Saturday, March 8, 2014

Too much snow for March

Last week at the Granite State Outdoor Show James, Justin and myself (The Granite State Hunting Adventures Crew) decided that enough was enough and we HAD to take to the woods. The plan was to find some orchards down in the valley that had deer sign , film some shed hunting and also get some "B" roll for our DVDs (which are still in the production phase, not for sale yet).


We started our shedding half way down the mountain and when we got out of the truck we could hear some coyotes howling on the ridge above us. So our shedding turned into an inprompto coyote hunt. James had his rifle and his Foxpro in the truck, so we grabbed them as well as the filming gear and out we went. Well, sort of.... Justin did not bring any snowshoes and the snow was still at a knee freezing 24" deep even with the day being in the 40's/50's.

We trudged past our original intended target, the orchard, and could tell that not one deer had been there since the last big storm weeks ago so that was a no go anyway.

We got set up for the Song Dogs on a flat spot over looking a gully and a large hay field. We called with a fawn in distress call every 10 minutes for an hour with no response. We had the wind but in retrospect the coyotes had either found food when we heard them or they had moved off out of hearing range before we got to our setup. No harm no foul, that's hunting. Mood could also play a part. Basically I could care less about shooting/hunting coyotes. They are not as big of a problem where I am because we have a lot of dog hunters that run the coyotes with hounds. But I digress.

Justin had to split after our foray because he had to go to work, so James and I decided to go scout a spot near a friend's sister's house. She had wanted me to come over and look for "horns" for quite awhile. She has a 160 class "Booner" running around her property based on trail camera pics. We wandered down her lawn toward her apple trees and I was blown away. The ground beneath every apple tree (some still with fruit hanging) had been packed down like a barnyard. The trails that feed into the orchard were just crazy!

James and I decided to wander out some of the trails. They dropped over a steep bank down into a hemlock grove, just a perfect bedding area, beds and trails everywhere. There was still 12-18" snow even under here so the prizes are still hiding.   We scouted a bit more and then touched base with the landowner before heading back over to the Unity Mountain farm to film a "Shed tip of the week" segment on finding matched shed using the clean and dirty pedicel trick. Seems like it turned out all right, so James will try to load that one up on You tube.   Tomorrow I'll head to my brother's farm and check on a camera that has been out for a month, change the batteries and cards in it and re set it in another area. I am checking for a couple deer that were wounded during rifle season to see if they made it through til now.   Next weekend is the Rutland, Vt show and we shall see how that turns out. Stay tuned

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