Muzzleload Eve I Can Hardly Wait

Opening of the central muzzleloader season here in North Carolina is just hours away and I can’t wait. Like a kid on Christmas Eve I anticipate what the season will bring. This has been a busy week getting things wrapped up at work because I have all of next week off as well as getting things ready to go to deer camp. The weather looks like it will cooperate as the forecasters are predicting the first killing frost of the season for Saturday morning. Nothing like a sunrise on a crisp autumn morning as the steamy moisture rises off the frosty leaves to greet the warm sunshine. I don’t even need to see a deer and I know I’ll enjoy it but I’m hopeful the deer will show up around my stand. I hope I enjoy success like I did on the opening of the Eastern Muzzleloader.
I have the week off from work and I plan to be hunting fool next week. But don’t worry I got some obligations that will drag me in from outdoors so I suspect I’ll get some posts up and keep you updated on how the hunting is going.

Dog Hunting Declining Across the South East?

I’ll admit that I’ve never hunted deer with dogs but I’m hopefully going to get out on a dog hunt this season and see what it is all about. In the local newspaper this week Fred Bonner talks about the decline of this sport. This is the second article I’ve seen this season about this topic and it is sad to see a local cultural hunting tradition go by the wayside and the poor economy seems to be hasting its demise.

For the deer hunters who chose to have their hounds chase the deer the conditions couldn’t have been more ideal. It was damp enough that the deer’s scent hung close to the ground and it was cool enough to make it comfortable for both the hunters and the dogs.

That’s why I was surprised to find relatively few deer hunters out there with their dogs on the opening day of the season. Ordinarily we’d see truck after truck loaded with dog boxes, two-way radio antennas, tracking antennas and elevated stands lining the roads in the more rural areas Down east. I started to wonder just what was wrong here.

He goes on a bit later in the article to point out some of the pressures on this sport.

The national economy is playing a large part in having a change in the way deer hunters carry out their sport. This seems to be particularly true in the case of the deer hunters who choose to hunt with the aid of dogs.

Dog owners who formerly owned several trained deer hounds found the price of keeping these dogs was getting really expensive. Between the price of dog food and the medications that keep the dog healthy the hunters simply found themselves in a financial pinch. When it comes down to a choice between feeding and keeping healthy their families versus several large hunting dogs, the families won out.

Garner News

Dog hunting is a long standing tradition in this part of the country and it would be a shame if that tradition was to be lost. Even hunters like myself who don’t use hounds to hunt deer should tread lightly as dog hunters get squeezed out because we could be next. I realize that there are issues around the use of hounds. Most often conflict arises when the dogs get off the land they are suppose to be on and run on land they are not suppose to be. Unfortunately the hunters causing the conflicts are often the ones that draw the most attention and thus cause negative prejudices against this hunting tradition.
Read the whole article Fred Bonner wrote and see if you can learn a little bit about this tradition. I hope to get out an experience a hound hunt this season and I’ll report back here on my experience.

Guest Blog Post From Michael Waddell / Calling Elk Bow-Close

The following is a guest blog post from fellow hunter and writer Michael Waddell. Michael just this week announced that he will be a regular writer and contributor to Peterson’s Hunting. I’ve had the honor of meeting him a number of years ago here in Raleigh at the Scope Show and it is an honor to have him post on MooseDroppings

Whether hunting public or private land, the fundamentals of calling elk remain the same.
Calling Elk Bow-Close
Michael Waddell

We heard the bull bugle at first light and snuck into his core area. When I hit a lick on my bugle, the bull simply came unglued and stormed our position like a tank, crashing through brush and small lodgepole pines like they were matchsticks. Before we could react he was in our lap and we were pinned down, me hiding behind a camera, too scared to touch the tripod for fear my shaking hands would ruin the footage. All I could see of my partner wedged against a stunted pine was the tip of his undrawn arrow quivering on the rest. Before a shot presented itself, the bull smelled a rat and disappeared as quickly as he arrived. While this experience didn’t result in a dead elk, it did hopelessly addict me to calling them.

It seems that in all walks of life, be it the animal kingdom or humans, communication is a key ingredient for all social interaction. However, not all living things communicate to the same degree. If you ask my wife, I am sure she will tell you I am lacking in the communication department; in fact, I’m sure she believes I don’t listen to her at all, but when it comes to communicating with animals I can barely shut up. Of all the animals I love to communicate with, elk rate right at the top.

By nature, elk are very vocal. The uninitiated often simply think of bulls bugling, but cows, calves and bulls make all sorts of noises year-round. If you encounter a large herd, while you might not hear anything from a distance, if you get close you will hear lots of subtle vocalization. Most of the time these are sounds of contentment, but depending on what’s happening the vocalization reflects it. Elk can convey contentment, danger, curiosity or a cow in heat. Bulls, for instance, only bugle primarily in the rut, but they also communicate to establish a pecking order. After spending a considerable amount of time chasing the mighty wapiti, I’m convinced every elk in the herd knows each other by sound alone. This happens with the cows as well as the bulls, and based on my evaluation, somewhere in this mix is the deadly secret to calling elk bow-close.

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery
It seems that the more vocal a herd, the better the odds are for success at calling them. Some cows call subtly, while others are loud-mouth ladies actively looking for a date. By listening, it gives you a better opportunity to imitate the particular tones and intensity of the herd.

By calling, we are automatically intruding into the social club without an invitation. The closer we can sound to a known elk and match that intensity, the better the odds are of filling a tag. Even though we may sound like an outsider to the herd, luckily for us, love-crazed bulls are not looking to be intimate with just one or two cows; they are looking for all the love of every cow in the world, so taking advantage of their sexual frustrations and promiscuity is our salvation.

It doesn’t take a world champion elk caller to trick bulls within range. By simply paying attention to the herd and understanding simple elk rhythm, tone and, more important, volume when calling, a hunter can depend on an elk call to be a valuable asset to dulling broadheads.

Public Versus Private Land
Since I started hunting elk 16 years ago, on private as well as public ground, I’ve realized comparing these two different types of ground is like comparing night and day, and it is all about the amount of pressure each receives. Generally speaking, private ground bulls are way easier to call than public ground animals, but this is not always the case. Some private land gets a lot of pressure, which can make for some pretty tough calling duels with elk that can serve you up a humble pie every time you bust out a call. Conversely, some public land, either through sheer remoteness or hard-to-get tags, is like calling the best private land in the nation.

Hunting untouched land and cow calling to bulls that have never heard a Hoochie Mama would obviously be nice. It wouldn’t take long working over these uneducated elk to start feeling like an elk-calling pro, only to be deflated the first time we went to the national forest and mixed it up with bulls so well known by local hunters that they have nicknames. However, regardless of where you hunt, the basics of calling remain the same.

Start with mastering the cow call and all its various inflections. Your basic reed-type calls are the easiest to learn as well as get proficient with. You will find two kinds; both are bite-down reed-type calls, one being enclosed and the other having an open reed or reeds. These calls make a very realistic sound and before your wife can run you out of the house you will master the basics.

I rely heavily on the cow call and think most of the time hunters are better off sticking with it over a bugle no matter where they are hunting. However, learning how to make a basic bugle is important, especially for locating bulls at a distance before getting close and working him with your cow call. In addition, sometimes it is the bugle that finally provokes a dominant bull to commit, especially during the early season when bulls are still sorting out their pecking order.

Earning Your Public Ground Ph.D
Let’s face it, unless you have deep pockets much of the private ground in the West is pretty much off limits, so you have to learn to hunt public land. This is not a bad thing, as public ground comprises millions upon millions of acres across the West and happens to have some of the biggest bulls found anywhere. While it can be tougher than private, once you learn how to hunt it you won’t be disappointed. Over the years one of my favorite places to hunt is the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, and even though this is a trophy area, tags are fairly obtainable through application.

In the Gila, the trophy potential is off the chart, sporting some of the biggest bulls in the country, but just because the big ones live there doesn’t mean that you automatically make one call and they come running to get in the back of your truck. These mature jokers have a Ph.D in avoiding hunters.

Over the last six years I have hunted this area religiously and have had the opportunity to shoot some nice bulls, all by using elk calls as an aid to close the coffin.

Notice I said, “as an aid,” meaning the call was just one thing in a bag of tricks to help smoke these monarchs. My biggest bull that came out of the Gila was a 378 P&Y bull that earned the name The Professor because he always seemed to take you to school when you applied too much pressure. However, this bull was vocal and would bugle his butt off. He also seemed to be fairly easy to find, not only by his gnarly, raspy bugle that set him apart, but frequently he could be found early in the morning in a large meadow just south of a particular water hole that always attracted a large herd.

The Professor was not the only bull in the area that had large headgear, but it was the Professor that seemed to call the shots. I had caught this bull in the open several times, but calling seemed to really make him uneasy when you were in close. However, he would bugle hard to distant cow calls and seemed to be whole heartedly interested, but he had a sixth sense when you moved in for the attack.

Finally, we decided to have a caller stay behind as we worked him coming off the meadow at daybreak. By doing this we could keep him interested and bugling as we stalked in closer. The caller always was no closer than 80 yards behind me. While the caller kept him occupied, I slid within 50 yards and gave him a G5 Tekan right behind the shoulder. This hunt was really a stalk, but the call and caller had a big part to do with his demise. Once we started quartering the bull, we found a piece of an old arrow lodged just below the backstraps, so obviously someone had him in close before and gave the teacher an education, which explained why he was so wary.

The Double Team
As this old bull showed, hunting with a partner can work extremely well. It not only puts the hunter out in front of the call, it gives the hunter a chance to move and adjust the angle based on where the bull might be approaching. Likewise, the caller has the flexibility to move and apply a lot of different calling techniques.

The double-team plan worked again on another hunt. It had been hot, and the bulls were only bugling early and late. As soon as the sun would rise the elk woods would turn into a ghost town.

Just after daybreak on the fourth day of our hunt we heard this bull bugle. He hit it only two times, both very weak. He sounded like the littlest rag horn in the land, but with no other game in town we went after him. Getting as close as possible to where we thought the bugle came from, I eased up and sat down by a pine stump while my buddy moved back and to my right about 40 yards.

Neither of us was very optimistic about our chances. My buddy made one or maybe two very soft cow calls on a two-reed diaphragm, then he started raking a tree and rolled a few rocks. We sat there for possibly 10 minutes in silence, then out of nowhere appeared a wide 6×6 coming directly to us.

At 25 yards the bull let out a soft chuckle, looked over his surrounding, and kept walking in the direction of where the last rock had been rolled, which led him 16 steps from my pine stump. By now I was at full draw, waiting for a broadside shot. When the arrow left my bow, I knew we had killed a call-shy monster by keeping it low-key and staying patient. Needless to say, I was never convinced by the two times he had bugled earlier that he was a shooter. This was a lesson in itself. Never judge a bugle until you can see what is making the sound.

The most exciting way to bag a bull elk is to get him in close, and the best way to do that is with a call. Confidence in your call is critical, because if you’re insecure about using your call, there is a good chance you will spook elk. Have confidence in your calling ability and become just another elk in the herd where you are hunting.

Find a call that works for you and not what works for someone else. Think like an elk and do as elk do. Realism, rhythm and volume control can make the difference between bringing them in or running them over the next ridge. Remember, it’s not always about calling. It can be about just patiently listening to the sounds around you and applying minimal calls while practicing good woodsmenship and stalking skills that could help you put that monster on the back of the truck.

The Meat Hunt

A few weeks ago my buddy Brian (NC St8) called me wanting to know if I was up for a Game Lands Hunt? Sure I said that should be fun. Part of me questioned my sanity about agreeing to this hunt. My only hope was that NC St8 could find a few others to join us so we could spread the fun around.

NC St8 is a fun guy to hunt with but probably one of the luckiest / unluckiest hunter I’ve ever come across. He’ll get his critter (lucky part) but along the way he’ll have a calamity of errors (unlucky part) that you wouldn’t believe could befall one individual. With that as the backdrop I knew this was going to be an adventure and if we lived there would be some stories to tell.

This has become somewhat of a tradition with a few of us from the website ( NC Hunt & Fish) that we get together one day during the week of Muzzle Loader season and hike into a secret spot on the Game Lands and have a meat hunt.

Being public land that gets hammered pretty hard this is the best time to connect with something because you can take both antlered and antlerless deer. Next week when the regular firearm season rolls in it is antlered deer only till around Christmas time when does become legal to hunt again. This is a stock your freezer adventure and pretty much “if it’s brown it’s down “type of hunt.

We hike in a pretty good distance with the nearest stand more than a mile from the parking area. This year there was four of us ; NC St8, Quiet But Deadly (QBD), Jay Bird, and myself. With 3 carts to haul our stands and blinds we begin the hike in. The temperatures are cool and it’s misting a bit a much better situation then opening day when I hunted in hot & humid conditions.

I set up my blind in a grove of oak trees mostly reds but a few whites to make it interesting and settle in for the hunt. I spend the afternoon watching squirrels and birds enjoying the oak grove. I have a pretty uneventful but enjoyable afternoon in nature.

The first shot of the afternoon belongs to Jay Bird but he has less than perfect ignition and the deer bounds away unharmed. The misty dampness obviously got to his powder preventing him from connecting on the doe.

QBD has an afternoon much like mine where the squirrels entertained him he does see a deer but can’t get a shot. It’s looking like we are going to get skunk but with just a few minutes left in the hunt NC St8 gets a shot.

Moments later I get a call from him telling me that he shot a buck but he couldn’t find any blood but he heard the deer crash. By now it is the end of legal light so I tell him once we get our stuff together we’ll be down. I pack up my stuff and head to the meeting spot. Jay Bird and QBD are coming down another trail to the meeting spot. We decide to hide our equipment and bring just what we will need to track a deer and start heading towards NC St8.

We find NC St8 in the woods looking for where he left his stand and stuff when he went to track his deer. The good news is that he lucked out and found his deer despite not being able to find “much blood”. While we found it somewhat funny that he laid his equipment down and now the dark woods looked pretty much all alike we helped him search for his stuff. It took about 10 minutes or so and he stumbled upon it. Great now to get back out to the trail and go get his deer.

His deer was only about 200 yards from where he shot it and it was really close to the trail. Once we got in there we started back tracking from the deer to learn from the blood trail. There was a pretty good blood trail but without good lights it was difficult to see. QBD talked about how Coleman Lanterns are really one of the best items to use when blood trailing but folks rarely uses them these days. We ribbed NC St8 about not finding “much blood” especially in a couple of places where it looked like it someone poured it out.

Gutting the deer with 3 experts offering advice, holding legs, and shinning lights while none of us offering to gut it for him seemed to make NC St8 a bit nervous. Let’s just say we laughed pretty well while NC ST8 did the gutting job as a light rain fell. Some how he completed the job with all his fingers still attached.

We had a 45 minute hike to our trucks so we got rolling. It was about 9pm when we finally got back to the trucks. I swear someone added a few hills to the trail while we were in there hunting. Once at the trucks I offer to let NC St8 use my game hoist that hooks into my trailer hitch to cut the deer up. He rejects my offer wanting to get home and use his hoist there to finish cutting his deer up.

NC St8 had one more lucky / unlucky event in regards to this hunt after we all split up and went home. I guess his hoist snapped at the house and he barely escaped injury and a trip to an emergency room. I bet he wished he used my hoist.

We had a great hunt; lots of laughs, some great sights, and spending times with friends. We all got out of the woods with all our limbs so I guess it was a very successful hunt. Besides once again NC St8 is the only one to tag a deer…. he is one lucky dude.

Success On Opening Morning

Eastern Muzzle Loader season opened on a warm humid day on Saturday. it was already in the 70’s by the time the first rays of daylight hit the woods I was hunting in Johnston County. I was sitting in a blind with my new Thompson Center Omega with anticipation of what the season would bring.
As the woods woke up around me birds and squirrels were about all I was seeing. I could hear that volley of shots as duck hunters in a nearby swamp greeted the day. The acorns were falling like rain and occasionally making me jump as they hit the roof of the blind. About an hour into the hunt I was beginning to think the warm humid weather was going to keep the deer from moving around much. Not long after that I saw movement in the thick brush off to the right of the blind and then I heard them coming up the hill from the swamp.

The first deer I could make out was a small one most likely one of this past springs fawn. A second deer appeared and I could see it was a good size doe. I picked up the muzzleloader and watched them feeding on the acorns as they worked their way towards me. The brush was thick and while they were about 40 or 50 yards from me I needed them to step into one of my shooting lanes if I was going to get a shot. The smaller deer had stepped through and stood in some of my shooting lanes a number of times before the doe stepped in to one of the lanes. As I eased the hammer back the smaller deer stepped between the doe and my blind blocking my opportunity.

What seemed like an eternity but in reality was just a few minutes the doe gave me the shot opportunity I was looking for. As the smoke cleared I could only see the smaller deer running through the brush back the way they came. I got out of the blind and went to the spot where the doe was standing and I found some blood. I went back to the blind and reloaded my gun and waited for 30 minutes so I wouldn’t push her.
I got on the blood trail and it went straight down the hill towards the swamp. I had to fight my way through some thick brush but I was rewarded with a nice doe about 100 yards downhill from the blind. The trail crossed an old trail from a hunt a number of years ago but I knew it was close to a clear path. I got the deer out and with the heat I knew I wanted to get it quartered and on ice quickly.
Registering my deer was a bit complicated because my Blackberry phone does not have letters on the numbers like a typical phone. So when NCWRC prints their number as 1-800 I Got One without the numbers it makes it difficult to call it in. Luckily a call to my wife and she help decipher the number 1-800 446-8663. So there’s a good tip for you if you got a blackberry save a copy of the numbers and the letters they correspond with so you can use the phone in check system. It’s not enough to just have the phone number because you got to also type the county in as well. I was able to guess but it took a couple of tries.

Once registered I quickly got it cut up and on ice. I’ll age it in the cooler and finish processing it this week. A great start to the deer season.

Black Powder Season Opens Tomorrow

Nothing like Muzzleloader Eve as we all sit around and hope that at daybreak tomorrow we see a deer or two under the tree for us. The Eastern part of North Carolina has an earlier opening to firearms seasons so if you are like me and have hunting lands in both parts of you get to Muzzleloader eves each year.
I have a new muzzleloader this year deciding to buck the trend and get a Thompson Center. I know you can hardly watch a show and see another maker of muzzleloaders besides Thompson Center. I picked up an Omega from Cabela’s a few weeks ago for a pretty good deal.
I took the Omega out yesterday and sighted it in so hopefully I’m ready to roll in the morning. I’ll be hunting in some thick woods in Johnston County and I’ve opted for a ground blind over a treestand. There is a pretty good double tree canopy with a lot of hollys and dogwoods under the mature hardwoods. To hunt from a treestand I’d have to be pretty high to see around much of the clutter. My shot opportunities will be 50 yards at the max.
The weather is not the greatest with the temperatures predicted to be in the 80’s it is only going to get down to the lower 70’s over night. The promise of some light showers may help because it seems the deer move around a little bit more it seems when it’s like this.
I hope everyone going out has a safe and enjoyable hunt and who knows maybe in the morning there will be something under the tree for ya.

Is Corn a 4 Letter Word?

That is the question Deer & Deer Hunting Magazine is exploring this month and next and one that has been on my mind as of late as well. The topic comes up often in deer camps, message forums, about anywhere hunters gather.
North Carolina allows baiting or supplemental feeding of deer and hunters use a variety of items as bait but corn is probably the most popular item. The topic of baiting is real hot right now in the counties that have bear seasons because it is illegal to take a bear over bait unless it is being pursued by hunting dogs. Having sat in the Big Game Committee Meetings at NCWRC I can tell you there does not appear to be any commissioner that wants to touch the deer baiting rules.
I urge you to go read the article in Deer & Deer Hunting they have a pretty good synopsis of the corn debate and I won’t try to rewrite it. Hunters need to decide for themselves whether they’ll hunt over baits or not much like many of the other choices we make when it comes to hunting.
I use corn for a number of different reasons and sometimes the property dictates the use. One place I hunt we use corn to supplement because the landowner doesn’t want us planting food plots so we set up a number of feeders on the property. Another place we hunt we use corn to keep the deer on the property because surrounding properties use corn as well. Then another place I hunt the landowner wants some deer killed because of destruction of vegetation but because of safety concerns there is limited hunting spots on the property. Corn helps position those deer so we can safely remove them and they don’t end up getting killed under a depredation program where the meat more than likely will not be used.
I’ve heard a number of people say this and my experience seems to support it that big bucks will not hit a bait pile usually during daylight hours. My experience has been smaller bucks, does and fawns seem to be the ones that utilize along with a variety of other critters including turkeys.
I don’t have an issue with the use of baits in areas where legal. Though I do think if that is the only way you feel you can hunt that you are severely limiting your options.

National Hunting And Fishing Day

Saturday is National Hunting and Fishing Day and North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has a number of events planned across the state. Check out all the events and even though the weather is calling for rain I’m sure some of these will still go on. People in other states should check the National Hunting and Fishing website for links to local events in their state.
I’ll not be attending any of those events but I’m planning to get together with a number of hunters from across the state. Whatever you have planned to do this weekend take some time to think about the positive things our sports offer. Tell someone else how great our sport is and invite them to join you on a future trip. The future of our sport rest squarely on our shoulders so do what you can to introduce someone new to it.

New NC Record Non Typical Velvet Antlered Buck Taken?

Rumors and this photo are circling around the net indicating that a state record may have been taken in Stokes County. The NC Sportsman Magazine reports that a story about this buck will be in the next issue. This is what was reported on NC Hunt & Fish;

The deer that was killed was a non typical velvet deer the green score was 145 7/8. My good friend killed this deer a day after I saw it with him. It was around a 25 yd shot and about 150 yard recovery. Its an awesome and should beat the previous record that stands with nc bow hunters which I believe is 132. After 60 days it will be scored again by 3 more certified scorers. So I think the most it will lose is 5 in beating the previous record by 8 in.. If left anything out just let me know. Oh yeah it was his first bow kill!!!

I guess I’ll have to sit by my mailbox and wait to read the full story in NC Sportsman.

Moose Vs. The Wiley Coyote

About a week ago I promised to tell a story about coyotes. My father in law was having something stealing figs off his trees and I suspected deer. He set up a game camera and to our surprise it was coyotes. We knew they were around because they have been seen a time or two but now we knew they were eating the figs. I hunt his land often, mostly killing deer as of yet the turkeys haven’t moved in and with coyotes around it could delay them taking up residency. I don’t like to compete with other hunters so these yotes got to go.
A week ago this past Saturday I was out at the property before day break and set up quickly to see if I could get a coyote to show himself. I set up a blind, had a fawn decoy, fawn in distress call and my trusty shotgun with buckshot. 10 minutes into the hunt I realized I forgot the most important thing….THE THERMACELL. The skeeters tore me up.

After about an hour I realized that only hawks and crows were going to come to the calls. The sun was getting up and it was getting warm plus I was down at least a quart of blood so I called it a hunt. I was disappointed that I hadn’t even seen the coyote but I guess he wasn’t interested in a deer dinner. Later that day I was talking to my brother telling him about the coyote and how I struck out trying to call him. I lamented the fact that no matter how hard I looked in the Cabela’s catalog I couldn’t find a Fig Call.
Well my ever helpful brother told me I should sing the Fig Newton song and about an hour latter this video hit my box. I’ll get that coyote but don’t look for me to do a song and dance routine to get him.

Today’s Big Game Committee Meeting

Well I took the morning off to attend the Big Game Committee Meeting where a lot of the hunting regulations we debate get their legs so to speak. Long before they end up in the proposal booklet at the public meetings chances are pretty good some if not all the Commissioners have kicked them around a bit.

I’ll try to give you the readers digest version of the meeting and add a bit more flesh in future posts. If anyone has a specific question post it up and I’ll try my best to review my notes and recall my memory to give you the best answer about what was said.
They started the meeting off with reminding everyone that a number of hunting proposals were delayed from implementation for at least a year. At the meeting they reiterated that the 10 letter rule delayed all the deer rules and that there was no way the NCWRC could of sidestepped this with the use of temporary rules. I also asked about separating the rules so opposition to one or two does not sink the entire slate which they also said was not an option. From where I sit it would appear to me that we better just plan a two year cycle for getting new rules. Getting 10 letters of opposition is such a low threshold I can see some folks having fun with that process.

The first agenda item was a presentation on a proposal to establish a captive cervid herd certification program. (Deer Farming)

This would be for the current farms and will not allow any additional farms. Chronic Wasting Disease is the reason that tight control by state and federal agencies was implemented a few years ago. Presently there is no known cases of CWD in captive or wild deer in North Carolina. The closest cases of CWD is in West Virginia in both captive and wild deer. Under current laws captive deer in North Carolina are highly regulated with each farm receiving two inspections a year to verify compliance.

They are looking at establishing strict guidelines under which deer could be transferred / transported between two licensed farms. Operations would have to be clean record for 5 years before they could reach this status. This is in the early process and will go to public meetings if the NCWRC as a whole decides to go forward with it. Under this plan there is no plan to issue any new licenses this only for existing operations.

Bear

Proposal to look at a harvested bear needing to weigh 100 lbs or more was shot down.

Proposal to alter bear season in the NE part of the state so it didn’t fall the week of Christmas. Shot down

Both of those proposals were asked for by a number of bear hunters at the last meeting

Baiting of bear was again discussed. Under current law still hunters can not bait bear however hound hunters can strike dogs off a bait pile. This has led to some places where hound hunters are baiting and either drawing bears off others lands or limiting hunting opportunities on others land.

Baiting 3 proposals sent out of committee to the Commissioners Meeting.

(side note all of these are a ways off because they’ll require legislative action for any of them. They are being floated to see if the NCWRC wants to hear from folks on any of these potential proposals)

1. Outlaw all bear baiting outright.
2. Keep the law as it currently is and add a 3 day pre dog hunt still hunt over baits. This would be a limited draw hunt and NCWRC would set the number of permits it would issue for this hunt. (Private land only)
3. Establish a 3 day still hunt prior to the opening of dog season but no bait Rest of the current laws would stay in place

1&2 passed with only one vote each in opposition
3 passed unanimously from the committee.

Deer

Talking about QDM and possible inviting Mr. Hamilton to address the committee in the future. Early stages of this idea so it may nor may not happen. Several of the commissioners voiced concerns over internal politics within the QDM movement.

Beginning to look at the possibility that some deer rules maybe by county if the majority of hunters want a particular rule. IE. Some folks are wanting a one buck limit the big game committee is going to explore that topic of special rules for a county.
Well that is a brief overview of the meeting and some of these I’ll elaborate a bit more in future posts.

Dove Opener Is Approaching Fast

The start of the hunting season in the south is traditionally the opening of dove season. Dove season opens at noon time usually the Saturday before Labor Day (If it falls in September) and across most of the hunters will gather for a lunch prior to the hunt. It is a very social event and often the first hunting opportunity that some youngsters get to participate in. Very much a family and friend affair for sure.
I love dove hunting but my wing shooting abilities are not that greatest. My hunting buddies swear I keep Federal in business with the amount of ammo I go through in an afternoon. Certainly something I’ve got to work on and something I’ve been reading about. I came across an interesting article in Game & Fish about 6 Tips to improve your dove hunting.
LIGHTEN UP/OPEN UP
GUN CONTROL
HEAD CONTROL
THE NUMBERS GAME
POSITION
REALISTIC PRACTICE
All worthwhile things to work on I believe head control and realistic practice are the areas I really need to work. Who knows maybe I can get a few more doves for the grill this season.

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