Successful Hunting

Mid August was upon me and I had an archery hunt planned for the 1st week of September. I decided to go and scout around the places I was planning to hunt. I first talked with hunters and checked my maps to find good areas along with the hunting regulations to find the most hunting oppertunities.

My wife and I drove to the hunting grounds and scouted around. We spotted an abundance of whitetail deer, some mule deer, and at dusk we came accross 2 bull elk. Mind you these were not herd bulls but they had at least 5 countable points on each side of their racks. This was close to where I shot my elk 2 years ago so I felt this spot would do just fine.

I also filmed these bulls so I was quite happy about that. I will have to upload my video footage of my scouting trip to share it with you all.

If anyone would like some Scouting Tips for Elk Hunting be sure to click the link.

I took my labrador retriever for a training session to see if he would retrieve properly. The day was a great success. Roofus loved the Dokken mallard retrieval duck and retreived it successfully after each throw. I was proud of him, especailly after this falls episode when he would not retrieve the real duck that was shot, view here: Dog trying to retrieve.

I think he initially took interest because his mom wanted the duck and it was a competiton, but we let them retrieve sperately and he could barely wait to get back into the water to grab the mallard. It was a good day as he felt like he was accomplishing something and making me happy by retrieving the duck. To read my review of the training duck click: Dokken Deadfowl Trainers. I am excited to take him for another try at real waterfowl this fall to see if he will continue his successful retrievals on real waterfowl.  I think the key is to interest the dogs  to birds and give them great praise for accomplishing the task of retrieving although for most dogs it is insticntual, the craft just has to be perfected and nurtured by the trainer.For hunting dog training tips click the link.  To view more pictures of the dog training vew this album: Dog Retreving Duck.

We are always looking for new hunting grounds and sometimes the best areas are the closest to us. A long drive can be a time consuming and costly venture so staying local can put more time and money into your hunting trips.

I decided to use some of the resources around me to find some new hunting areas locally. My father in law is a pilote. We flew over some areas that are hard to access in order to find some promising hunting grounds that are away from the crowds. I really got to take in some great scenery and do some quality exploration. Here are some of the pics from the air: Air Photos

Scouting is a very important part of hunting and this is a great time of year to be looking for bruins coming out of their hibernation dens. It is also a good time of year to start getting into top physical condition for sheep hunts and early season alpine adventures.

I love the outdoors and staying in shape is a must to be a successful hunter so I am regularly hiking the local mountains all the while keeping my eyes open for bear sign so I know where to invest my time once spring black bear hunting season really picks up.

It is a beautiful mountain trail, steep at parts but none the less it will do the trick for preperation on backcountry high elevation hunts.

After I made my way up the trail I found some nice open logging slashes that could produce some bear sightings as the sason progresses. I kept going after finding nothing worth looking at twice in the logging slash. I was getting a little disapointed to not be seeing any bear tracks, bear scratching posts, or bear scat. But I kept exploring to no avail.

On the way down close to where I started on the opposing trail, I finally found what I was looking for, a sign. I was excited to see some fresh bear scat at the begining of the trail head, now I have reason to continue scouting the area until I find some more clues and vantage points that will lead me to a successful archery bear hunt.