Hunting- explain its aspects to a newb.

[mkrainc]

GunNewb, your question had me thinking about how I was taught to hunt. Fortunately I learned from my father. The way he started me out was working backwards. What I mean by that is, he started me out butchering chickens. When he was sure that I knew how to kill and then what to do with a kill, then I was allowed to have a gun.

He had to know that I wasn't going to be weirded out by taking a life, then he had to be sure that I wouldn't waste the meat. The hunt is one thing, butchering is another. It's also one thing to shoot something from afar and another to kill something hands on for the first time.

I'm not sure if this helps you out at all, but it will give you a few things to ponder over. I hope you can find a mentor for your endevors.

 

[trevj]

X a lot, for the idea of hooking up with someone with some experience to show you a thing or two.

Alberta is a great province to hunt in, but it's a big, varied place. Where you are, and whether you have to travel far to hunt at all, is going to dictate in a large way what you hunt, and where.

First rule, always, is to know what you are there to shoot, and what you are not there to shoot.
Equal to that, is that you are there having a successful hunt, by being out hunting, not by killing something. Bring a camera! Enjoy! Relax!

Read books, watch videos, and you can learn a lot about cleaning a deer or a duck, as per your particular needs. I'm not a waterfowl hunter by any means, but I can clean a duck and keep it from being wasted. Deer are pretty easy to clean, with some help and some care. Moose are just bigger deer. Cut them into pieces you can manage. Be prepared to haul ass on getting the meat to a cooler if it's warm, or pass on the shot. Better no shot, than rotted meat.

Everything is easy when you know how, eh!

Getting out into the farm country, knocking on doors and being polite (even when dealing with a "GTFO" response) during the early parts of the year, looking for Gopher opportunities, or Coyotes, or whatever, is a good way to meet new folks, as well as a chance to maybe find new places to hunt. Whacking gophers got me access to 3 quarters surrounded by posted land, outside of Moose Jaw, when I lived there. It was a sweet spot for whitetail and mulies, and it treated me pretty good. My wife actually gets the credit for that place. "You have a gopher problem?""My husband may be able to help you out." And it began. Same on several other great spots out that way. Knock on doors, be polite, ask around.

Failure (like getting busted by the deer) is a pretty good way to learn how to hunt, if you can figure out what you did more or less wrong. It took me a long time to learn to move through the hunting area slowly and to look and see what was going on around me. Bowhunting was really good for that. Spent a LOT of time watching deer that were out of range, on the wrong side of the fence, etc. You get to know their habits and how they react.

Never had a bad day out hunting. Always something to see, always new places to explore.

Find a mentor. Best advice I can think of.
I've taken a few first timer's out and got them hooked up on a deer. It's a hoot, and really gratifying to pass on a little of the knowledge.

Cheers
Trev

 

[c-fbmi]

H4831, your posts are always worth reading! Thank you for that and the good common sense you pass along.
I agree we do tend to enjoy one form of hunting or type of habitat and tend to gravitate to these places often. I am different than you in that I love to put on the backpack and head for the high country where there ain't all those damn trees to block the view. Get set up on a stream with some willow about for a fire and then glass, climb to the next peak and glass, climb to the next peak and ......well you get the idea.
To the OP, I found a mentor by hanging out at the local gunshop, talking to anyone more knowledgable, asking questions and just generally being an information sponge. (that also reads pest) Also a good way to meet people of a like mind, with the same interests.
Be patient, success comes with experience and time invested affield, you will learn what not to do 50 times before it becomes doing everything right and you are rewarded. My father was not a hunter at all so I pretty much taught myself, with a couple of buddies, whose input was dubious at best. We learned how not to stalk downwind, we learned walking the skyline was not the best way to move about the country, we learned tramping non stop through the bush was very counter productive..........etc...etc...etc.
Then I met my mentor and my success rate skyrocketed, it seemed I was doing everything wrong and within no time I had an antelope, a small mulie and things just went upward and onward from there.
Good luck, welcome to the ranks and find yourself a buddy to hunt with, cause that's what it's all about.

 

[Dogleg]

Hunting is 90% location. Good hunters find, get into or otherwise secure access to good locations. Techniques and skills quickly evolve to suit those locations.


Theres more, but they tend to be variations being in the right place at the right time. Doing it on purpose is the trick.

 

[H4831]

H4831, your posts are always worth reading! Thank you for that and the good common sense you pass along.
I agree we do tend to enjoy one form of hunting or type of habitat and tend to gravitate to these places often. I am different than you in that I love to put on the backpack and head for the high country where there ain't all those damn trees to block the view. Get set up on a stream with some willow about for a fire and then glass, climb to the next peak and glass, climb to the next peak and ......well you get the idea.

Thank you very much for your fine comments. I really appreciate it.
I was suggesting to the OP that he try and get set up in a bush oriented camp for common game, as a good start to hunting. I have been there, of course, and certainly enjoyed myself.

"---- some willow about for a fire and then glass, climb to the next peak and glass, climb to the next peak and ......well you get the idea."

Oh that idea! You mean in country something like this?

You're lucky in the yukon, You get above timberline before you get a sweat up.
I was once on a week's hunt out of Atlin, all by myself, for caribou. I saw a hundred caribou, before I shot one. And one morning from a hill, I could see four of those huge, heavy antlered moose, all at one ime, in different directions!
In Atlin I had a friend (this was in the later 1960s) who was a great bushman, knew every inch of the country, because he was born in Discovery and spent his entire life in the Atlin area. He would tell me where to go for caribou and I would report back to him in three days, just so he would know I was OK.
He told me about this cabin which I hunted from for a couple days. In that week of hunting I never saw another hunter, or anyone else.
I set my camera up to take my picture.

I have hunted in the Kootenay's, where timberline is about seven thousand feet, but most of my mountain hunting was north-central BC, with timberline more like about 5,500 feet. And yes, we've camped in that last clump of bush before timberline. From one such camp, after we had returned to it from a day's hunt, we counted 31 goats congrunated at a mineral lick, about a mile away. One of those sights of nature that is deeply burned into my memory, as the last glimmer of daylight still showed the ghostly looking animals moving about.
I wrote of that storey and it ws printed in The Outdoor Edge, Nov-Dec, 1999.