frequently he could be found early in the morning in a large meadow just south of a particular water hole that always attracted a large herd.

The Professor was not the only bull in the area that had large headgear, but it was The Professor that seemed to call the shots. I had caught this bull in the open several times, but calling seemed to really make him uneasy when you were in close. The Professor however would bugle hard to distant cow calls and seem to be whole heartedly interested, but had a sixth sense when you moved in for the attack.

Finally we decided to have a caller stay behind as we worked him coming off the meadow at daybreak. By doing this we could keep him interested and bugling as we stalked in closer. The caller always was no closer than 80 yards behind me. While the caller kept him occupied, I slid within 50 yards and gave him a G5 Tekan right behind the shoulder. This hunt was really a stalk, but the call and caller had a big part to do with his demise. Once we started quartering the bull up, we found a piece of an old arrow lodged just below the backstraps, so obviously someone had him in close before and gave the Prof and education, which explained why he was so wary.

The Double Team

As this old bull showed, hunting with a partner can work extremely well. It not only puts the hunter out in front of the call, but it gives the hunter a chance to move and adjust the angle based on where the bull might be ap­proaching. Likewise, the caller has the flexibility to move as well and apply a lot of different calling techniques.

The double team plan worked again on another hunt. It had been hot and the bulls were only bugling early and late. As soon as the sun would rise the elk woods would turn in to a ghost town.

Just after daybreak on the fourth day of our hunt we heard this bull bugle. He hit it only two times, both very weak and he sounded like the littlest rag horn in the land but with no other game in town we went after him. Getting as close as pos­sible to where we thought the bugle came from I eased up and sat down by a pine stump while my buddy moved back and to my right about 40 yards. Neither of us were very optimistic about our chances. My buddy made one or maybe two very soft cow calls on a two reed diaphragm then he started raking a tree and rolled a few rocks. We sat there for possibly 10 minutes in silence, then out of nowhere appeared a wide 340 inch 6 x 6 coming directly to us, at 25 yards the bull let out a soft chuckle, looked over his surround­ing and kept walking in the direction of where the last rock had been rolled, which led him 16 steps from my pine stump. By now I was at full draw waiting for a broadside shot. When the arrow left my bow, I knew we had killed a call shy monster by keeping it low key and stay­ing patient. Needless to say, I was never convinced by the two times he had bugled earlier that he was a shooter. This was a lesson in itself. Never judge a bugle until you can see what is making the sound.

The most exciting way to bag a bull elk is to get him in close, and the best way to do that is with a call. Confidence in your call is critical, because if you’re insecure about using your call there is a good chance you will spook elk. Have confi­dence in your calling ability and become just another elk in the herd where you are hunting. Find a call that works for you and not what works for some else. Think like an elk and do as elk do. Real­ism, rhythm, and volume control can make the difference between bringin’ them in or running them over the next ridge. And remember its not always about calling, it can be just patiently listening to the sounds around you and applying minimal calls, while practicing good woodsmenship, and stalking skills that could help you put that monster on the back of the truck.

*This blog post was used with permission from Michael Waddell and Skinny Moose Media. Muskoka Outdoors is a proud member of Skinny Moose Media Blogs

Float tube on my back, I found a spot on the bank where I saw clear, but tea stained, water. Setting my rod up, I noticed I had already got a fan-club of several dozen black fly and ‘mossies’. I got out the “OFF!” and sprayed Arms/Legs/Noggin with liberal quantities of 30% deet and it seemed to do the same job as that ugly gorilla that accompanies Simon Cowell everywhere (at least on the Mossies). The Black flies like getting into the hair and they seemed tenacious – if somewhat reluctant. I hoped the deet would last but I had another spray in the tube as a back up. No breeze in the warm, overcast air made it ideal for the bugs to keep track of me – albeit from a distance of two or 3 feet downwind.

Note to self: Bring the bug jacket next time.

Spirits high, I set off up-stream planning to fish the lake first, and let the fish in the river settle. I would fish the river while drifting back down later. Not seeing any rises at all, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to slowly troll a small lure as I paddled up the river. Not 50 metres later, the first hit on the line was an 8″ baby large mouth bass that took my gold-bead fritz lure (white body, green marabou tail). It was to be one of a dozen LMB (up to 15″) and some decent yellow-fin perch that I would catch before I made it to the mouth of the river.

Then, I drifted into a deserted and calm Fish lake. A few red-winged Blackbirds swooped around and the chorus of Bull frogs heralded the morning as I sat back and admired the scenery. Although I was fishing for the Speckled Trout, I had a feeling that the number of LMB in the river did not bode well for them.

The river was deeper, slower and wider at this point – though only 2-3 miles downstream of my usual spot. Already, I could see the river changing as it meandered down through Arrowhead provincial park until joining the Big East river (a few miles down). It seemed the bass were looking for the river as a feeding and mating spot, and the trout had decided to head upstream further only to be blocked by the old beaver dam. This dam created a good flow rate, riffles and white water.

Looking over to the far side of the lake I saw a huge Rock Face climbing several hundred feet into the pine forest above. Some large birds of prey were circling in the up-current on the edge of the cliff face. Knowing that the lake bed and the shore line always bear a close resemblance I knew very deep water lay at the base of the cliff – my thighs and calf muscles almost on fire as I went “ramming speed” over to that side. I had 3 more hours before curfew and had to make it count.

It was a dark, deep and rocky place so I put on a metal cone-head lure and went in search of some lake trout in the depths. It may seem odd, but at this point, I was dreading the Bass that continually kept smashing into my lure with gusto! I was unhooking a fish every few minutes it was hardly sporting.

I came to the conclusion that I should either come back when the ice is on the lake and go drill a hole (when the bass lie dormant) or at least come a bit earlier before the water warms up. Never the less, I hi-tailed it back down the river, re-applied the deet and hooked into many more SMB and LMB on the way back down. It was a productive day with a total in the 30′s, not bad for 3 hours fishing!

Without a float tube or Canoe, it would not be possible to fish the marsh-rivers up here, wading is too difficult and the water too deep in places. As there is no “bank” it puts off the average Joe-Fisherman and means the places are never fished.

What a shame.. and it’s all FREE!!

*Note – All bass caught were released as it is not yet bass season. The author was in pursuit of trout.

After grabbing my fishing pole and my modest tackle box I left home and stopped down around the corner to see my buddy Ralph who just happens to own a bait and tackle shop. I got a dozen night crawlers, a container of meal worms and a new spinner to replace the one I lost awhile back. Even though I asked how much – Ralph would not let me pay. Ralph, I say again, Thank You.

I headed to my first spot which usually does well but, after an hour with not even a nibble I decided to head out and go down stream a couple of miles.

This is called the Mt. Hope River which goes all the way through the town of Ashford and Mansfield and ends up feeding the Mansfield Reservoir.

There is a lot of good places to fish with easy access. This is one of my favorite places.

This river is stocked by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection 2 to 3 times a year.

I have always had good luck fishing this spot but, I am very happy to say that yesterday was the first time ever that I actually caught my limit of 5.

These are all Brown Trout (photo below).

This is obviously me. You can’t tell but I am smiling. Never have I ever caught my limit before so this is a day to remember, at least for me it is.

My next thing to accomplish is to take my son Tyler fishing for the first time. I am hoping to do that this coming weekend depending on the weather of course.

These 5 brown trout are going on the BBQ grill this weekend. I first official cookout of the year, rain or shine.

I will be adding the recipe I think for Savory Sunday so don’t forget to check back.

*This post written by Rick Kratzke. He is an outdoor blogger from the northeast corner of Connecticut. Rick blogs at Whitetail Woods. Take a moment and visit his blog to catch more of his enthusiasm for the outdoors. This is a second article in a series of guest blogger posts while I recover from a small battle with writers block. Thanks to Rick and the others who have offered to help me through this ‘ailment’.

Assuming you are fishing for the pure enjoyment of fishing and not trying to win a bass tournament or guide a fishing party to the home of the lunkers, there is a synergy that surrounds a day on the water. Whether that water is a trout stream, in Muskoka, or the stumpy waters of a Georgia bass lake, there is an all encompassing serenity that pervades mind and body. Catching a fish becomes only a possible consequence and the real point, releasing one’s mind from all but the act of fishing. The long graceful curve of the fly line as it arcs through the air to land, delicately, on the crest of a rippling rivulet or the quiet swoosh of monofilament leaving the spool, tracking effortlessly through the air, to deliver it’s lure, with a soft plop, before the edge of a sun dappled Lilly pad. No other meditation is needed to attain the restful mind, than this one uncomplicated challenge, thrown down to an unseen adversary, beneath the shimmering surface of water and consciousness. We have met before, it says and we will do so again. Come forth and do battle! For it is a battle, of wits and skill and strength.

It is, a test of all these things and oneself. But beyond that, it is a time given over to itself, with no demands beyond the mechanics of the art and no end save the passing of it.

Fishing removes the stress of living. The sunlight on the water, the circular tracings of feeding minnows, all conceal the outer world. Gently rocking in boats, or, tremulously wading a riverbed, serve only to erase all but the moment. The world becomes populated with dragonflies, gnats, hawks and hummingbirds and the wind moving through the willows and over the water. Decisions required are of which fly or what lure and beyond that only the chances of success. The ripples on the water, the eddies swirling, backwards, past some half sunken log, these draw the mind’s eye. These hold attention, raise pause and search the memory for some half remembered recollection of one that got away. Dark pools, drawing one in with expectations of lurking, finny adversaries. Lilly pads and half dead tress awaken tales of monstrous warrior bass that shake off lures and leave the water roiling from their Hurculean efforts. Yet, amidst this overwhelming furor, a serenity blankets the consciousness, the act of fishing itself, becomes the reality and the rest, just passing moments. Little else will clear the mind with such Zen like precision. Little else, produce serenity from the simple act of placing a line into a body of water.

One may clear the mind in many ways and meditate in many places, but few ways and fewer places are as simply mastered or discovered as those found with one’s hand on a favourite fishing rod.

This post written by, Peter Wm. Richardson. He is a Canadian Photojournalist living in Mono, Ontario, Canada. Please check out his excellent blog with some amazing posts called: A Life In Pursuit of Imagery. This guest post is a first in a series posts written by guest bloggers who are graciously helping me through a short episode of writer’s block.

Thanks  Peter.