Pat Garrett from Garrett Bros. Outfitting sent me a DVD of their hunting operation to review and make a blog post.

Right now, as far as being top pri0rity on my big game hunting list, I don’t have a deep-seated desire to harvest a big black bear, but if I did… Garrett Bros. Outfitting just might be my choice.

The DVD was well put together and described many portions of their hunting operation.  Not just the black bear hunting, but how camp is hauled deep into the wilderness and extracted back out every year.  There are some great clips of a convoy of vehicles braving ice coated and mud trenched trails to get “camp” to where “camp” belongs.

A family-owned operation that operates out of Alberta, they offer black bear hunts as their premier game species but also offer limited moose and bush whitetail deer hunts.

For their black bear hunts, hunters may choose to hunt out of river camp or a fly-in camp.  Both hunts are $3500 (an additional $750 may be paid on the harvest of a second bear).  That may seem expensive, but take it from someone who has seen the DVD.  This camp is a TON of work to get setup and the opportunity to harvest a big P&Y and even B&C bear is relatively high, not to mention the abundant color phase bears running around too.

For more information, you can visit the website.  Garrett Bros. Outfitting is very open about their business and have many references listed for the potential customer to telephone.

To view their brochure, link to this pdf file.

If you are in the market for a wilderness black bear hunting experience, look no further than Garrett Bros. Outfitting.

I rummaged through a thread on ArcheryTalk.com’s forum and pulled these deer hunting one-liners out for your thought, consideration, and yes…laughter.

*Always hunt the wind

*Have fun and don’t fall out of the tree

*Aim small, miss small

*Remember to put your phone on vibrate

*I like this one….  If you are happy with the size of the bucks that you have been killing, keep doing what you are doing.  Think about it.

*You can’t kill a trophy or very few or none actually exist.

*No deer is worth your life — BE SAFE

*Net? Who cares what it nets?  Nets are for fishing.

*Practice how you hunt  (I would echo an AMEN to that one, if shoot with a facemask in archery season, you better be practicing with one on too)

*Big bucks are like middle aged men

*Don’t discriminate based on gender … does taste great too!

*Scout harder than you hunt

*If you don’t shoot him, someone else will (I hope everyone realizes that as long as everyone keeps believing this one, yearling bucks will continue to dominate harvests nationwide!)

*Don’t get married (Kara, that one wasn’t my idea)

*Don’t get too comfortable a treestand, you’ll fall asleep in it…

My favorite from the thread:

*Always carry some TP in your fanny pack and a pocket knife in your pocket.  The pocket knife is to cut your underwear off if you don’t get down the tree in time!

Everyone should consider starting a hunting journal this fall.  A photo/story journal preserves memories for generations, makes a great conservation piece, and lets you relive great days afield as you flip through its pages.

For whatever reason, I began recording every deer hunting story in a hardbound, acid-free paper journal when I was 14.  Fortunately, I had only 2 years to catch up on because I killed my first deer when I was 12.  Now, I extended my journal into a second album just this year and have a story and picture to accompany every deer that I have ever shot.

When I was about 15, my hunting horizons started to broaden and so did my hunting journal.  Now I have pages recording great waterfowl shoots, shed hunting excursions, squirrel hunts, bowfishing trips, out-of-state hunting adventures, and even the occasional big buck that dad or another close friend put on the ground.

I also include the year in the bottom right corner of every page so that when I am 75 and can’t remember if I was 18 or 28 when I killed XYZ buck, I can just look and know for certain.

Here is a smattering of pages that I photographed out of my hunting journal to give you ideas of how you can set-up various pages in your own archive.

Think of it as manly scrapbooking.

First page – first deer.

First archery kill.

A big North Carolina muzzleloader buck for dad.

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I just saw a news blurb a couple of days old that indicated draw odds for a Vermont moose permit was almost 10% this year.  Now, that is the general draw odds and actual non-resident draw odds could be much worse…even as low as 2-4%.  But, even those aren’t horrendous considering some of the once-in-a-lifetime hunts in the Rocky Mountain states for Shiras moose.

Now, I know how beautiful Vermont is having vacationed there 6 or 7 years ago with family near Smuggler’s Notch, and I can only imagine having a moose permit to explore that same territory with a firearm in hand.

If you’ve explored opportunities to hunt moose in the Lower 48, your eyes should perk up at the sight of 10% draw odds.  Add in the fact that fees are only $25 for non residents and not a huge temporary deposit of $1000+ are huge factors that will probably lead me to start applying for a Vermont moose permit of my own.

Just a couple of days ago, 1,230 people were drawn to receive moose permits from the 14,000 that applied.  Biologists expect that half of those successful applicants will successfully tag a moose.

Word to the wise, don’t start applying for a Vermont moose permit until you are serious about going moose hunting.  Why?  A bonus point is awarded every year to unsuccessful applicants.  However, you must apply every year to sustain your bonus point accumulation total.  If you forget one year or decide this year isn’t good for a moose hunt, you lose all your hard earned work.

Visit the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department for more information.

Philip (Hog Blog) responded to the article that was posted on Realtree’s Whitetailology site discussing the misleading messages that are promoted by video hunting games.

Philip made the great point that video games sell for the very reason that they do depict normal sports as suped-up fantasies of whichever sport is depicted.  Faster action, harder hitting, longer shooting, more intense.  Think about it, the real NFL can’t run plays every 8 seconds like a player can on Madden 2009.

In hunting games that equates to bigger bucks, more deer, faster action, otherwise they wouldn’t sell.

That being said, he also directed me to an online hunting game website simply called “The Hunter”.  Being the sucker that I am, I downloaded the free portion of the game (mule deer hunting with bare bones equipment) and played an hour or so today.

I must say that the 3-D environment is the most detailed I have seen on arcade hunting games.  The action is a bit slow, but hey…isn’t that a little closer to reality and more satisfying when success is had!

So, I’ll spare you a long review of what I liked and didn’t like about the game and instead direct you to the website to try it for yourself.

Have fun shooting mule deer before mule deer season!  Please don’t take that out of context!

As promised, here is dukkillr’s final blog post on his recent Canadian black bear adventure.  He ends on a bang, or should I say a “thwack!”

Follow the link

Photo courtesy of The Daily Limit.

Go on over to The Daily Limit blog and read about dukkillr’s exciting 2009 spring black bear hunt at Garrett Brothers Outfitting.  14 bears killed including a beautiful chocolate, a couple 19″+ bruiser black bears, and a smattering of mid-size Yogi’s.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

When he posts Part V, I’ll provide that link as well.  Enjoy!

The third day of my Kansas trip started out in the woods carrying a 12 gauge shotgun with a turkey choke screwed into the end of the barrel.  We were hiking in to a spot where Brad had seen 5 toms the week before, when I looked up and saw birds roosted in a tall tree only 125 yards away.  It didn’t appear as if the turkeys had seen us, so we hunkered down right where we were and waited for more light to start calling.

Pretty blurry but you get the point.

Didn’t take long for the birds to fly down, and it wasn’t long before they were close enough to see only hens and jakes.

All blowed up, but no beard.  Jakes.

Not exactly what we were looking for, so we moved on to another spot or two.  No birds to be seen or heard though.

After breakfast, we spotted a couple toms strutting down on the riverbottom.  After a little strategizing, we were walking down the backside of a levee and into position.  Unfortunately, no amount of strategizing can prepare you for a wad of deer exploding right into a good turkey set-up.

After helping Brad’s brother clean up some of his storm damage (toppled pole barn that had 2 trucks inside, trees, branches, basically a $10,000 mess) for a couple of hours, it was time to go hang stands.

Stand #3

Stand is the white splotch (bad “Paint” job…sorry) with the green food plot.  Several funneling necks of timber collide.  Several 110-120″ bucks spotted out of this plot last year during muzzleloader season in September, but no shooters.

Stand #4

Located in the middle of a large bedding area, this stand has a specific deer in mind…one that should push 180″ this fall.  A hunter had a disappointing encounter with him last rifle season, but hopefully we can seduce him into the back corner of this timber jungle with a little seductive calling.  Worth a shot!

Stand #5

What more really needs to be said.  A no-brainer 4 lane funnel highway with CRP on 2 sides and crops on the other 2 sides.

Stand #6

Didn’t actually put this one up on this trip, but I checked it out to make sure it was safe and shooting lanes were clear.  A major creek runs right past the stand and helps to funnel the deer even more dramatically.

Stand #7

This might have been my favorite set.  Several trails following fence lines, creek beds, and natural openings intersect to create one humdinger of a set-up.  This spot should be good from September’s muzzleloader season to the last day of rifle season.  Crop fields to the northeast and southwest.

That was it for hanging stands on Saturday, but there was one more order of business…finding a turkey!  With bad weather expected on Sunday, Saturday afternoon might be our last legitimate chance.

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Wow, what a crazy trip that was!  I had no idea I was going to a natural disaster zone, but is what it turned into seemingly.  Bottom line though – we got plenty of deer stands up in trees and I killed my first turkey.

But I’ve already spilled too many beans…here’s the rundown of Day 1 and 2.

Day 1 – 800 miles by myself.  Enough said.

I left the house at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday morning and arrived in Kansas around 8:15 p.m. that night.  Not bad miles per hour average, but a looonnngg trip anyway you cut it.

First state after Alabama was to cut across the corner of Mississippi.

Then around Memphis and through the western part of Tennessee.

After crossing through Arkansas and into Missouri, I was winding through the Ozarks.  Beautiful country and scenery, but miserable driving when you are trying to make time.

Still in the hills.

Finally some flat ground, which must mean I am in Kansas finally!

That night, we schemed a little on Google Earth for some treestand locations, double checked to make sure we got the treestands we ordered, and got some good rest.

Day 2

We debated on whether or not to go turkey hunting on Friday morning, but need for sleep won out.  Good thing.  The only way we could have killed a turkey Friday morning was to shoot one out of the air as it blew past us.

I woke in Kansas (Wizard of Oz country…i.e., tornadoes, natural disasters) to a hurricane.  Yes, I said hurricane.  And it is not just me making this up.

The local radar showed a line of storms had arced into a semicircle and where we were was in the middle of it.  The storm dumped 2-3 inches in no time and had sustained straight line winds of 70-80 mph with gusts to 110 mph.  Definitely the hardest winds I’ve ever been close to.

Damage at the house was minimum with just some shingles, flower pots, outdoor ceiling fans, a few sheets of tin from the barn, but nearby people suffered major damages.   Destroyed grain bins, flipped trailers, flattened barns, uprooted and snapped off trees, broken windows, peeled off roofs…bad stuff.  In fact, one of the nearby television stations had barely evacuated the building when the antenna tower came crashing down on the building.

Here’s just one picture of a crumpled up truck that I could find on the Internet from Joplin, KS newspaper website.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I hope everyone has a great tail end of the week.  I’ll be leaving out early in the morning and hope to arrive in Kansas by 6 or 7 Thursday evening.

Plans are to hang stands (maybe a little shed hunting too) on Friday, do a little turkey hunting Saturday morning, hang more stands during the day, more of the same on Sunday, wrap the weekend up with a good cookout, and be back to Alabama by Monday afternoon.

The X factor is certainly the Neosho River.  Hopefully, the river will come down a little from its current flood stage so we can get to all the stand locations we hope to reach.  If not, well that will just leave more time to find antlers and hunt turkeys.

Have a great weekend, and I look forward to sharing the trip with you next week on The Outdoor Smorgasbord.