Month: September 2017

Southern Alberta Deer Hunt

We spent two days chasing deer in the Southern part of Alberta. Stalks were made, stalks were blown, mistakes were made, and hunters got busted; arrows were flung despite all of that. It was a great time, with lots learned. With a bit more time in that country I feel confident one of the opportunities would have led to a deer on the ground.

Ten Lessons Learned (mostly rookie mistakes)
  1. We need to learn a whole new level of patience; glass, spot, identify, assess the situation, and learn to turn down those iffy opportunities that most likely will just eat up a lot of time and blow the deer into the next county.
  2. When half the deer you see in a morning are either chasing coyotes or are being chased by coyotes, there are too many coyotes.
  3. When you spook an animal during a stalk, it will go exactly towards the deer you were after and make it run away. We found that elk are especially adept at this. The best performance we watched was by one bull elk, who cleared out a entire bowl (that held approximately 25 deer).
  4. Ignore the wind at your own peril; yes, deer will smell you if the wind is at your back; they may not run immediately, but they will depart long before you get within longbow range.
  5. When you think you are off the skyline, drop down another 100 feet if you can, and you might still be back-lit when looked at from the bottom.
  6. When you are sitting in the middle of a light-straw-coloured grassy slope, you will stick out like an ugly wart on a pretty girl’s face; find a rock, shrub, high weeds, anything to break your outline; camo doesn’t help.
  7. We make too much noise when walking, or deer hear too well.
  8. Kyle needs to stop wearing his rain pants when it is not raining (swish-swish-swish-swish)
  9. We have proven that we can get into the red zone, despite our efforts to alert deer to our presence.
  10. A 15-yard shot is not a gimme.
Brief photo essay

Bear Meets Cougar (aka Elk Hunting)

Too hot and too smokey, but opening day is opening day is opening day.

The 35-minute hike to “my spot” took an hour and I was still sweat-soaked and overheated as I settled onto my three-legged stool behind a rickety screen of freshly cut spruce boughs. The wind direction made my not-much-more sturdy blind out of dried-out willow branches across the meadow unsuitable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a while something started making a lot of noise in the bush in front of me, rustling leaves and breaking the odd stick. This went on for a while, and I was getting very curious, when a young black bear stepped out, and ambled over just about to where my other stand location was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I was contemplating my course of action, a bull elk pitched a few short chirps, unlike anything I had heard before. I was unsure if I wanted to call back, with a cow call maybe, as last time we tried this, we ended up with a black bear in our lap, and I’d rather have the bear amble by unsuspecting of my presence.

I let out a few cow calls just the same. Sometimes I think one thing, but do the other.

A few minutes later, as I was keeping an eye on the bear, something moved in my peripheral vision. Here came this cougar, walking past my stand at maybe 25 yards! Whether he came because of the noise the bear was making, because of my cow calls, or both, I don’t know, but here I was with two predators right in front of me, and a bull elk somewhere off to my left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was too intrigued about what showdown might be about the happen to be thinking about hunting so I switched on the video and recorded the following footage:

Bear – Cougar Encounter

As Donnie Vincent said: “To experience fantastic things, we need to put ourselves in fantastic places”. Sometimes all it takes is a little stroll right off the highway, and a bit of luck, for fantastic things to happen regardless of location.

Get out there!

FD

Testing the arrow set-up

Hunting season is here!

Targets have been worn out, cardboard animals pierced and punctured so many times that parts had to be replaced. Magnificent shots have been made, hitting tennis balls, pieces of string, stumps, and imaginary hearts on bear-shaped bushes. Unfortunately various slumps have weighed heavy on the mind, and the realization that a poor shot is just a half-second of inattentiveness away keeps me on edge.

And then there is the experience that the one gopher didn’t immediately die from being hit with a judo point. A gopher. Weighing less than a pound. What am I doing, thinking I can kill a deer, or maybe even an elk?

Time to put the worries to bed. My old chest freezer finally wore out, and we were left with a few pieces of thawing, freezer-burned pork ribs that would make a perfect medium to try out my bow and arrow set-up.

To recap, I shoot a Stalker Stickbows Jackal longbow, set at 47 lbs, and Easton Axis Traditional arrows, 400 spine, RMS Cutthroat 250 grs broadheads, for a total arrow weight of about 558 grs.

I shot at the double-stacked racks of ribs from 20 yards, and at a single rack at 30. Here is a ten second video of the 20-yard shot: Arrow vs. Spare Ribs

In the photo, the top ribs came from the double stack, the bottom is a rib from the single stack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hit ribs in both racks on the 20 yard shot. The broadhead cut through both (about half-width, as both were a glancing hit), and plowed on deep into the block material, as the video shows. On the 30 yard shot I hit a rib full-on and split it apart. The arrow hit a stack of heavy cardboard that I had used to patch up the center of the block, and that stopped the arrow pretty fast.

Although there was little science bothering my testing approach, and repeatability of the test can only be achieved by happenstance, it did show that my set-up has some power. Two stacks of ribs were no match for it at 20 yards, and even at 30 yards it still has enough power to split ribs.

I will go into the field a little more confident now. I hope everybody has a wonderful season, bringing home lots of great experiences, and hopefully filling a freezer. And maybe at the end of year you will hang some antlers or horns in your den as well.

Be safe!