Saskatchewan Hunting Articles
Setting Goals for Hunters
It's hard to believe that another year has come and gone. 2011 is long gone ...we're well into 2012. And with a new year comes hopes of better days ahead. It is a time when the slate is wiped clean, and we have the opportunity to make the new year better than the last. Many of us began 2012 with resolutions. For some, those included plans to eat healthier, exercise more, and hopefully to weigh less. For others, it may have included a promotion, a career change, or maybe the beginning of a new business venture. Very rarely, though, do you hear any of us diehard hunters talking about our hunting resolutions for the new year.
Finding Coyotes
I live far enough north that when mid-winter rolls around the amount of daylight available to hunt coyotes can be less than eight hours. That means I need to be spending my daylight hours hunting, not scouting for someplace to hunt. But any coyote hunter worth his skinning knife will tell you that to be successful, you have to hunt where the coyotes are. The more coyotes, the greater your success will be. The key then is to have a scouting method that finds concentrated amounts of coyotes - fast.
4 Tips for Hunting Late Season Moose
We don't often hear about hunting moose in the late season. An undeniable romance focuses on calling and attracting bulls during the peak of the rut; but what about when all that hormone-driven activity subsides? Where do the moose go and what do they do? More to the point, how do we hunt them in the late season? Allow me to share the events of a late season moose hunt and offer four tips that helped me close a tag last fall. Whether we're talking about Shiras, Canada, or Alaska/Yukon moose, for much of the year bulls are reclusive by nature.
Get High on Whitetails
Today, the vast majority of deer hunters take to the trees. So popular is this movement that an entire industry has evolved along with a paradigm shift in how hunters approach the deer woods. Despite the effectiveness of tree stands, some ask if this strategy is creating a new generation of unskilled reactive hunters. More to the point, there are pros and cons to hunting from the trees, but in the end, it's hard to deny its effectiveness. Let's take a look at what it means to get high on whitetails.
For the Traveling Sportsman
Every year thousands of hunters across the continent book outfitted hunts. Some are booked in their home state or province; others require considerable travel by air. For those with the means, exotic trips abroad are a unique privilege. But regardless of where a hunter goes, the research, booking and travel aspects are imminent. Simple or complex, logistics are a part of the game. I've seen it more than once with first time traveling sportsmen.
Field Judging Deer
Some might call it buck fever. In my opinion it was just plain misjudgment. Sure, my heart races the same as the next guy when I get a big buck in my crosshairs, but I've usually got it well under control. No, this particular instance was a result of poor judgment and a split decision. Too many variables and too little time, that's what this one was all about. Had I been afforded another 30 seconds to evaluate the buck's antlers, I'm certain my decision to hit the switch would have been stifled.
Dropping the Hammer
If you're a serious gun nut and you haven't noticed the increased interest in shooting, reloading and hunting with old style guns in the last decade you've probably been in a coma. Rifles and shotguns that haven't come out of the closet in eighty years are being brought into the daylight, getting cleaned off and carried out to ranges and hunting fields. This particularly includes classic old lever action and single shot rifles. I haven't been immune from this old-gun bug myself, as an 1894 lever action in .38-55 is one of my current project guns.
Surviving Mother Nature: Remember the FSFS Rule
Have you ever been in a survival situation? Most of us have not. Would you know how to survive in the wilderness in a crisis? Believe it or not, most of us would not. With the advent of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) we've been lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that we can escape any predicament by following our handy little electronic devices to safety. While basic wilderness survival skills were commonly learned by generations before us, recent generations are much less savvy in this regard. As hunters, our activities often take us into remote areas. It behooves us to learn the essential skills required to survive if we ever find ourselves stranded in the wild.
Hunt Year Round
When we talk about hunting season, most of us think about turkeys and whitetails, basically because they're the most accessible. Truth is there are loads of other opportunities for every month of the year. Following are a few suggestions.
Still-Hunting: The Woodsman's Dance
Though it's certainly no Swan Lake, in a very real sense, still-hunting is the dance of the woodsman. Done properly, it is choreographed and precise. It's planned out so that every movement combines agility, grace, and stealth, so that each step, head turn, and pause serves an artful purpose - to collect venison.
Camp Food: Eating Right in the Backcountry
There are two schools of thought regarding the menu for a hunting, fishing or camping trip in a remote location - roughing it or eating well. On my recent Alaskan caribou hunt, we ate well - including tundra filet mignon cooked on an innovative grill which folds up to the size of a ruler!
Satellite Bucks: Making the Most of Your GPS
Not that long ago, it would take the average hunter a few seasons to truly learn the ins and outs of a new area. Typically, he would gain knowledge of the local topography bit-by-bit, mostly by hunting near obvious landmarks such as watercourses, trails, ridgelines, meadows, and clear cuts. And, for a while, this would work just fine.
Communicating with Big Game
Minutes after climbing into my stand I began my calling and rattling sequence. First grunting, then working the antlers, I stared down at the mock scrape I'd been religiously anointing with doe-estrus scent for the previous two weeks. I hadn't even finished my first round of clashing antlers together when I saw a nice buck run in from the heaviest cover. In a magnificent display of dominance all four feet were planted firmly in the center of my scrape as he swung his head back and forth in defiance! My efforts to communicate had sent this buck a clear message and he responded on cue.
The Super Bucks: Typical Category
The true superbuck is a one-in-a-million creature which is perhaps the culmination of perfect circumstances in terms of genetics, habitat and nutrition or perhaps a function of natural experimentation gone awry. It inspires dreams and passions in the mind and soul of hunters and obsessions in the spirit of collectors who aspire to own the biggest racks at any price.
Cold Weather Hunting
Cold-weather hunting is not for the faint of heart. I've seen guys throw in the towel after only a day or two, canceling their trip of a lifetime because Mother Nature dropped the mercury into the toilet. Sub-zero temperatures can make the outdoors a miserable place to be. Add wind and humidity to the equation, and things get nasty. Sure you can always hunt a heated blind, but if you need to brave the elements, some planning is in order. Gear up properly and the cold can be manageable. Venture out unprepared and you may as well write off your hunt.
Six Tips for Better Shot Placement
Hunt long enough and you'll see some weird things. My own list of odd occurrences seems endless. I've seen an arrow pass square through the center of a bear's chest with the bruin collapsing immediately. Then, not 20 minutes later, that same bear leapt to his feet and scampered away, never to be seen again. On another occasion I witnessed a fellow shoot a moose that collapsed on the spot.
Cry Wolf: Guide to Wolves and Wolf Hunting Opportunities
Ah, the howl of the wolf. Is any sound in nature more primordial? That eerie call, echoing off the spruce and rock faces of a frozen northern lake on a frigid winter's night, can rouse a man from sleep and fill his head with images of tracks in the snow and gore on the ice. A wolf is a paradox. On one hand, it is a fearsome predator; on the other, a social animal that, when caught relaxed, is not all that different from the family dog.
Mule Deer: Those Western Deer
It was clearly the peak of the rut and, in the narrow draw below me, a doe pranced coquettishly through the brittle cottonwoods, keeping well out of reach of the husky buck that dogged her trail. Though confident that her magic scent would draw him on, she stopped every 50 meters or so to gaze intently down her back trail, evidently impatient for the buck to catch up.
The Truth About Prairie Whitetail
Dakota whitetail. Just the name inspires images of big boned, heavy racked deer standing alert at the edge of a cottonwood bluff while the last vestiges of yet another spectacular prairie sunset fade overhead. But is there really such a creature or is this simply a fabrication of our imagination bordering on elitism. After all, big-bodied whitetails have been taken throughout North America.
Trail Cameras: Truth or Consequence
Trail camera use and technology has exploded over the past five years. Do they uncover a property's true potential for producing trophy whitetails... or spook the very deer we're trying to hunt? Finding a cure for the common cold will probably happen before hunters fully understand how trophy-class whitetails so easily evade us during hunting season. Undoubtedly, it's the variables which make this sport tough.