Blog – Page 6 – The Crooked Arrow Blog

String walking or fixed-crawl for hunting?

Traditional bows are not known for producing blistering arrow speeds. Shooting at anything beyond 20 or 25 yards creates a beautifully arched trajectory that we can follow with our yes. One of the reasons I love shooting a longbow. It does however create a dilemma. Not for those fortunate few that can just look at target, pull back without thought, let one rip and hit the ten-ring, regardless of distance; but for those without that talent, the aimers and gap-shooters. At close distances we generally need to aim pretty low to get good center hits; so low sometimes that the connection with the animal is lost and it becomes awkward and difficult, resulting in poor shots.

Enter string walking. String walking is a method of shooting and aiming that creates smaller gaps at the shorter distances. By sliding your string hand down the string, grabbing it s short distance below the nocking point, at full draw the arrow will be closer to your eye. The change in perspective makes that you can aim closer to the animal or target. At longer distances, you go back to the traditional method, where you grab the string immediately below the nocking point (string walking usually means you are shooting “three-under”). When you create one defined point where you grab the string at shorter distances, it is also referred to as a “fixed crawl”.

The guys at The Push Archery created a movie a few years back that explains all this in detail: The Push – A Traditional Archery Film

Sounds good? Sounded good to me when I first learned of it. Who wouldn’t want to have the best of both worlds: aiming point close to the point of impact at all distances. But wait; all distances? Just how far are we shooting in hunting situations anyway, and does this approach really have practical value?

Lets examine. I have read claims of archers whose “point-on” (the distance where the point of the arrow at full-draw covers the point of impact) is 50 yards or so. This has to be a result of one of two, or a combination of two things: a high-poundage bow, and a light-weight arrow. From a hunting perspective a point-on this far makes little sense to me.

How many of us can consistent hit the ten or nine ring at 50 yards? How realistic is it to expect that you can hit a whitetail deer consistently at 50 yards, when your arrow speed is such that it has time to hear your string drop, locate the source of the sound, look you in the eye, do a pirouette, flip you the middle hoof, and duck down, all before your arrow gets there?

I’ll pause here and say that the above is based on my own limited view of the world, and for every generality postulated above, there will be plenty of exceptions. However, most people probably have no business shooting at an animal beyond 30 yards with a longbow or recurve. Accepting that as fact, I really see no need for string walking or setting up a fixed crawl.

The solution: shoot a heavier arrow. Why inconvenience yourself with large gaps at short distances, for the idea of having a flatter trajectory out to distances at which you will never shoot during hunting? Find your maximum distance (and for most that will not be 40 or 50 yards), and build an arrow with a “point-on” around that. Obviously your arrow will drop quickly after your point-on distance, but practically you will still have another few yards where you can keep the aim on hair (depending on the size of the critter), and for closer shots your gaps will be a lot smaller. You won’t have to remember to grab your string lower (I am sure I would mess that up in the heat of the moment), and you can create a better-penetrating arrow: higher arrow weight, and more opportunity to put more weight towards the front. All advantages for a hunting set-up.

That was my approach anyway, once I realized that shooting at 40 yards or more was not for me (yet?). I’m getting to the point where I’m getting consistent out to 30-35 yards, and I built my arrow around that.*

Disclaimer: This is just one guy’s opinion, and in my small world it all makes sense. Feel free to tell me I have it all wrong in the comments. I am here to learn and get better, and have fun doing it.

*since I wrote about my arrow set-up my technique has changed a bit, and my point-on increased to just below 30 yards.

Shooting 3D – Progress Report

There is a gentlemen that walks his Springers behind my house, exercises his falcon within earshot of my backyard, is the husband of one of my son’s teachers when he was in high school, and, as I found out a year or so ago, shoots a longbow. He’s quite friendly to boot. He told me about the 3D league that the local archery club was putting on, and I didn’t need too much convincing.

We’re just over half way in the league, having gone through 7 out of 12 shoots (I missed one; only 10 out of 12 count for the total score), with a different set-up each week. The club owns a variety of targets from most of the local wildlife to more exotic, including a crocodile (or alligator, it’s hard to tell), and we shoot at 12 of them from 6 stations, two rounds each night. The compound guys get one arrow per target to make it happen; the trad guys are expected to be not so accurate, so we get two arrows per target, each round, so 48 shots.

Here are some quick impressions and lessons learned so far:

Despite my generally ornery disposition and dislike for crowds, I am enjoying this.
Low light and distances stretching out to 40 yards make that I can barely read the numbers identifying the targets; that has to have some influence on accuracy. A visit to the laser people may be in my future.
Having two tries per target really helps. It’s probably not a good reflection of a hunting situation, but it makes our scores look less dismal.
Out of five trad shooters, I am the only one deliberately aiming.
Despite having two arrows per target, of which only the best arrow counts, I still had six 5’s on the last scoring sheet, on 24 targets; a five meaning a hit outside the kill zone.

So, for the remaining five, here is the plan:

Aim for the X! Regularly I find myself aiming for the animal, and not for the 11-ring. Focus, focus, focus!
Keep trying to execute, and fight the TP*. Sometimes I have trouble releasing the arrow.
Shoot at least one evening using only one arrow per target. My inflated 75% kill shot percentage may not look so hot when I don’t have a second arrow.

*Target Panic

Book Review – Voices from the MacKenzies by Paul Deuling

Arctic Red River, Gana River, Nahanni Butte, South Nahanni, Ram Head. Any sheephunter knows what we are talking about. NWT Outfitters, MacKenzie Mountains, Redstone River. Famous names, famous outfitters. Dall sheep, moose, caribou. The far North of the continent.

A few quick trips by jet and propeller plains will get you there, to the heart of the MacKenzie Mountains, Northwest Territories, Canada. A comfortable lodge in the middle of nowhere, and a crew of good people awaits. It’s like they have always been there, ready to provide a trip of lifetime to the traveling hunter who dreams of experiencing the North country.

If you had arrived there in the early 1960s, things would have looked slightly different. The Government of the NWT had just decided to open the MacKenzie Mountains to outfitted hunting, and the first pioneers were chosing their areas, and trying to figure out not only how to get there, and get their hunters in and out, but also how to establish a permanent presence in a place far from infrastructure and outside support.

Who were these folks, that jumped into this adventure with both feet? How did they cope? Who worked for them as their guides? What about the bush pilots, wranglers, cooks, government staff? What are their stories? Paul Deuling, in what must have been a gargantuan task, set out to document the history of the pioneers, the old-timers, while most of them are still around, as well as the adventures of those that came after them. Some stayed one or two years, others almost a lifetime, but all of them helped shape the outfitting in the industry in the NWT that it is now.

The 407 pages that this book is long are not enough to capture all the adventures. Many of the individuals portrayed in this book could likely write a book about their lives that would not be boring. In an attempt to be all-inclusive, no doubt sacrifices had to be made in terms of space.

At times, especially when describing the first few years of each outfit, the information relayed becomes a bit repetitive, but mostly this book provides a glimpse into a way of life that many of us secretly dream or have dreamed about at some point.

It is probably worth to own this book as a hardcover paper copy, just to leaf through it and look at the pictures. However, if you are cheap (like me) or on budget, it is also available as an e-book in Kindle format. In order to best show the photos that sometimes go across two pages, the e-book shows two pages at ones, reducing the font to a size that I cannot read without glasses on my iPad. I cannot imagine reading this on a phone or a small- sized reader.

You can order the book here or on Amazon.

Fourteen years of mountain hunting or the unfortunate accumulation of “stuff”.

In 2003 I came to the Rockies with a dream of sheep hunting burning in my soul. My gear was typical of a Western European forest tree stand hunter. Heavy boots, thick sweaters and jackets, a 9 ½ pound rifle. I quickly bought a hefty sleeping bag, a foam mat, a $150 backpack, a billy pot, a diminutive propane burner, and I was off to the mountains.

Ignoring for a moment that first year when I had to learn the hard way that a little hill in the Belgium Ardennes was poor preparation for the East Slopes of the Rockies, that gear was pretty much all I needed to survive. Cotton clothing, army surplus for the most part, must have kept me wet and cold sitting on a high ridge after a big climb, but heck, I was sheep hunting! My day pack contained some raingear, salami, cheese, nuts and Snicker bars for lunch, knife, moleskin and tape to deal with the blisters. Map and compass too, I reckon. An overnight pack had the big heavy sleeping bag, foamy, tarp (not the fancy kind) and the cooking gear. My most expensive piece of gear was my binoculars, a pair of Swarovski SLC 10×42.

I have lost many photos of those first few years unfortunately, but I managed to recover a few low-res images from forgotten sources. Here are two examples of frugal camps. I was tougher than I was smart, and “hunting” consisted mostly of long hard treks, with the odd half hour of glassing thrown in here and there. I wish someone back then had steered all that energy in the right direction, but I hunted mostly solo and had to make all the mistakes myself; many times over.

My first sheep camp. Pretty nifty set up until the snow started flying

Scouting for sheep, surrounded by promising basins. Mice chewed the fingers out of my deerskin gloves that night

Fast forward 14 years. Looking over all the gear I took mountain goat hunting, scattered across my basement room, I can’t help but wonder what Fred or Jack would have said, had they been able to see my collection of stuff and gadgets.

Over the years I improved many components to my “kit”. The first to go was the tarp. A lightweight one-person tent provided a bit more shelter, later replaced by a two-person because the one-person was a bit tight and claustrophobic, and I needed room to keep the dog and gear out of the rain (never had that problem with a tarp).

I probably spent several times more on that set of lightweight rain gear than the worth of all my old clothing put together. It replaced a heavier set of big-name-retail rain gear that had the unhappy habit of sucking water into the cuffs and transferring that to the liner, causing me to be wet from the elbows and knees down.

The Exped 7 Downmat was a life saver. An aging back no longer enjoyed a half-inch thick foamy, so for probably 25 times the cost, I bought comfort. Of course the heavy sleeping bag had not been a smart purchase, and it was replaced by a much lighter, and more compressible down bag. Through winning a Rokslide (www.rokslide.com) push-up contest (old-man category) I added another bag, a synthetic minus-something bag for the really cold days (and most my days are really cold, as I seem to be one of those guys that can’t seem to stay warm at night).

After years of enduring the agony of a cheap backpack, I finally broke out the checkbook and bought what was probably the last Kifaru Timberline before they went to the detachable frame. A daypack was added through winning a photo contest (I get lucky sometimes, I also won a Sitka Kelvin jacket through an instagram photo contest).

Then came 2013, and a coveted late season draw tag for bighorn sheep. Now I really started piling on the gear, from merino base layers, to expensive insulated pants, gloves, pac boots, and much more in order to be ready to fight the -30 temperatures and gale-force winds.

Of course there was a new lightweight rifle, because no sheephunter should carry a 9 ½ lb set up; a new bow after the sight on my old hand-me-down finally broke; a satellite messenger for the home front, and then another one that allows sending texts, and battery packs to keep those and the paired cell phone powered up, a folding knife with replaceable scalpel blades, too many fixed-blade knives (I have a problem), fancy high-speed water boiler, better this, more of that. There is no end.

I know there is no going back on some things. The comfort of a good sleeping pad I will not forego. Some clothing is so much better than the stuff I had fifteen years ago, that I can’t see myself going back to cotton t-shirts and jeans. I knew the very moment that I purchased a SPOT messenger that that genie would never go back into the bottle. I get daily crap from my family for not taking my cell phone when I walk the dogs and stay out longer than expected. Not taking the Inreach on multi-day trips would rank up there with the other mortal sins.

Recently I have been taken my old billy pot out for hikes again. Despite washing it, the pungent smell of the many campfires never quite comes off, like it is fused into the metal. It holds a little bit of each of those early mountain hunts, when I was low on experience, but high on enthusiasm, and energy was in unlimited supply. I think I will go have a good hard look at my gear, and figure out how I can simplify it a bit.

A campfire and an old billy pot – nostalgia over efficiency and speed

That foldable scalpel blade, I think I will start with that one. It’s not a real knife anyway. Besides, I just got a fancy custom knife that looks better with the new longbow.

What is your one piece of gear that you won’t go without? And what might you leave at home this year?

BC closes the grizzly hunt – what went wrong?

On December 18th, 2017, the NDP/Green coalition government of British Columbia closed the hunt for grizzly bear all across the province, except for hunting by First Nations.

It was a decision that had nothing to do with science, nothing with wildlife management. It was a decision based solely on a perceived public opinion that grizzly bear hunting is unacceptable. Unacceptable how? That is unclear.

In the summer the BC government announced plans to close grizzly hunting for “trophy”, meaning that the meat would have to be recovered and the hide, skull and claws would have to be left in the field. There was to be a period of public consultation. It appears that the hunting community’s indignity focused around the incomplete utilization of a resource, that leaving inedible parts of the animal in the field would be disrespectful, a waste in fact; and of course around the science of wildlife management.

Reportedly the government received some 4000 emails, of which 3/4 expressed a negative opinion towards hunting grizzlies altogether. That was enough for the government to change their plans, from allowing the hunt for meat collection only, to closing down the hunt altogether.

What can we learn from this? Because learn from this we should if we are to avoid the same thing to happen again in the near future.

It’s not about the science!

In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, politicians use science only when it supports their ideology, or when they think they can gain popular support (read votes). The government admitted that the science was solid, that hunting grizzly bears is sustainable, and still they closed it.

It’s not about wildlife management!

No matter how often we say we hunt because we need to manage wildlife, people are not buying it. The average voter at best has a hard time understanding the concept of killing animals to save animals. More often, the average voter doesn’t care. The non-hunting public does not accept the image of the altruistic hunter who goes out to do his part for conservation when he loads up the truck with gear and heads for the fields or mountains.

Hunting is not a right!

Hunting lives or dies by the acceptance of the general public, or rather, by the perception of acceptance of hunting by a really small group of elected officials. You can claim it is your right to be allowed to hunt as often as you want, but last time I checked I didn’t see it listen in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Hunting is your “right” until the next elected government tells you it isn’t. Then you have the right to speak out against it and it is your right to vote for the other guys. But hunting is not your right.

They are much more dedicated than we are!

When it comes to exercising the one right that we do have, freedom of speech, the people that are vehemently opposed to hunting are much more active than we are. Look at the numbers. 4000 emails, 3000 of them oppose hunting (of grizzlies this time, just wait and see what comes next). Of roughly 100,000 hunters in British Columbia, just 1% could be bothered to send an email.

So, what do we do?

There are a few take-aways from the observations above.

We need to come up with a rationale for hunting that goes beyond wildlife management, one that can be understood and accepted by non-hunters (forget about the anti-hunters, they will never be convinced). I don’t know what that story looks like. I do know what it doesn’t look like.

It is not “hunting is my right, it is legal, so get over it” attitude. It is also not the animal carcass shown on Facebook or Instagram, unceremoniously deposited on the garage floor, with blood and gore oozing out. It is not the photo of four of five does piled up in a truck bed. None of that does any good to help secure the future of hunting. None of that will be understood by the non-hunter. Remember that anything you put on the internet can and will be used against us. There is no such thing as privacy.

It is also not the argument that we hunt for the sake of wildlife management. Many individuals and organizations are up in arms right now reiterating the science, once more elaborating on how the grizzly hunt is sustainable, how grizzly need to be hunted to help the numbers of other wildlife, or to curtail human-grizzly interactions. It is a non-argument at this point. The politicians have thrown out all those arguments in favour of what they feel is the voters’ opinion. They even admitted to it.

Unless we get better at rallying the troops, and stand together as hunters irrespective of our how we hunt or what we hunt or where we hunt, we will lose these battles every time. Let me put it differently: until YOU get involved, educate yourself, and get active socially and politically, we will lose. It doesn’t matter if you do not hunt species X, or you do not hunt with weapon Y. Stand together for hunting, or risk losing it.

What is your story?

Everybody has his own story when it comes to hunting. Mine started on a different continent, with different traditions, centered around family, valuable time spent together, working to improve habitat, looking after a small lease 12 months of the year, and shooting some of the surplus in a few short months at the end of the years; sharing meat with friends, cooking a hare for Christmas, training and working gun dogs, and being outdoors in weather that keeps most people inside. When I think of those days, I do not remember the shooting, I remember the people.

Right now hunting for me is about finding the simplicity and satisfaction in hunting with a traditional bow, spending time in the mountains alone or with good friends, staying fit while the body protests, providing food for my family and others if ever I can succeed in getting close enough with the bow, stories shared by a campfire although some have been told a few too many times already, and waking up with the desire to look over the next ridge, to see a new valley. What is yours? Let’s hear it.

BC Goat Hunt – Gear Review and Physical Prep

The goat hunt is more than a week behind us and the ragged edge of disappointment has dulled a little. Time to provide some perspective on gear and the physical preparation.

Gear

None of our personal gear let us down, nothing really failed (not counting the cheap rubbery rain gear I bought to use during the boat and quad rides; I considered it disposable, and disposed of it got, it lasted the four days that I needed it).

Though we got a daily soaking fighting through the wet alders, we didn’t get rained on incessantly, as we had feared. It was a little colder than expected so most precipitation fell in the form of snow. The day I shot the billy was a day of constant drizzle. I used an older set of KUIU Chugach rain gear with a good soaking of a spray-on DWR just before departure, and it performed fine.

For base layers I used Icebreaker merino. 200-weight shirt and long johns and a 260-weight shirt over top of that. On days that were wet and close to freezing, a rain jacket to keep the wet and wind off was sufficient while climbing. A neck gaiter (KUIU) and a hooded jacket (Sitka Jetstream) kept the cold from creeping in from above when glassing. For prolonged periods of glassing I would put on Sitka Kelvin puffy pants and jacket.

I would definitely recommend hunting pants with knee pads. I used Sitka’s Mountain Pants. I slipped in the rocks one day, and fell onto my knee hard. The knee pad made this an event without consequence. Just for that reason, I’d wear a garment like that. But the knee pads also help when crawling over downed trees, up rocks, and other obstacles that are just too high to get a foot on them.

I used insulated boots, Lowa’s Tibet GTX Superwarm. Despite the fact that the leather got thoroughly soaked, my feet stayed mostly dry, and fairly comfortable. Some swear by more rigid boots for this type of country, but I found these to be a good middle-ground, being suitable both for the long approaches and the climbing in the rocks.

Gloves are always a big concern, since my hands get cold easily. I purchased Columbia Powder Keg skiing gloves. Guaranteed waterproof. Not sure if that was the case, the gloves got pretty wet on the inside. Could have been sweat, and ingress from the top. The good thing was that they stayed warm even when wet. However, they were hard to dry by the stove, by morning they were still damp.

After long deliberations, I left my 5 1/2 foot aspen hiking pole at home, and brought a 100cm SMC Gear Capra Ice Axe. A disadvantage is that it is loud when banged on rocks, but a big advantage is that it becomes an extended arm during climbs, and of course it might save your life if you start sliding, in a way that no trekking pole can accomplish.

Carrying the longbow through the alders was a major nuisance. I couldn’t strap it to the pack or it would get me stuck every second step, so I had to carry it by hand and feed it through the shintangle. Whenever the terrain got rocky I’d rather have the bow strapped, so I could maintain a balance using two hands. Crossing smaller rock slides I felt unstable, and of course managed to slip and bang up my shins. I really missed my long pole, but I would not have been able to carry it up some of the stuff we climbed.

I fabricated a sling from a piece of nylon rope, which, in lesser terrain, would have worked perfectly. The system I came up with to protect the tips while still having quick access to the bow needs some work. The “prototype” consisted of two baby mitts connected by bungie cord. The tip that would lead the way when fighting the alders was well-protected,, but the rear mitt got pulled off constantly. The next model would have to incorporate a non-stretchy connection between the two tip protectors, or something using snap caps. Maybe there are tip protectors commercially available, I must admit that I never looked. In the end, the bow only sustained minor scratches, though I did manage to ruin a string when I fell and it caught on a sharp rock.

In this country and this weather you will need something to protect the feathers on your arrows. I found a small dry bag that just fit over them, which kept most of the moisture off and kept damage during bushwhacking to a minimum. Similar to the mitt though, branches will want to rip it off, so make sure it is attached well.

Physical Preparation

It is hard to give advice on this, as everybody’s physique is different, and everybody’s starting point and opportunities to train are different.

Sitting behind a desk all day is not the best preparation for a multi-day hunt in goat country, or any kind of hunt really that doesn’t involve a tree stand or ground blind, but it is what I do for a living. Despite that, I try to stay fit year-round, just to have some sort of base level. I live in the happy circumstance that I live near a hill, and a fairly steep creek canyon, so I can get some base-training in just walking the dogs.

A few months before the hunt I started focusing on prolonged periods of daily work-outs, without getting too extreme on any individual day. The body is aging, and I found that extremes of anything increase the chances of injury. For me, and you will have to figure out if that also applies to you, daily work-outs, with very few exceptions, are the key. Focus on cardio, with added weights if you can.

If you can run (meaning you don’t have any injuries that prevent it), hill running is an excellent way to train legs and cardio, provided you have hills (or stairs). Hiking up and down hill (or stairs) with a weighted pack is very useful too (I would call it essential), just be careful with the knees. Add some push-ups, pull-ups and core, and you’ll have a good start. Mix things up, run or hike on uneven ground if you can, do side-hills, pick up and put down heavier, awkward things, and so on. There are many online resources to help you pick the exercises that feel right for you.

The last week or two before the hunt I picked out the steepest slope I could find close to home and went up and down, and up and down, with light or no weight. On the weekends I added in longer hikes, which would give me a few hours of continuous climbing, again with limited weight. A shoulder problem prevented me from doing any kind of serious upper body weight work, even the amount of bow shooting had to be moderated. It was not ideal, but it was what I could do.

I could definitely have been in better shape, but I feel I was adequately prepared, nobody had to wait for me. By day 6 I was feeling the strain, but this was likely partially caused by the deception of losing the billy. For the next hunt I wouldn’t change much. Focus on daily climbing for a long period of time (I probably didn’t skip a day for two months), and add in whatever keep things fun. I will work on upper-body strength though, and core, so I might actually be able to pick up and carry a moose quarter next fall. Who am I kidding, I’ll settle for being able to stumble back to camp with a quarter in my pack, I’m going to need help to get it in my pack and get to my feet.

One last comment on shooting: as much as you can, get away from formal-stance shooting across flat ground. I don’t think I saw any piece of ground where a nice standing horizontal shot would have been possible. Shoot from the knees, from two knees, shoot up, shoot down, from behind cover, standing on a slippery sloped surface, and so forth. Even though I never got to draw the bow during the hunt, trust me on this one. You won’t regret it.

Questions

I just picked a few topics to comment on that I thought would be of interest. If you have any specific question regarding gear or training, just email me. If you have any tips or tricks for mountain hunting with a trad bow that are worth sharing, please comment below.

Broken dreams

Rocky Mountain Goat hunt SE of Kitimat BC

November 2017

“A Beast the Color of Winter”

Preface

Mountain goat, the “Beast the Color of Winter”, I have been wanting to hunt for a long time. After years of unsuccessful draws in Alberta, and the age-clock ticking, my wife decided I should take the opportunity of a hunt offered to me through a friend, for a late-season hunt in coastal British Columbia. I would be guided by my hunting buddy Kyle, whose goat hunting experience is about the same as mine: negligible to none. When speaking to the outfitter (D.) he assured me that the terrain would be well-suited to bow hunting. Just climb up through the trees till level with the goats, traverse, stalk, shoot. We had a plan!

Pre-hunt days

Less than two weeks before the hunt, messages started pouring in from the field that snow levels were unusually high, access was difficult, climbing possibly impossible or dangerous. We needed to decide if we wanted to push ahead or postpone a year. I would have been OK with the latter, but the second hunter (H.) wanted to wait and see, so we waited and saw, and it turned out that though the access was difficult, the hunting area was still in fair shape, so the hunt was on!

Traveling

A long drive on a Monday brought us to the outfitter’s house, a beautiful log home in the boreal forest. We chatted about the plans, the boat ride in, the state of the trails, and more. After a 2AM wake-up, a five-hour drive, and lowering the boat trailer to where the outboard motor touched water, technology started working against us. The marine battery didn’t start the engine, the battery pack didn’t provide the required power, and the generator wouldn’t start. We were also unable to pull the trailer back out of the water due to the iced-up ramp.

About half an hour of tinkering later, the boat’s outboard motor was puttering; we loaded up and commenced the 60km boat ride. Now, in my opinion, pontoon boats make good vessels, if you are planning on venturing 300 feet from shore, firing up the barbeque, emptying the cooler of beer, and jumping off the roof into the lake. They make some poor load-hauling-big-lake watercraft as we were about the find out. Even small winds make big waves on the open water, and the bowless craft didn’t like those conditions. We took on water, dipping the nose of the craft into a big roller, and had to flee behind an island to get out of the wind.

Five hours later, back on dry land

With serious anxiety about the home journey, at least for me, we beached the craft, unloaded, and drove two quads and trailers for of gear to a gorgeous cabin at a smaller lake, where we spent the night. Early next morning, we road about 2 hours on an old road, partially overgrown, to our intended camp site, where some gear had been left after the previous hunt, and some had been ferried over the previous night. Only one wash-out had to be negotiated by portaging our gear, and gingerly feeding the quads and trailers across what real estate the raging waters had not destroyed.

Inside the surprisingly nice cabin

We cut an opening in the alders to fit two wall tents, set up a kitchen, wood stoves, cots, and brought in all the boxes of food and paraphernalia, before venturing out to find a dead tree to turn into firewood.

Hunting Day 1

Setting camp consumed a large chunk of our first hunt day, but we ventured out for the afternoon to spot some goats, which we readily did. Nannies and kids, later joined by two billies. We got our first taste of the toughness of the terrain, as we battled alders at the bottom, steep mossy climbs in the trees, and too-steep-for-comfort grassy rock slopes once past tree line. We never reached those goats and turned around; in fact we weren’t even sure if we were on the right track. But we had seen goats, and spirits were high.

Getting ready to leave

Hunting Day 2

The area we were hunting consisted of a long down-sloping ridge with a mixture of trees and rock on the top, steep cliffs underneath, patches of grassy areas mixed with more cliffs and slab rock, and fingers of tree cover reaching up from the bottom, all of this cut up by avalanche chutes, and creeks that look more like waterfalls, but frozen, due to the early cold weather.

Glimpse of the slopes we’d be hunting

Our daily approach was to fight the alders to the one of washes (creek beds opened-up and cut-deep by rock slides) and glass the slopes. We readily found a group of four goats from the second wash, running up and down a patch of green, chasing, cajoling, rutting. Before we could make up our minds to go after them, or even figure out in our minds where we would start the climb, they were gone. In the afternoon, we climbed up the wash and through a treed area, attempting to lay eyes on a small basin, and a possible route to even higher trees, only to get stuck in a forest of alders. We hadn’t climbed high enough, and were starting to feel some apprehension about the terrain, and the feasibility of true spot and stalk hunting.

Fighting the alders, every day, twice a day

We made it to the tent just before D. returned with his hunter, the latter hobbling in in less-than-perfect condition. Turned out he had slipped and fell, bouncing down fifty feet of rocks, dropping off a ten-foot cliff and stopping just before a 200-foot cliff that would have killed him. His rifle didn’t survive the ordeal; stock broken it careened off the mountain, never to be retrieved.

Hunting Day 3

Amazingly, despite a bruise that covered his entire leg from hip to foot, a badly hurting heel and swollen arm H. was ready to go after breakfast. Tough kid! The four of us hiked up together to the very edge of the trees, where they petered out into some alder shrubs. D. suggested hiking up higher to another group of trees to keep watch on some nannies from there. I hesitated because of the terrain. Not much later a billy showed up and we made the climb anyway. I don’t recall if I had already mentally given up on the longbow by then, because we were climbing into a dead end, with no chance for a bow shot. I didn’t matter, cause the billy spooked. Don’t they say that you cannot approach them from below? We proved that statement correct. This billy also showed nothing of the phlegmatic attitude that D. had found these goats to have; he was not enjoying us crawling around on his front porch and took off.

We climbed back down and glassed for a while without seeing anything of interest. A long walk back it was, through the water and snow-covered alders. I slipped while crossing a rock slide, the bow string got pushed into a sharp edge, and shredded four or five of the fifteen strands. Soaked we got to the tents, lit a fire, ate a meal, went to bed, but not before I, with a heavy heart, took the longbow apart and put it away for the rest of the hunt. If I was going to kill a billy, it would have to be with a rifle. A better man than me might have pulled it off, but basically there were only one or two very specific locations where an approach to within bow range might have been possible, but chances of that becoming a reality were slim to none.

Hunting Day 4

With a new outlook on the hunt, Kyle and I took off in the pre-dawn, while D. and his hunter went out to go collect more firewood. We spotted goats in one location that we couldn’t reach earlier, two nannies and a kid and a fourth one we could not identify. We decided to climb elsewhere, had lunch underneath a gorgeous clearing that practically reeked of goat, and continued to climb to the tree line. Climb, climb, climb, everything goes up, and when it doesn’t go up it is covered by alders. Thank goodness for the predominant absence of Devil’s Club, we only found it here and there. The mixed cedar/pine forest was beautiful. Spooky almost, quiet, tall, moss-covered, the few lingering patches of fog giving it a touch of the magical. Giant trees, we tried to measure one by embracing the trunk; we were short at least one person, hinting at an 18-foot circumference close to the base.

Climbing through the green

We were feeling good and strong, starting to get accustomed to the steepness, climbing steadily. I almost stepped into an avalanche chute when Kyle hissed me back. He had spotted the head of a nanny, on a bench almost straight above, or so it felt. We had decided before taking off in the morning that the more effective way of hunting here was to climb to the goats’ home turf, and wait for them to show, rather than to spot them from below and then spend a few hours climbing to find them gone.

We did just that and were rewarded. As I started to climb a little higher to see if we had line of sight to a group of four goats further up the ridge that we had spotted earlier Kyle again hissed me back. “Billy!!” I slid into the chute and clambered to find a shooting position, while the billy retreated out of sight. Shooting would be about 45-50 degrees up from the horizontal, and it took some fiddling and body contortion to find a rest.

My support hand needed to be under the trigger guard to get the required elevation, but my body was hugging the slope and I had a solid rest for my right arm. Relaxing, breathing, closing eyes, opening, natural alignment, this could work. Kyle brought me my pack, which was useless for support as it wouldn’t sit on the steep slope, and my rain jacket, as I was getting wet. I settled in. Not for long. Five minutes, maybe or ten. Two goats appeared on the bench further towards the right. A slight adjustment of the position, confirmation through the spotter: “The one on the right!” Natural alignment, sort of, breathe, a spot low on the chest of the quartering away goat, squeeze.

The billy was just to the right of the clump of trees in the centre

“You got him!!” I didn’t see the hit. Four seconds later I saw the goat fall off the small cliff, head first, legs up, dead. Not much later there was a brief sound of rock fall to our right. Did he slide all the way there? We looked but saw no sign. We decided to climb up and see where he fell, there were a few hours of day light left, and the approach looked steep but manageable. We were wrong. Quickly after we left the last trees and used the last alders for support in our quest for the high bench things got a little too hairy for our taste, with all the rain that had fallen that day. We tried a different route but got cliffed out. Back to the first route, a slightly different approach, but we again found a traverse that was too sketchy. One four-foot step was all it took to get across a piece of slab rock but the departure and arrival rock were wet and covered with a thin layer of snotty moss without proper handholds. Looking down we saw nothing but thin air and the tops of the trees below. We couldn’t even see the rocks that would split open our skulls should we slip. We retreated for the day to bring back the outfitter in the morning. Good thing we did, I think we would have spent the night up there had we pushed on and somehow not killed ourselves. We still came into the tent well after dark.

Slip and you die

Gnarly steep, still trying to get to where we hoped we would find the goat

Hunting Day 5

Four goats were hanging out close to where we were the night before. I wanted to scout the lower stretch of the creek, but D. wanted to stick to the trees so as not to spook the goats. With some reluctance, I agreed. We climbed to the crux, and Derrick managed to get across with some maneuvering that was hard to watch. He eventually made it to where the billy had been standing and was able to look into the area where the goat fell, but didn’t find anything. He directed us to where he figured the goat might have rolled or slid, and we looked into every crevasse that we could access, while he and H., who was going as if nothing had happened to him, worked the other side. We came up empty.

After we had exhausted ourselves, we started to traverse back through the trees with hanging heads. Kyle picked up a sound, and figured maybe the other guys were coming down. We stopped, and were about to yell at them when like silent ghosts a dark-chocolate coloured sow grizz (or should I call them brown bear this close to the coast) and her almost adult cub emerged from the trees. At first it seemed like they would continue their walk, but they must have heard or seen or smelled something because as quickly as their backside had disappeared, their inquisitive heads popped out at the edge of a gully across from us, probably no more than 200- 250 feet away. As we maintained our silence, the sow grew bolder and stepped up. It was time we made our presence known. Our yelling and banging of my ice axe against a tree did stop her approach, but it did nothing to expedite her departure, so I decided a slow retreat on our part was the way to go. By the way, this was the first day in a long time Kyle had decided to leave his bear spray off his pack; mine was at the ready.

It was a very silent walk back to the tents that night, and I watched that billy fall dozens of more times during a very restless night.

Dark night

Hunting Day 6

Kyle and I spent the day in camp, reading, talking, thinking, while D. and the other hunter took my rifle out for a walk. We split wood, cooked dinner, rested. I went out for a bit to look for goats, and maybe, through some stroke of luck, see circling ravens to indicate where my goat might have fallen.

Rest day

Hunting Day 7

I had planned to look through one more section of mountain, and especially look again for congregation of birds, to see if we at least could get some closure to the matter of the lost billy, however, the weather forecast was such that D. wanted to leave for the cabin that afternoon instead. We would forfeit the final hunt day and most of the second to last day, in favour of hopefully decent boating conditions. D. and his hunter went out for a quick look at the slopes, while Kyle and I packaged the contents of the cook tent, loaded it on two trailers and hauled it back to where a portage of goods would be necessary. With the snow at the higher elevation, the wheeled quad barely made it. After unloading, the left rear track spun off the wheels of the tracked quad, leaving one of the two quads non-functional, with two hunters, the remainder of camp and the tools required for the repair at least 15 km down the trail. We rode back, packed camp in one trailer, and collected the two other guys who rode on top of the load in the trailer. The wheeled quad, now with tire chains, struggled, but got us there.

Traveling once more

After the real Canadians ate Kraft Dinner and I ate a Heather’s Choice meal, we had turned in early the previous night, to allow for a 4am wake up. We were ready to set sail by 6:30, half an hour before first light. We couldn’t load everything in one go, so the plan was to drop Kyle and me, plus two quads, a chainsaw and some fuel off at a little beach about half way. An old mining road started not too far from there, we just had to cut our way through the trees to reach a two-track trail connecting a bunch of camp sites, which would lead us to the start of said road. Our ride would cover an unknown distance, but we estimated at least 40 km.

Dropped off

Just as we cut the last tree, the chain came off the saw. We managed to get the quads and one trailer out to the two-track trail with a lot of lifting and shoving on the rear end of the tracked quad, and hand-pushing the trailer. With some relieve we started our long ride out, but were blocked unceremoniously by more fallen trees; big ones. No way through. It turned out that in the summer the trail had been clear but D. had not been there since. A storm had done its work.

We shot Derrick an InReach message that we could not make it out. I vetoed his initial suggestions to drop off the other saw on this way through, so we could still cut our way to the road. The chains on his saws had seen better days ; it was more by friction than by cutting that we downed trees. Moreover, there was no telling how many more trees we would encounter. It was more than likely we would not make it out that night, or at all.

Reaching out, arranging our extraction

Therefore, we jumped on board as he came by, abandoning the quads for a pick-up the next day, and made it to port as the last shimmers of daylight disappeared.

Pulling in at last light

After we had pulled into a motel the night before earlier than we had wanted, due to the road conditions, we had a long drive to get home. The road through Jasper and Banff National Park was beautiful as always, but snow and ice covered, making for slow going. Kyle had to tack on another three hours, after I dropped onto the couch and cracked my first beer in ten days.

Epilogue

“Try to keep a positive and flexible attitude” a friend told me before I left. We tried, we hunted hard, stepped outside of our comfort zones on the slopes, and created a chance, even though it was not with the longbow. Maybe the mountain resented my lack of resolve and decided to keep the goat for itself.

We hunt for the experience, we say, and at the end of a long day of scaling slopes and crags looking for the goat, I would have gladly given away meat, horns and hide, in return for getting closure. The sense of waste was great, but nature will see it differently. Likely the bears found the goat, and used it to beef up their calorie intake right before hibernation. Ravens and other birds happily ate the scraps, and smaller predators and rodents will gnaw on the bones. Next spring, the melting snow and rains will wash whatever remains of the goat down to the creek, erasing the last reminder of our hunt from the steep slopes.

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)

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.
When half the deer you see in a morning are either chasing coyotes or are being chased by coyotes, there are too many coyotes.
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).
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.
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.
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.
We make too much noise when walking, or deer hear too well.
Kyle needs to stop wearing his rain pants when it is not raining (swish-swish-swish-swish)
We have proven that we can get into the red zone, despite our efforts to alert deer to our presence.
A 15-yard shot is not a gimme.

Brief photo essay

Defeated. A long walk back after a miss.

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!

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!