So, is your hunting an adventure, or is it go out back behind the house and hunt.

John Y Cannuck

John Y Cannuck

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I'm the adventurous sort, and this year was no exception.
The camp, is our moose camp, it's atv only, and the trail can be nasty when it's wet, or snows. This year, the trail was fairly good to me. But, the rocks there on, kinda did in my ATV. I did a trail fix, as I mentioned in an earlier thread, and managed it fine.
Both of the deer I shot gave me a hard time, one I needed to walk on water, the other, I needed a friggin helicopter.
But again I managed.
So, lets hear your stories from this year? Was your whack shack good to you? or are you waiting for the late season hunt?
 
Thanks to having to work for a living, I hunted deer in my pasture this year when time permitted. That and the deer quite often come within spitting distance of the house. Not much of an adventure but the end result is the same. Hopefully more time next season to venture further.
Out here in the boonies there are lots of deer close by so there really is no need for traveling.
 
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I used to travel a few hours away very regularily. Now if I have to travel more than 15 minutes from the house and carry a ton of gear for extended stays I don't really want to be bothered. I much prefer the close to home hunts nowadays. In fact one of my favorite things to do is fire up the foxpro and smash the daylights out of the local crow population right from the yard.
 
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I live in the big city, so if you don't drive 2-3 hours you are spending a day walking in the bush with a rifle, not hunting lol

I've tried hunting closer to home, but it has been highly unproductive... which is kinda frustrating because my friend gets deer in his yards all the time, but can't shoot within city boundaries and there are no public roads going north into the hills
 
Suther said:
I live in the big city, so if you don't drive 2-3 hours you are spending a day walking in the bush with a rifle, not hunting lol

I've tried hunting closer to home, but it has been highly unproductive... which is kinda frustrating because my friend gets deer in his yards all the time, but can't shoot within city boundaries and there are no public roads going north into the hills
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I'm in the same boat Suther, closest I've seen anything is Harrison Lake, although I know there are SOME deer on Sumas Mountain. Gonna try and get up there with a bow next season. Maybe someday I'll be able to hunt off the back porch, but where I am now, it's considered "home defense" or "gang control".
 
tho the wife and I nailed two decent bucks locally on day hunts , not "in the backyard" but within a hour of the driveway LOL, one of my bucks came from a different region. Ballsy terrain but not hard to get to camp.
My season this year has been a bit of a write off due to real estate endeavors but we got that all wrapped up now and have a possession date so now I can do some late season hunting in what days remain ;) Got an elk hunt in northern bc that starts December as well so it ain't over yet.
 
you lowermainland guys..... I know some really good areas but access these days is not easy. Seriously tho, there were and should still be, high numbers of deer in the north east side of chillwack lake. Google earth is your friend. The problem is access now that the road to the back end of the lake has been out of commission for years. Along that road there were spurs that went into some killer hunting areas, seldom hunted even back then. Chilliwack lake road on the south side of the old prison camp..... we used to shoot deer up there all the time when I lived in sardis. It's a find high sign or feeding areas , scrapes ect and build yourself a ground blind or treestand kind of hunting. Walking or driving for blacktails just isn't a productive way to hunt them.... leaving it all to chance. Finding an area Blacktail like to frequent, they can be somewhat patterned like a whitetail and susceptible to ambush. This is the way I learned to hunt black tail deer in the Chilliwack area, Harrison alpine , Chehalis lake area, meager creek before the mountain fell down and pemberton/Lillooet. A boat and a set of legs and provisions/gear for 3 or 4 days around the north east end of Chilliwack lake should be a fun and enlightening hunt. Might just have to make plans to do that again one season soon ;)
 
I plan at least four stay away from home hunts a year, some are sleep in the truck, under the truck, in a tent after hiking or in my travel trailer. These trips are 2 hour to 13 hour drives away. Some trips are just weekends and others are 10 days, day trips are common in between the "adventure" trips. I live in town but can hunt 15 minutes away, so sometimes I hunt before or after work. In my opinion shooting from the back of your house isn't exciting or hunting, there is no challenge or sport in it. It's more harvesting or game management unless you own sections of land and you actually have to hunt for the game. To each their own when filling the freezer. I have permission to hunt farms and told the owners if I can't get meat in the freezer by the end of the season, then I would like to take them up on their offer. I prefer to feel like I earned my kill, take pride in trying to learn where the game is, even if it's the hard way. With that said it's nice to have a backup plan instead of buying from the butcher for the winter.
 
pounder said:
Every hunt is an adventure.
pounder
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Pounder, you beat me to it!
In the hinterlands where I grew up, I could take the rifle out the door and in ten minutes was in excellent whitetail country. One of my most memorable hunts happened there, about a month after me becoming seventeen. Went out in the morning, just after daybreak, looked across a little opening and there was a large wt buck, standing behind a thick willow clump with only his head and a bit of neck showing over the thick bush. I had a borrowed, long barrelled 30-30 Winchester, so I held on the white spot on his neck, fired and he took off.
I just put my nose to the ground and followed him like a bird dog, until there would be a snort and a great white flag flying. There was two or three inches of snow on the ground, quite a lot of deer tracks and that big buck tried to lose me by joining other tracks, but I sorted him out and by noon time had seen that big flag at least three times, but never got another shot away. I walked to the house, ate and within an hour I was right back at him.
I eventually figured out I had to do something different, so I tried circling, but that beggar always knew where I was. Finally, it was dark and I had to go in. As I thought about it, I'm sure I was never as far as a half mile from our house at any time, all day!
It was a great adventurous day and I later realized just how much deer lore that old buck had taught me.
 
For a little over three decades now (since Ontario brought in the moose lottery) sometimes just two, but often three of us have been hunting up near James Bay about 40 miles south of Moosonee.

Contrary to how it may sound the area is not over-run with moose, but we can often scratch one out. And because the WMU is super remote - zero road access except at the extreme south end which barely gets you into the WMU, we consistently pull a pair of adult tags every second year.

The ground is peat bog or muskeg and the tree cover is mostly black spruce that grows maybe 20 feet high before the ground can no longer support them and they fall over and rot. Super tough walking and can't use an ATV unless the ground is frozen - not hospitable.

To get there we make the 800 km drive to Cochrane, Ontario and then climb onto Ontario Northland's Polar Bear Express (mixed passenger/freight) for the 5 1/2 hour train ride. They stop and kick us out with our camping and hunting gear at the trackside 156 miles (still use miles on that line) from Cochrane. When we want to return, you watch for the train and "flag it down" - usually a blaze vest on a stick works well :)

Anyhow, we went up with high hopes this year and were partially successful. We hunt moose and bear on the trip. Due to the terrain we have to hunt within reasonable proximity to the tracks. Anyhow, the town of Moosonee decided that this year was the one to rebuild their landing strips at the airport. So we had trains going by at all hours of the day/night hauling gravel and other supplies chasing away most anything that normal hung around (normally eat grouse and rabbits until we can't stand them, but saw none this year).

We also got to get an up close look at a derailment. The track crews that inspect the tracks after every train passing (tracks become loose and pegs get pulled because of the spongy ground) forgot to reset a switch and a dozen car loads of gravel parted way with the tracks within visual range of our camp - the ensuing clean-up, while entertaining, certainly didn't help our cause.

So no moose, bunnies or birds, but we did get a couple of decent black bears. I don't normally plug any one companies scent products but we tried out a new product from Rackstacker called "Guts" - they have two (scents) "ripe" (berries) and "rotten" (fish guts or the like).

The "rotten" has a warning on the bottle not to open indoors - I can tell you it's not pleasant opening it outdoors either. It's the most vile stuff I have ever got a whiff of, but in less than an hour of dumping some of this stuff - actually surprised the ground didn't try and crawl away - we had four decent bears coming in to see what was up - what's left of one of them is neatly packed in my freezer :)

Despite the fact that it's an "early" trip (3rd week of September), we had our water freeze up on us two of the five nights we were there.

This may have been my last trip up for this hunt - getting tough sleeping on the ground in a tent when every joint is reminding you that you are old and have some arthritis but kinda think I will make just one more trip.

If we go up in 2018 that will be the 35th anniversary of our moose hunting at that location - just hope the body holds out :)

And at the end of the day, I'm kinda glad we didn't get a moose this year despite having both a bull and cow tag. That would of totally messed up the trip - all that work getting it dressed out and cut into manageable chunks (we usually would cut it in 8 - quarters are bit much to handle when everything is done on foot) - the two bears were already a good bit of work. So a moose would have really cut into drinking time and it would be a shame to miss out on some good Rye :)
 
H 4831, that reminds me of one that a close friend of mine wounded. We trailed him for the whole day, daylight to dark. He wandered into other tracks, then jumped out sideways, he'd bed down on a hill and watch us come for him, he'd circle two or three times over his own tracks, he did all kids of stuff to lose us. It was snow that let us trail him, and it was, in the end, an overnight snow that lost us his trail. He'd stopped leaving a blood trail, and it was never much of a trail, just the occasional spot, so I think he was just fine. On the map, he led us in a line about 13 miles long towards a swamp locally known as the "Black Bog" We went in there the following day, but his trail was gone for good, the snow had sifted in and covered everything.
 
I shot a 9 point buck on the power lines near Tracey NB one year. My wife dropped me off on the side of the highway, I hiked in several KMs and just after 8am I saw the buck cutting across the power line @ about 250m. I fired, hitting him a little far back & he took off. When I caught up to him, he was still trying to get up... While field dressing him, I noticed that I had hit him in the liver. It was a fatal hit, just not the hit I wanted...

Now, this is where it got interesting. I grabbed that buck & tried to drag him... NOPE, NOT MOVING! He was too big! I had to walk out of the bush to the highway & knocked on farm doors until someone answered! The lady asked how she could help & I said I just had to call my buddy to get help moving a big buck. When she asked who in particular I was going to call, it turned out my buddy Dale was her son in law! HA HA

Anyhow, help arrived & without the atv and trailer, I would have had to quarter that buck as there was no way I was moving it by myself!

Cheers
Jay
 
I find for deer, it's usually a closer to the road type of hunt. Like other have said, i don't always have enough time to do much else, so i usually try to find a spot fairly close to somewhere i can drive to, which is usually in the woods behind the camp, which is itself an hour and a half drive from home, but it's far from "out in the wilderness".

When it comes to adventures, that's usually more likely when it's before deer season looking for partridge, or after deer trying to find some rabbits. I always end up covering a lot more ground, and going through some places i've never seen before just to see what i can find.
 
we live 2 miles (by road) 1 mile kitty corner, from the start of the hunt. We used to go all over the place on hunts to see new country, but have now found in the last number of yrs that the deer are close to home, closer to farms, closer to people in general. I believe it is safer for them. Less wolves, yotes and cougars. On the far away remote hunts, you would very rarely see anything!
I would have loved to have taken a camper out into the wilderness for a week long hunt and enjoy that experience when I was younger, but we never did. I guess we have always lived very close to forests and great hunting areas. We were lucky again this yr, got 2 young bucks for some awesome meat. One to the west of home and one to the east, not far at all. So, the antlers aren't huge and worthy of nailing to the barn wall, so what! There hasn't been many (seen) big rack bucks around for a while. We are just very happy and thankful for the fine meat.
 
Every hunt is an adventure. Most of my whitetail and coyote hunting is done within an hour of the house. I also work/hunt in South Africa during our summer so it gives me some great year round hunting. I also like to travel to new places to hunt both at home and abroad. In the end I just love to hunt, but whether it is the back forty or half way around the world I get just as much satisfaction out of both! The moment it ain't fun I will hang it up!
 
dand883 said:
I find for deer, it's usually a closer to the road type of hunt. Like other have said, i don't always have enough time to do much else, so i usually try to find a spot fairly close to somewhere i can drive to, which is usually in the woods behind the camp, which is itself an hour and a half drive from home, but it's far from "out in the wilderness".

When it comes to adventures, that's usually more likely when it's before deer season looking for partridge, or after deer trying to find some rabbits. I always end up covering a lot more ground, and going through some places i've never seen before just to see what i can find.
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I am with you on that one, I follow this mantra the closer to the road the bigger the deer, if I am far back in the bush the smaller the deer, it sucks having to quarter and hike in and out four times several kilometres.

I helped an old guy who could barely walk pack out a moose one time, had to cut into about eight pieces to carry it out, I will never do that again. After the forth trip in and several hours later, my day was completely shot, I was thinking I have blood all over me and nothing to show for it.
 
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