Hunters Should Be Cautious As Remnants of Ida Grip the State

Late season hurricane Ida hit the gulf coast earlier this week but the remnants of this storm our now stalled over North Carolina and the Mid Atlantic states. Parts of North Carolina are expected to get up to 7 inches of rain before this system clears out. In addition to heavy rains the state is experiencing high winds with gusts in excess of 45 mph. This is a deadly combination as trees are toppling over after ground saturation erodes the integrity of the root system and the high winds just push the trees over.

Chilly, windy, rainy

“It’s going to be chilly, windy and rainy today,” said WRAL meteorologist Elizabeth Gardner. “It’s the gusts that are really kicking up out there.”
Wednesday was the third-wettest day recorded at Raleigh-Durham International Airport since 1944, according to WRAL meteorologist Nate Johnson.
The storm that started the week as Hurricane Ida weakened Tuesday after making landfall in southern Alabama. It was downgraded to a tropical depression as it moved east over the Florida panhandle.
Moisture from that system joined forces with a cold front and a separate low pressure system off the coast of North and South Carolina to produce a nor’easter that will continue to dump rain on the eastern half of the state into Friday.
“The rain will probably be lighter and spotter on Friday, but still there,” said WRAL Chief Meteorologist Greg Fishel.

WRAL

With signs of the rut beginning to kick in as well as it being the week of muzzleloader season across the center part of the state many people including myself has taken this week off to hunt. Hunters hunting from treestands should be aware that the tree they are hunting out of may not be stable and could potentially topple over. Other hazards include flash flooding as rain continues to fall.

People need to be safe and carefully consider whether or not hunting in their particular area can be done safely. I did not hunt yesterday nor did I venture out yet this morning. I do have plans to hunt this afternoon but if conditions are not safe I will forgo the hunt to be safe.
People should be cautious and carefully check things out before driving across any flooded areas and before climbing into a tree.
Be Safe

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.

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.

Hot Diggity Dog I Got Drawn

I got drawn for a Tundra Swan Permit. I can hardly wait.

NCWRC has posted the draw results.

Coffee and Hunting

Nothing goes better with a hunt then a great cup of coffee and on a cold morning just about any cup will do. I’m a big coffee drinker and I often will carry a thermos with me to the blind or stand or leave one in the truck to retrieve later.

Now I remember a few very memorable bad cups of coffee on some hunting trips.
I recall a number of years ago when my buddy Jon and I were driving from Maine to Maryland for a deer hunt stopping early in the morning at a Cumberland Farms in Southern Massachusetts and getting a very thick like molasses cup that had a very strong burnt taste. It did its job because we stayed awake arguing about how long it been since that pot had been brewed I think we agreed it was probably about 3 days old.

Now there was one hunting trip where I got two of the worst cups of coffee ever and that was our combination pheasant / duck hunt in Iowa. On the drive out we stopped in a small town in Illinois I believe and checked into a hotel in the wee hours of the morning to get some rest. As we were getting ready to turn in a freight train rolled by the motel sounding its horn and rocking the motel which we thought was funny but that was short lived after about an hour and two more trains rolled through. Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep and I needed a cup of coffee that morning. I grabbed one in the motel lobby as we continued our drive to Iowa. I was barely out of the parking lot when I pitched that rancid thing out the window. I told Billy it tasted like it been filtered through a dirty wool hunting sock.

A few days later on our hunt Billy and I were sitting in a duck blind on a pretty cool Iowa morning. Our good friend Rick had brewed the coffee that morning and filled all our thermoses. Well wanting a cup to help warm us up after a few hours of hunting we tried drinking that stuff and it was horrible. I believe he may have filled the filter completely up because it was strong. Luckily I had a bag of M&M’s in my pack so I poured them into the thermos and shook it up good and made us a Cappuccino right there in the field. It was not great but it made it drinkable.

Well if you haven’t figured it out coffee is pretty important to me and I drink a lot of it. In my opinion as far as coffee goes around here Dunkin Donuts has the best followed by Caribou Coffee and the Starbucks. The worst cup of coffee hands down goes to McDonald’s, I’d stop in a Cumberland Farms if there was any around here before McDonalds.

This all leads me up to the Starbucks taste test this weekend. In case you didn’t know Starbucks has introduced an instant coffee, Starbucks Via, that they claim is as good as the brewed coffee. Well I had to check this out because I had my doubts. I’ll give them credit it is pretty good, very close to the brewed coffee. I picked it out without a problem but it was darn close. I’ll be adding some to my hunting gear so even if I’m in Trainville Illinois, a cold duck blind in Iowa, or traveling through the badlands of Southern Massachusetts a good cup of coffee is only a cup of boiling water away.

A Great Weekend Get Together

One of the benefits of the internet is being able to develop friendships with folks all over. This weekend a group of us that talk hunting on the world wide web all the time got together for a BBQ and some outdoor fun.

The threat of rain seemed to dampen spirits a bit but once we all got there things improved. The rain held off so we had a spectacular day sighting in rifles, shooting skeet, and swapping lies. Some of these guys I hadn’t seen in a while so it was great to see them.

One of the touching moments was when we remembered a good friend 340 Mag that for many years had driven down from Wisconsin to attend the get together. Dale lost his battle with cancer about 6 weeks ago.
The food was spectacular and the stories were great. With another hunting season upon us I guess we’ll have to try hard to outdo the stories we heard from seasons past.

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.

Work Day At The Hunting Club

Saturday was a work day trying to get a bunch of stuff done. Not having the equipment we hired someone to bushhog for us and we worked on clearing roads and trails. It is amazing how many trees and limbs will fall down in a year .
We also had to do some repair work on some stands. I forgot to bring some wasp spray and I had a number of nests inside my towerstand. I successfully knocked 5 nests out of my stand by opening the windows and batting them out. Any of the wasps that didn’t go with the nest out the window either I stomped on them when they lay dazed on the floor or I successfully batted them out as they flew at me. Not a single sting. Granted these were pretty small nest but a small feat in my book anyways.

I had sprayed down with bug spray real good so when I got home that evening I didn’t find a single tick. The only tick I found on me was during a water break crawling on my shirt.

As far as wildlife goes we saw a number of deer including a fawn that the bush hog pushed out of beds. No turkeys were seen but a nest was found and a number of broken eggs shells were there lets hope they hatched out. Not seeing many hens with pouts earlier we are thinking the spring rains around the nesting time got a number of them so we hope they renested. The mineral licks we have around the property seem to be getting hit pretty hard. A number of them have been dug out pretty good. Most of us kept guns handy all day but no yotes showed himself but coyote sign is pretty strong across the property.
While it was a warm day it wasn’t unbearable hot like some years past. Lots of water breaks we still got a lot accomplished. Yesterday and still this morning I’m a little stiff but its good to feel that it should make this falls hunting a lot better.

Annual Fishing Trip A Success

The Crew & the haul

For a number of years now a group of us have been chartering a fishing trip on the Risky Business out of Oregon Inlet Fishing Center. This past Friday we went out and once again Jamie put us on some fish. Years past we’ve gone after tile fish, a pretty tasty fish, but this year no one has had much success on them so we went for trigger fish.

Trigger Fish

I’d never caught a trigger fish before but they were a lot of fun on light tackle and in a little bit shallower water then the tiles. We caught about 85 trigger fish and a whole mess of sea bass with about 30 of them being keepers. When the fishing slowed on them they set up the trolling gear and we went after dolphin having a number of strikes but landing two.

oops not this type of dolphin but we saw a number of the mammal dolphins playing alongside the boat.

The day started and ended a bit on the choppy side getting out of port in the morning the waves seemed a bit choppy for this land lover. The return trip in the late afternoon saw us racing a line of storms that was coming in and I’ll admit I was happy to sit on the porch of the fishing center and watch Mother Nature’s fury. I may love to watch the deadliest catch but I certainly don’t want to even remotely live it.

What a great day and a mess of fish. The trigger fish were as tasty as promised, the dolphin was out of this world good and the sea bass was awesome. Jamie and Andy did a great job of taking care of us and putting us on some fish. As I’ve said before there is nothing Risky about chartering this boat other then you might have to good of a time and want to do it again real soon.
Risky Business has full day and half day charters still available this summer so check them out.

Annual Fishing Trips
2008
2007
2006

Rouge Gang Of Jakes

This has been an unusual turkey season for me so I was happy when I finally filled one of my tags. Saturday I was sitting in my buddies blind(Rick) on our Alamance County lease. Most of our lease is fields and open land with small pockets of woods so running and gunning is not really an option.
The Ameristep blind was set up at the edge of the field that had been planted in tobacco last year, but plowed under after the crop was harvested, and now overgrown with weeds. Saturday was a warm day with off and on showers so hunting from the blind was a good plan. I had three decoys out; two hens and a Jake to hopefully entice a bird to close the distance if we called one to the field. Rick sat with me in the blind for the first few hours. We did call a hen out to the field but she looked the decoys over and just fed off. Rick had to leave so he shuck off and I settled in for what could be an all day hunt.
Shortly after Rick left a heavy shower rolled through but I kept calling and watching. Not long after the shower ended I got the feeling that something was coming even though I hadn’t heard or seen anything. I picked up my Mossberg 935 and got ready. In the back of my mind I was suspecting a coyote was sneaking in so I was surprised when four Jakes showed up near my decoy spread. I think they were equally surprised because I suspect they were only expecting to see the two hens. The sloping land had allowed them to cover the 50 yards or so from the woods to the decoys undetected by me but also prevented them from seeing the Jake decoy until the popped over the hill. What happened next was an amazing event to witness as all four Jakes ran straight at the Jake decoy stopping just a few feet behind it and all four gobbling at once. The sound about rocked me out of the blind and as soon as they did that they turned tail and started running back the direction they came from. In my haste I did not pick up or put a call in my mouth so I had little options so I yelled “Hey”. One bird stopped but the slope of the field all I could see was his head as he stuck it up to see who was calling him. The Mossberg 935 barked as the Remington Nitro #5 found the mark and dropped him. I saw the other three birds fly up into the trees at the other side of the field and I’ll admit I wasn’t 100 % sure I had gotten the bird until I got out of the blind. I paced it off and it was 43 paces a bit far but the results were a dead bird.
Believed it or not in all my years of turkey hunting this is the first Jake I’ve ever taken. While some don’t consider a Jake a trophy because it is a juvenile gobbler in this case this will be a hunt I won’t soon forget. This has been a tough year and next Saturday is the end of the season so I’ll have one more chance to fill my second tag.

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