Timberdoodle Time

by Keith “Catfish” Sutton

Keith Sutton
15601 Mountain Dr.
Alexander, AR 72002
501-847-9643
catfishdude@sbcglobal.net

Every autumn, when the weather man announces the first cold front blowing down from the North, we get timberdoodles on our minds.

Last year it happened in mid-November. The phone rang at 6:30p.m.

“Did you hear the weather report?” Jim asked, a twinge of excitement edging his voice. “There’s a blue norther coming down. The timberdoodles are probably flocking into Lost Pond already. I’ll pick you up at 5 tomorrow morning. You bring sandwiches, and I’ll bring the coffee. Patterson’s going with us.” Read more

Rattlin’ The Alders

By A. Sayward Lamb
A. Sayward Lamb is an outdoor writer and published author. He writes for U.S. Hunting Today and Maine Fishing Today.

Rattlin’ The Alders

This story happened during the last week of November, in 1992. It was a beautiful day, with a foot of snow to hunt on, and my son, Jim; son-in-law, Blane Morse; and myself, decided we would go down to Dead Man’s Curve, in West Paris, to see if we could find any deer. We were especially interested in finding the where-a-bouts of a big buck, who had been frequenting the area for the past ten days. His tracks were huge, so we assumed it was an older buck, in full rut, seeking out the several does that lived in that lowland area. Read more

The Basics of Black Bear Hunting

by Keith Sutton

Keith Sutton
15601 Mountain Dr.
Alexander, AR 72002
501-847-9643
catfishdude@sbcglobal.net
American black bears live only in North America. These familiar bruins are primarily woodland animals, occupying forests as far north as forests grow in Alaska and Canada and as far south as Florida and northern Mexico.

When Europeans began settling the New World, they converted many forests to farms, and black bears were eliminated from large portions of their original range. Populations experienced a resurgence during the latter half of the twentieth century, however, as people abandoned marginal farmland and let it revert to forest. Read more

Why Do We Teach Our Kids to Hunt?

By Denny L. Vasquez

In many parts of America today, hunting is still considered a family tradition, a way of life. These families feel that youngsters who hunt learn valuable lessons from the experience. Critics of this practice disagree, saying instead that this is a dangerous practice that will have farreaching implications.

It is a warm September morning in a southeast Texas rice field and the dead doves lay neatly stacked in a little pileby the young girl’s side. She carefully takes the time to examine each one before gently laying it back in the stack. Read more

Are You Spooking the Deer on Your Way to Your Stand?

By Shane Gulbrandsen

The answer to this is, of course you are. And if they are not spooked, they are aware of your presence. All the pre-scouting and work to get your stand justperfect, might well be all for nothing. Have you ever been on your way to your stand and seen tails fleeingor heard deer snorting? Sure you have, we all have.

Now you get in your stand and your confidence and excitement level is not the same as when you started out. After sitting awhile without seeing a deer, you start to doubt your chances and abandon your stand. If this sounds familiar you’re not alone.

This is something all deer hunters face and no sure-fire solution. I have taken many hunters to a stand over the years, as well as gone to a few stands myself. I have learned some things about how to increase your odds of the deer not knowing you’re in your stand.

There are many products on the market that help hunters get deer to come within sight – scents, calls, camo you name it, it is all for the same goal. The problem is if the deer already know you are there, you’re in for a long day.

Let me tell you about this one occurrence I observed. This one stand I was in is at least a half a mile from any road. It is solid bush and no clearings and you could hear the traffic go by. I had been in the stand about a half-hour, when this 11-point buck appeared. He was slowly walking and feeding without a care in the world. He could hear the traffic as well and paid no attention to it.

Then for some reason, a vehicle that I could hear heading down the road, started slowing down and eventually stopped. Now remember this is a half-mile away from me with solid timber the whole way.

As the vehicle slowed to a stop, the buck lifted his head and totally froze. There was a big broadleaf plant in his mouth and he even stopped chewing. The vehicle eventually started off again and the farther it went the more relaxed the buck got.
The buck eventually fed his way out of sight.

Now you may think that this is nothing new or no big deal but all this took place with the buck only 20 yards from me. He never had a clue I was there. He showed more attention to a sound a half mile away from him, without any concern that I was above him.

Just imagine that vehicle that stopped out at the road was me and I was on my way to the stand that I was already sitting in. Would that buck be in the area by the time I got to the stand? Would I be able to lure him back out with calls? Of course not, he would already be wise to what was going on. Whitetail deer (especially bucks) are creatures of habit and routine.

The plan years ago to get to a stand was to use the four-wheeler the majority of the way, then walk the rest. Makes sense right? Wrong!

In 1995 an older gentleman from New York was hunting with me. Getting off the four-wheeler and starting our walk in the dark was starting to get too much for the hunter. One morning he asked me to take him right to the stand with the four-wheeler. I stated that this would spook the deer and to walk in quiet would be best.

He then stated that we were probably spooking them more by trying to walk in quiet. He said to take him right to the stand but do not turn off the four-wheeler or shine a light up to the stand to help him see to get in. Once he was in the stand and set up, I was then and only then to get out of there.

The old fellow killed a good buck at first light that morning. He told me that evening that as soon as I left him he was watching the lights of the four-wheeler weave its way back through the bush when two bucks started to spar about 100-yards from him.

Now those bucks were probably sparring while we were on our way in and saw and heard the four-wheeler coming. They simply stopped and watched the four-wheeler come and then go and resumed their match. As daylight approached they had no idea the hunter was in the stand.

The 11 pointer I had watched from the stand that listened to the traffic, I had someone bring me to the stand with the four-wheeler that day. Once I was in the stand, the four-wheeler left. Eventually it got back to the road and I could hear it being loaded into the truck. I heard all of that and so did the deer.

If you can get the deer in your area to get accustomed to hearing a four-wheeler coming in and going out, I would bet that you would see more deer. To the deer when they hear you coming in, they think trouble is arriving. When the four-wheeler leaves, they think trouble has gone. Do not shut the motor off though. Let the deer concentrate on the bike.

My trail camera pictures also prove this method works. I have pictures of deer looking in the direction that I always approach when I come to exchange the card in the camera. Then I get photos of deer right after I have gone.

Try it this fall for yourself. Early in the year, start riding into your stand, sit a few minutes with the motor running then leave. The deer will get accustomed to this activity and you can figure they have you patterned. Have a friend bring you in to your stand when season starts. Maybe you can return the favor to your friend. I hope this helps someone get the trophy buck of there dreams.

Shane Gulbrandsen www.gulbrandsenoutfitters.com

Tracking a Wounded Deer

By Tom Remington

You’ve made the shot! Now what? Many times when we take a calculated shot at a deer, it falls nearly in its tracks. Other times we are not so fortunate.
I have heard hunters talk about a shotthey made and never found the deer. As conscientious and ethical hunters, the last thing we want to do is leave a wounded or dead deer in the woods someplace because we couldn’t find it.

 

Sometimes when we make a shot it may not have the results we were hoping for – even what we would consider an easy shot. We are all human and at times shots get deflected or more often than not, our adrenalin rush forced a bad shot – or a not perfect shot.

 

After making your last shot and the deer did not drop where you can clearly see it, I would strongly recommend flagging the spot where you are standing. If you fired more than one shot and you moved in between shots, try to go back and flag the location of each shot. If you don’t carry flagging tape, I suggest you pick some up and put it in your pack.

 

Flagging the spot where you shot could be advantageous before the search is over. Many times when we are recounting the events that led up to the shot, the shot itself and finding your trophy, we realize we can’t remember the EXACT location of where you stood when you fired.

 

Knowing exactly where you stood when your fired your gun can be of great help in determining where a bullet may have gone, if not into a deer. Which brings me to the second thing you should do.

 

Locate the specific spot the deer was when you fired your shot or each shot to include them all. This is not always the easiest thing to do but I would suggest spending the time. Once you have marked the locations of where you fired from and where the deer was each time you fired, it can help you to determine several things.

 

Wounding a deer does not always provide telltale signs. I have killed deer before that never bled a drop of blood externally nor was there any visible hair at the site of the shooting. Other times, the blood trail is very obvious and easy to track. There is one thing I can guarantee you. Each and every time you shoot and hit a deer the blood trail or any other signs will never be the same.

 

If you can’t easily find a blood trail or any other signs that you have wounded the deer, take some time to align the location you were at when you shot with the spot where you think the deer stood. Look from all angles and directions and search carefully for broken small branches where a bullet may have hit and deflected. Also look for large trees you may have hit. Yes, we have all done it at one time or another. You need also to search for places where a bullet may have hit the ground and furrowed up the soil. If you find any of these, mark them with your flagging tape. Try to determine the outcome of each bullet that you fired.

 

Following a big trail of blood is easy. It’s the tiny specks that present a challenge but one that you have to undertake. Look for blood, hair and bone. All of these can give you clues as to where you may have hit the deer. Bright red blood often indicates a hit in the leg. Dark red blood may have come from the main body of the deer. Look at any hair closely. White hair comes mainly from the belly but there is white hair on many parts of the deer. Brown and grey hair comes mostly from the main torso area. A combination of blood color and hair color could help you to determine the location of a hit. Lastly, look for any bone fragments. Sometimes when a bullet enters a deer it hits a bone or bones and will shatter it. Sometimes pieces of the bone exit the deer and are found on the ground. This occurs mostly with a leg shot but not always. We all know there are exceptions to every rule.

 

When you find any of these indicators, mark them for future reference. You should know the general direction a deer ran when you fired at it. From the location of the first drops of blood and/or hair and bone, slowly and methodically work in the direction you think the deer went looking for any more signs. As you find them continue to mark them. Try not to disturb the area you are searching in. It is easy to cover up signs by flipping over a single leaf or stepping on a branch.

 

Don’t forget also in your search to look for blood and hair on bushes, shrubs or small trees. Sometimes a wounded deer, if running, will pump blood out and it will land on leaves and branches on brush, bushes, thickets, anything that is adjacent.

 

One of the mistakes young and inexperienced hunters will make is to get too excited and hurry off looking for the deer thinking they need to catch up to it. Deer will not run long distances even when completely healthy. They certainly are not going to run far if they have been wounded. Sometimes just sitting down and taking a break for 15 or 20 minutes will give the deer a chance to lay down and die. So, relax and do all the right things so you can go home at night knowing you did not leave a wounded or dying deer in the woods.

 

If you continue to mark each sign you have found and continue following the trail, you will eventually find your deer. This doesn’t always happen but more times than not it will. Don’t give up simply because there is no blood or hair or bones. Attempt to track the deer by following where it dug up leaves or earth when it ran away. If there is no blood trail, slowly follow these tracks and keep looking. Very often deer will not start bleeding until sometime after they have been hit.

 

The worst case scenario is when you have looked and looked and you can’t find any sign whatsoever that you have hit the deer. You have marked from where you fired to the location the deer was in when you fired. If all you have found is some tracks running away and you have marked those spots as well, continue trying to follow the tracks until the deer stops running. If you can do that, often a deer will run for a while, slow to a trot and eventually a walk and then stop. If you are adept enough to follow the tracks to where a deer stopped and stood, you may find some blood there. A deer may be bleeding so little that the only time it shows up is after it has stood in one spot for a while.

 

Scour an area thoroughly before giving up. Mark all the areas you have searched and only after you have exhausted every attempt at finding this deer, do you give up. I can relate a story that happened to a friend of mine while hunting together.

 

It was a foggy day when my buddy fired at a deer. He felt confident that he had hit the deer yet in his initial search he found no signs of the deer being hit. Still feeling as though he must have hit the deer, he continued his search with help from another fellow hunter. The search lasted long into the afternoon until just before dark, somehow a speck of blood no bigger than half the size of an eraser on a pencil was found on a brown leaf.

 

He marked that spot and began a methodical search that took hours. It was getting dark. I can say most people would have given it up – at least until the morning but he was determined to go to bed that night feeling he had done all he could.

 

We returned to our hunting camp only long enough to get flashlights, a Coleman lantern and a roll of toilet paper. With the Coleman lantern, a small piece of white tissue paper no larger than a dime shows up like a beacon.

 

With flashlights and lanterns we continued the search. A second drop of blood about the same size as the first was found about thirty feet away. We marked it and continued on. The search became somewhat easier in that we got a general idea of the direction the deer seemed to be headed – walking at this time by the way.

 

When we had gotten to the point where we were ready to give up the search, my friend suggested that me and another fellow hunter remain on the deer trail and he was going to take a flashlight and make a small circle around the edge of a small swale. Within five minutes, he yelled over that he had found the deer. A nice buck and he laid dead just on the other side of the swale.

 

In all my years of hunting, I have never seen anything quite like that. I learned a lot that day and night in our search for a wounded deer and we all went home knowing we had done everything we could.

 

 

 

5-Year Old Descendant Of Davy Crockett Kills Him A “Bar”

“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee.
Killed him a “bar” when he was only three.
Davy, Davy Crockett.
King of the Wild Frontier”

We all learned the song as a kid growing up (well, those of us with a little age behind us) and about the legend of Davy Crockett. Now, 5-year old Tre Merritt, whose grandfather claims is a ten-times removed great grandson of Davy Crockett, has perhaps written his own legend by bagging a 445-pound black bear, shot and killed in Arkansas.

According to Fox Sports, this isn’t the first time young Tre has taken big game.

According to the report, Tre’s father said his son began shooting when he was 2 1/2 and killed three deer last year. What else would you expect from a decendant of the “King of the Wild Frontier?”

You can watch video of Tre and his grandfather from KATV at this site.

Tom Remington

The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker – To Save Or Not To Save?

It was back in late 2003 or early 2004 when I first heard about the possibilities that scientists had rediscovered the existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker deep in the swamps of Arkansas. As a matter of fact, it was so long ago, by cyberspace standards, that the blog I did about it was on my first blog of which I never transfered the stories over to this format – regrettable.

Ever since the claim was made that one of these thought to be extinct woodpeckers was still alive, there has been continual disagreement as to whether it was really seen. After all, it wasn’t like they caught it and put it in a cage. The claiming of rediscovery, if my memory serves me correctly, was a quick snapshot/video of a fleeing bird and some audio sounds that some scientist disputed as being of some other species. At Ivorybill.org, you can read “the story” of the rediscovery.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has formulated a “Draft Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Recovery Plan” that is estimated to cost the taxpayers $27 million. Go to this link and you can download a pdf file of the plan and get information on how to comment on the proposal.

According to an article today in the Memphis Flyer, no further sightings or rediscoveries have occurred since 2004 but scientists are hopeful.

While the woodpecker’s existence has not been confirmed since, tantalizing evidence continues to be gathered in Arkansas, Florida’s panhandle, South Carolina, and other locations across its historic range.

So tell me readers. Is $27 million taxpayer dollars worth the investment on “tantalizing evidence” and a sighting in 2004 that has been questioned?

While intriguing, I think that better substantiated evidence needs to be employed here before I would be willing to spend $27 million on hopefully finding something. I think USFWS tax dollars could be much better spent on other projects.

Leave comments below if you would like.

Tom Remington

EHD Outbreak Widespread And Following Drought

As most hunters are aware, several states are experiencing outbreaks of EHD (Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease). To date, states involved are, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey and Montana. In those states, some are experiencing widespread outbreaks while others are sporadic. Either way, it appears that this year’s outbreak is one that could be classified as the most widespread in some years.

J.R. Absher, the Newshound, and I sent a couple emails back and forth this morning about what’s happening with EHD. In one of my emails, I asked J.R. if this was what he would consider a large outbreak from his years of experience in the field. What he told me was that in a previous article he mentioned that he had talked with a friend of his, Doug Markham, information officer for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, about this year’s outbreak.

My good friend Doug Markham, information officer for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, dropped me an email over the weekend saying it’s as bad as he’s ever seen it in his 20 years with the agency.

Some especially hard-hit areas of the Volunteer State could lose half their deer to EHD this year, Markham speculated.

One other thing that J.R. mentioned was that it seemed that the EHD outbreak was following a similar path as this summer’s drought. I’ll have to do some investigating to see if I can find out if that is a common occurrence.

In the meantime, we all need to be praying for some frost and freezes to kill this thing off.

Tom Remington

Further Spreading Of EHD And Troubles With Water Contamination In Pennsylvania

We can now add Montana to the growing list of states confirming outbreaks of epizootic hemorrhagic disease, EHD, or blue tongue. EHD is contracted by the bite of insects called “biting midges.” The virus usually kills the animals within five to 10 days. It is not spread by deer-to-deer contact and is rare in domestic cattle. States already having confirmed cases of EHD are: Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and New Jersey.

Montana officials have confirmed the presence of EHD in the southeastern part of the state.

So far “hundreds” of antelope and deer carcasses have been reported.

The heaviest concentration of the disease appears to be in the Melstone area east to Ingomar and Sumatra.

There really is not much that can be done about the disease. We just wait until the first good frost or freeze that will kill the midges that carry the virus.

In the meantime, troubles from dying deer in Pennsylvania are raising concerns about the possible contamination of drinking water supplies. In Beaver, Greene and Washington counties estimates are that over 1,000 deer carcasses are lying about rotting and stinking up the air. For some, there is concern that the decaying carcasses, many of which are lying in water, are contaminating the water supplies.

Russell Morgan is a Greene Township Supervisor and a farmer. He’s concerned about the water problems but is getting no help from the Pennsylvania Game Commission to get the carcasses cleaned up.

Already, Morgan said, he has confirmed 17 dead deer on and around his property. Township secretary Sandy Wright said one resident found 50 dead deer within a short distance of each other. Another resident reported finding 35 dead deer, Wright said.

Morgan said the game commission should at least help remove the remains from water sources. Instead, he was told removal of the deer is the responsibility of the homeowner,

“No one wants to take responsibility for what’s going on,” he said.

One of the side effects of the disease in deer causes the body temperature to rise, thus sending the deer to water to cool off. This is often where they expire.

Game Commission Supervisor Barry Zaffuto says it isn’t the responsibility of the PGC to take care of the dead animals and that the rotting deer are not contaminating the water.

“A deer is 100 percent natural,” he said. “This virus is not transferable, so it would be just like a deer that dies in the water naturally, because it does happen.”

The commission, he said, does not have the resources to search across a three-county area for deer and then remove them, especially when nature is taking care of that for them.

“That would just be totally impossible. What would we do with them?’ he said. “Deer decompose naturally and rapidly.”

Morgan isn’t buying Zaffuto’s explanation about deer being all natural and wouldn’t ruin the water. As a farmer, he is required by law to remove any of his livestock if it should dye in or near water. Under the watchful eye of the Department of Environmental Protection, he is made to clean up the carcass immediately because it will contaminate the water. Morgan wants to know what the difference is between a cow and a deer?

Morgan isn’t the only one concerned about the dying deer and how to clean up the mess. According to the PGC, it’s the landowners’ responsibility but this is angering citizens because of the double standards being exemplified in this video.

Tom Remington

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