Hunting and Fishing

[Fishinn]

I enjoy the 4 C's---- catching, cleaning, cooking & consuming.

[FATMANAR]

I found out that is you are disabled here in Arkansas you can get a Sportsman lic. for three years for the price of one. The sportsman is a fishing and hunting lic. and cost $35 a year to residents. So that's a savings of $70! And I thought growing old and brokedown was going to be bad! Happy Trails...

[barlin44]

Yep, enjoy fishing as well. The wife only fishes with me once a year and thats our annual trip to Collins lake. We stay there for just over a week and we generally do pretty well. Plus the bald eagles and osprey are a bonus to watch. Can't wait till May when we will be setting the hook..

Fish On..
Barney

[Ray,IN]

You mention hunting so here is my thing. I usually have my Remington 7mm-08 in the 5er when we are out. When we are in WY, SD, ND, MT, it and a few boxes of ammo are under the bed. I like to shoot praire dogs on private ranches. Many ranch owners invite safe shooters back yearly to keep them in check. Here in S. Indiana wild pigs have become a problem in some areas. They are quite destructive to farm row crops and alfalfa or clover crops. No license needed, just permission to hunt them on private property.

Squirrel hunting with my little .22 pump using shorts is a challenge these days, I have tremors that make holding a good sight picture a real chore. As long as I can walk I'll hunt.

[akadeadeye]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ray,IN You mention hunting so here is my thing. I usually have my Remington 7mm-08 in the 5er when we are out. When we are in WY, SD, ND, MT, it and a few boxes of ammo are under the bed. I like to shoot praire dogs on private ranches. Many ranch owners invite safe shooters back yearly to keep them in check. Here in S. Indiana wild pigs have become a problem in some areas. They are quite destructive to farm row crops and alfalfa or clover crops. No license needed, just permission to hunt them on private property. Squirrel hunting with my little .22 pump using shorts is a challenge these days, I have tremors that make holding a good sight picture a real chore. As long as I can walk I'll hunt.

With you there, Ray. Here in Central Texas, feral hogs are a big problem to us ranchers so we hunt them year round. We have way too many hogs on our ranch to count and they seem to migrate to and fro. I use a .270, .223 SR556, and 25/06 to keep them in check but it is a constant battle. They do a lot of damage to crops and they eat protein feed I put out for deer.

Don

[DRosedale]

Love to hunt and fish, been doing it since I was 6 years old, lets see thats, oh well, lets just say a long time.

[sadiebug]

My husband in currently in the no work, no shave, no bath fishing mode. Montana deer liscense just came in the mail.

[barlin44]

AHH yes the No work, No shave, No bath Fishing mode...aint that da#n near Paradise.....NICEEE

[tickranch]

I'm pretty limited as to hunting & fishing. I only hunt for critters that have fur or feathers, & only fish for things that live in water! I also teach Hunter Education, to pass it on.

[Texun1]

FYI, Texas State Parks have wavied the need for a fishing license this year if you are camping and fishing within the boundaries of the park.

[cmothershed]

I just starting fly fishing and tying. Santa Cruz, CA
Curtis

[RVThere]

Believe it or not, NJ has some of the highest concentrations of deer on the east coast. I live on 10 acres and see at least 15 deer on the 1/2 mile ride to the main road.

If you drive on I-78 in NJ around Exit 13 (across from the Clinton Station Diner), you will see a field that regularly has 50 deer in it (part of the women's prison).

We don't have to go far to 'kill it, grill it, then get your fill of it'!

[Birddogman]

I'm a dedicated upland bird hunter - it's the reason I have the motorhome. My dogs and I usually spend much of the early fall camping on the high plains and other western US wilderness areas while we are hunting upland birds - usually prairie grouse.

Remote high plains scene:



Pointing a prairie grouse:



Retrieve of a sharptail grouse:



Riding out a howling prairie blizzard snug inside the camper:



Unfortunately, after 35 years of suffering the ever-worsening ravages of MS, my poor wife was hit by a devastating stroke ten months ago and is now unable to even sit up on her own, let alone do any of the “activities of daily living”. I have become a 24/7 caregiver – no extended western trip is possible. The dogs and I have been relegated to hunting only locally this season when I can get a nurse to care for my wife, so we are making the best of a terrible situation.

Luckily, my Pennsylvania Dutch relatives are the biggest farming family in the county, so the dogs and I have sole access to several large farms that my ancestors have worked since wresting the land from the Indians in the 1740's. The houses are mostly stone 1700 vintage:




The land itself is beautiful:





In the UK, bird hunters celebrate the "Glorious 12th" because the red-legged grouse season opens on August 12 as the first bird hunting season of the year. Here, the first bird season opens September 1 - for mourning doves. Doves are not hunted in the traditional manner where the dogs find them in cover and point them and hold them until the hunter comes up to flush and then (hopefully) kill the bird. Doves don't hold for points, so they are generally hunted by placing one's self under a flyway and trying to take them as they go over. They are quite fast and maneuverable, as well as wary of anything out of the ordinary, so the gunning can be very challenging. All the dogs can really do in dove season is to help watch for incoming birds and retrieve once a bird is down.

So, without further ado, the following posts are a PE of our first bird season of the 2011/2012 season.

We live way up on a mountain that overlooks the big valley where the family farms are located. When driving down out of the mountain on opening day, we noticed these good lookin' fellows in one of my little mountain meadows. We took that as a good omen.



Here are the players: Maggie is now 13 (VERY old for a working dog), but still in great physical condition - runs like the wind. More importantly, she is that special once-in-a-lifetime dog, more human than canine and much beloved. There was a brief sunbeam on her on a stormy day - her muzzle is gray now and so is mine. She is watching intently for birds and quivering all over with excitement - pretty cool that she still gets so excited about hunting. I still get excited about this, too - this is my 53rd season, not counting three years spent overseas as a prisoner of Uncle Sam in the late 1960's.



This is Chase - age 8 and in his prime. Like Maggie, he has learned that this sort of hunting is very different than normal upland hunting where the dogs quarter through cover (move like the tip of a windshield wiper) way out in front of me, trying to find birds by scent and then point and hold them until I can get there. So, he watches for incomers, too. His tail is a blur of happy wagging while he scans the skies.





Walking into the farm though an alfalfa field, Chase suddenly locked up on a point. I thought maybe it was a stray pheasant, but no... It was a groundhog hole. Oh well, he hasn't been hunting for months - I guess a few mistakes are to be expected.



And so we started to look for birds on the ancient farm (we live up on the mountain in the background).



Suddenly, action! This shot gives some idea of the excitement when there are birds in the air - it shows seven doves, in fact. You can hunt all day without seeing a bird; or you can have several flocks go right by you in an hour.



Here, in the heat of the action, Chase is bringing one to hand, while Maggie visually marks a falling bird down to retrieve.



A couple typical retrieves:





Chase is a retrieving fool. These days Maggie, who has made many astounding retrieves in her long career, will often leave the retrieving chores to him, as befits her status as Queen of the Uplands, but will sometimes bring me a bird just to show everyone she still can. Chase is always right there to "help".





Having grown up on a PA Dutch farm, raised by my grandparents who spoke only a little English, I learned to eat pretty much anything. Barn pigeons taste about the same as dove (neither is my favorite game bird, but they are OK), so we took pigeons when we got the chance:





This was a great retrieve by Chase. Both dogs hate cattle and buffalo, each having been stampeded when they were pups. They usually stay far away from cattle and buffalo. Here, I managed to drop a bird right smack in the middle of a tightly packed herd of cattle. Chase marked it down and you could see the wheels turning inside his head. Then he made up his mind and charged full speed into the herd, wending his way between their legs to snatch the dead bird and then he dashed back to me at full speed. Here he is having just emerged from the herd with the bird.



Doves are very hard to find in the big fields once they are down. Hunters without dogs often lose one bird for each one recovered. We did not lose a single bird this season - the dogs found every one. Here, a lightly hit bird flew about 300 yards before dropping in a dense bean field (the gold-colored strip). The Chaser marked it down visually, then went all the way out there hunted though the field until he found the bird (there is very little scent when a bird comes down dead in a field) and here he is on his way back with the bird. Amazing.



What do you do when one of the wily buggers lands in a tree and you can't climb? Why you stand there and bark at the bird (very helpful - NOT).



We enjoyed our outings:



Amazingly, the same flock of wild turkeys was out again in one of my little mountain meadows to greet us on the way back home:



Dove season is closed for now, but this week we will be hunting the local ruffed grouse - very challenging hunting in the mountains where we live.





Then in another week, we'll chasing ringneck pheasants in this cover:





Hope you enjoy the pics. More later.

[barlin44]

NICE...Birddogman,
Awesome pictures, awesome country, and really awesome dogs. Never get tired of watching dogs work.
Wish you and your family well and good luck on future hunt trips.
Thanks for sharing...