This is Way too Easy

Nebraska gives fall turkey hunters and especially meat hunters like me a real opportunity.  You can harvest hens or toms and your bag for the fall season is two birds.  This is like manna from heaven.  A lot of meat can be put in the freezer when you add in the ducks that will be taken along with deer, elk and other creatures which fly or feed in the corn fields.

I was in the duck blind and there was a beautiful blue sky with some high fluffy clouds.  The sun felt good as it was cold when had arrived for another big slaughter.  The opening came and went and it got light with the sun scorching our eyeballs as the blinds face east.  Still, a bad day of duck hunting is better than a great day at work, not unless you are retired.

By 10 AM it was obvious that while the company was really enjoyable, the duck and goose hunting was worthless and now with a warm south breeze, the birds are not going to be up and flying around.  They will sit and dabble sunning themselves enjoying the fine Nebraska fall weather.  It is what ducks do.  It was time to leave.


I had some excellent success the previous week and I tried that spot first.  It was behind the storage shed and up the road from the house. I had some luck at this location before and tried it out, but nothing appeared and I was on a limited time schedule.

The dog was kept inside, thank goodness, as I walked in front of the house down the road to the next spot.  The turkey had come up from a creek below the hill and stroll up the road in front of the farmer's house.  Late afternoon has always been a good time to be on location in this area.  I have never seen big toms, which is unusual, but a lot of hens wander through this area.

I hid in the crotch of a downed tree and sat there in the nice warm Nebraska day with my eyes having a hard time staying open.  I had too many clothes on, and in the sunlight that made it all the warmer and more comfortable.  I have fallen asleep before when hunting turkeys only to slowly open my eyes and have hens just a few feet from me scratching and pecking at the ground.

Soon, here they came.  Small to medium size hens and a couple of jakes in the mix.  Waiting patiently they moved up the hill not 15 yards from my position.  I picked out a nice hen and dropped her.  The other birds at the sound of the explosion flew, ran, and slithered away in all directions.

The landowner walked down the road and took the  picture below.

 

Good Hunting Good Fishing and Good Luck.  Hank

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Early Fall Turkey Hunting

There was one day of duck hunting and then the weather turned really nice with clear skies and southerly flow.  What is a person to do?  The logical thing is to head out for some turkey hunting north of Fort Calhoun at one of my favorite farms.  Striking out last spring was hard to swallow, but in the fall the turkeys bunch up in large flocks and all you have to do is find out where they are running.  That is the hard part.

Last summer an article was reviewed in a popular hunting magazine.  The recommendation was to find the flock,  run into the flock and bust it up.  Then hunt down each bird individually.  In the terrain where the hunt took place, that was not possible.  The hills are really steep and 50% of the farm is timber with steep hills.  Finding them will be the first problem, but trying to bust up a flock and then hunt the birds  one at a time or wait until they flock up again would not work on this ground.  Trying to run up the hills would be asking for a coronary.

The landowner called me the night before and told me about seeing a flock of 35 to 40 birds south of his storage shed.  They had appeared around 3 PM.  I waited until 11 AM.  The drive took about 45 minutes, and I was on site within an hour.

The first spot was my favorite. Notice the two big oak trees and the ground was covered with sign of deer and turkey.  I had no luck here after an hour.

The second spot was a spot that had always produced birds.  It just called for a lot of patience.  This area was surrounded by oak trees which shed a lot of acorns.  The deer and the turkey are always hanging around.  It was here that the second attempt for the day was made.

Notice the big oak tree just off of center.  The deer and turkey come up the steep side of the hill and they feed through the area.  I sat here about  one hour and saw 15 deer, but no turkey.  It is called hunting, not shooting.

It was time to move on.  Driving south to the open pastures and just field glassing the terrain, produced no evidence of movement and no evidence that the birds had been moving through.

The third spot was behind the storage shed and up the road from the house.  I never want to hunt this close to the landowner's home, even though he had given me permission many times to set up across the road from a big oak tree.

You can see the road at the bottom of the picture and right behind the big tree is an open gate that leads down into a pasture.  The terrain is really steep and the turkeys will come up to the tree through the gate and walk down the road.  They turn into the timber below before getting to the farmer's home. 

It was a really nice day.   I hid in the shadows surrounded by some tall grass with a tree behind me.  Trying to stay awake was a problem with the pleasant atmosphere and the gentle warm breeze from the south. Small hens then appeared right behind the tree.  They were obviously this year's hatch.  I passed up the shot.  Behind them came some bigger birds.  Then out from behind the tree stepped a really nice big hen.  She was immediately dispatched.  Upon arriving home, I took the necessary steps to put her in the freezer.  She will be tasty.

I took off my leaf suit as I was getting ready to drive home.  The farmer and his wife had just pulled up and took the picture for me.  Notice their dog in the background.  If you park at their house she will hang out with you in the woods.  I prefer not, and drive some distance on the farm so that she stays at home. 

Wild turkey is one of our favorites when it comes to wild game, and when we have guests over this is their favorite too.

 

Good hunting, good fishing and good luck, Hank
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Why We Shoot Deer in the Wild

(The person who sent this letter wants to remain anonymous.  Apparently he farms, writes well and actually tried this according to the letter that was sent.  I couldn't stop laughing.)

I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of week, then kill it and eat it.  The first step in this adventure was getting a deer.

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I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head.  (to calm it down)  Then, hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope.  The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back.  They were not having any of it.

After 20 minutes, my deer showed up -- 3 of them.  I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope.  The deer just stood there and stared at me.

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I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold.  The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the about the whole rope situation.

I took a step towards it, it took a step away.  I put a little tension on the rope, and then, received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.  That deer exploded!

The second thing I learned is that, pound for pound, a deer is a lot stronger than a cow or a colt.  A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and some dignity.  A deer, no chance.

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The thing ran, and bucked, and twisted, and pulled.  There was no controlling it, and certainly no getting close to it.  As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.

The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.  A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up.

It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head.  At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison.  I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.  I figured if I just let it go with rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere.

At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer.  At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.  Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots, where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground; I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in.

I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand..kind of like a squeeze chute.  I got it back in there, and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite?  They do!  I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope, and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist.

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No, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and slide off to then let go.  A deer bites you and shakes its head: almost like a pit bull.  They bite hard and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly.  I tried screaming and shaking instead.  My method was ineffective.  It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was only several seconds.

I, being smarter than a deer, (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it.  While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.  Deer will strike at you with their front feet.  They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp.

I learned a long time ago that, when an animal, like a horse , strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal.  This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse.

This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work.  In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy.  I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.  The reason I had always been told not to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head.

Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and three times as evil.  Because, the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave.  I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed.  What they do instead, is paw your back and jump up and down on you, while you are lying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.  So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope .....to sort of even the odds!!

All these events are true so help me God...

An Educated Farmer. 

 

Good hunting, good fishing, and good luck.  Hank

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