Bow Season is Just About Here

Saturday the 07 bow season opens here in North Carolina. The temperatures will be up but the mosquitoes should be down because of the drought. I’m still not able to hunt but even if I could the heat would probably keep me out of the woods. I much rather hunt in the cold then hunt in the heat but living here in the south I guess I need to get use to the heat.

Well if your planning to go Saturday good luck to you and here is some great advice from Dan Kibler.

If shoppers put together a list when they go to the grocery store, if an engineer checks off a list of safeguards before firing up a piece of machinery, it only makes sense that hunters who are preparing for early-season archery hunts should have a list of their own.
After all, isn’t getting venison for the freezer or a big set of antlers for the trophy room as important as your daily bread or the machine that sends electricity through the power line?
A bowhunter has a list that he has to check off before he heads to the woods for an early-season hunt, whether he’s going to put sausage and chops in the freezer or seeking a trophy buck in the first few weeks of the season.

Well I’ve always liked Dan’s writing so please check out the rest of the story and hopefully you’ll have a successful season. As for me hopefully about the time the mercury drops down a little bit I’ll get the ok from the doctor to return to my normal activities.

Birds on the Rebound

The Greensboro News and Record has an article from Dan Kibler about the history of the restoration of the wild turkey in North Carolina. As we approach the second half of the spring turkey season we who chase the wild turkey certainly have a lot to be thankful for as the turkey population is expanding along with the number of hunters.

Last year was record setting breaking the 11,000 mark will this year be another record setting year? I think with the hatch being off in many areas last spring the numbers will be less but that could be off set with turkeys in more areas and more hunters as well. So far this year my experience has been a very non normal year with gobbling being reduced and lots of day’s non existent. I’m seeing a lot of hens and that maybe part of the problem. In the article Marshall Collette offers this comment;

Collette hopes that the natural reproductive cycle of the wild turkey turns the corner this week and puts more gobblers out on the prowl, looking for hens to breed. The season opened April 14, the latest date possible under current regulations, and Collette thinks hen turkeys are only now beginning to go to the nest to care for clutches of eggs that can number anywhere from six to 15.

While they’re actively breeding, hen turkeys will track down gobblers and often prevent hunters from getting good chances at taking the birds.

With a great majority of hens nesting, gobblers will spend a week to 10 days cruising the countryside, looking for the small percentage of hens still willing to breed. That could lead to some exciting hunting, Collette said.

“We’ve had an early spring, weather-wise,” he said. “That may be part of what’s going on, but the hens are starting to sit. I think the second peak of gobbling is about to start.”

I hope he is right.
As far as the record I won’t be surprised either way I’m sure the harvest will be around the 10,000 mark. I’ve heard from a lot of folks killing their first birds this year and that’s great as more join the sport. With the number of hens I’m seeing and hearing from other hunters a decent spring hatch and the turkey population will really expand across the state and that will be some thing to gobble about.

The Art of Blood Trailing

Dan Kibler has a good article in today’s Fayettvile Observer on “Tracking Wounded Deer”. A good article on a task that can be difficult at times;

the reality is, the deer of your dreams doesn’t always collapse at your shot, not the way they do on those TV shows. More often than you care to admit, a well-shot deer will still leave in a hasty fashion, getting out of sight in a handful of leaps and bounds that doubles your heart rate and leaves your chest heaving.
That’s where the real work begins — finding him. It’s a task that can be a light walk in the woods or a real labor, depending not only on how accurate your shot was, but on how you approach the job of focusing on droplets or blood spatters on leaves and broom straw and knee-high brush.

He talks to two NC Outfitters on their experience tracking wounded deer and what they tell their clients to do immediately after the shot. The actions the hunter takes right after the shot can ultimately determine how easy of a job recovery might be as well as if the deer will be recovered. I recall a few years back when I was hunting with a group of hunters and one of them shot his second deer in his life the first being in the early 70’s almost 30 years ago. He made some major mistakes and we ultimately never recovered that animal from what I’m certain was a fatal hit. In this case the hunter got out of the tree and chased the deer through the woods not giving it any time to bed down. By the time some of us with more tracking ability had gotten there this hunter and a few of the other novices had scuffed up the leaves and the forest floor so bad we couldn’t find the blood trail.

My last blood tracking job for one of my deer was in 2004 and here is the story with photos that gives you an idea about how I was taught and how I trail wounded game on those rare occasions that I find myself in that situation.

In Dan’s article one of the outfitters he interviews is one that I know well and have featured some blog posts about and that’s Mike Noles from Conmans Guide Service. ( Big Buck Story in September and Big Bears from Last Month ) Dan has some great tips in his article and I hope you learn something that may help ya in a future hunt.

For WS Journal Readers and Anyone Else who Missed Dan Kibler this Past Sunday

WS Journal fired Dan as we talked about in an earlier post. Since then the outcry from sportsmen has gotten the WS Journal to continue an outdoor section minus the local connection. This week’s stories came out of Virginia and another one out of New York, both fine states but it seems to me that during the height of the hunting season that some local stories would have been included. I’m sure the local advertisers are happy to see stories from those states and can expect orders from Virginia and New York to pour in over the coming days but I digress. Dan did have a story in the Fayetteville Observer about Fox Squirrels and I hope you follow the link and read it. I’ve yet to see one and would love the chance to hunt them sometime.

Outdoor Sports get the Boot Dan Kibler gets the Axe

A dark day for outdoor enthusiasts as it appears that the Winston Salem Journal is dropping outdoor sports from its sport pages.

we let five members of our newsroom go during the past three days as part of a cost-cutting plan. It is difficult and dreary work.

The five positions were our NFL reporter, our outdoors columnist, our film critic and two people who prepared photographs for publication, known as scanning technicians. Good people all. We didn’t make these decisions lightly.

Newspapers—and other media companies—are in a tough environment. Advertising is moving online, and circulation is struggling. For publicly traded companies, there is pressure from Wall Street to keep profits up. Cost cutting has hit virtually every newspaper I know of, and it forces newsroom managers to make tough choices on what to keep and what to forego.

Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal Otterblog

I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Kibler at last years Dixie Deer Classic. Dan is one of the best known and most respected outdoor writers in North Carolina. I enjoy reading his articles I posted a link to one out here not to long ago about “Tripod”.

Hunting & Fishing have become politically incorrect and I can’t help but wonder if the decision to drop the outdoor section was made because of that. Unlike New York, Los Angles, and the likes the outdoors are a vital part of the culture in North Carolina. With the popularity of outdoor sports in this state I’m surprised that advertisers that cater to us outdoors people are hard to find. Locally for me the News And Observer has a wonderful outdoor section and I frequent many of the advertisers on those pages.

Unlike the other reporters that were cut Dan covered local people and local events that can’t be replaced with national feed. I would agree that the NFL & Movie Critic can easily be replaced but what national reporter is going to tell us about the local guy that kills an unusual buck or the local angler who catches a trophy?

I don’t think we should just idly stand by as our sport is pushed out and marginalized as something that we should be ashamed of. We spend money and support a good chunk of the local economy. I would encourage sportsmen and sportswomen to contact the Winston Salem Journal and let them know what you think about them dropping outdoor sports.

Bears, Boars, Blue Geese, & Bobcats Bonanza

I don’t have a Wild Boar photo but found this Cool Photo of a Peccary or Javelina I took so I had to use it. -Moose-

All of these plus some others have season openers this week. Check out Dan Kibler’s story “Loaded for Bear, Etc.: Sportsmen can hunt for everything from bear to wild boar during open seasons in the fall”
If this gets ya excited maybe you’ll want to get that rifle sighted in you should check out Ray Sasser’s Article in the Dallas Morning Star about checking that zero. 6 Tips that are pretty good and some I had never heard before.
Tis the Season R U Ready?

Nice Buck Taken in Stokes County

 

This I believe is one of two bucks I’ve heard about that will score around 150 taken in the first couple of weeks of the 2006 Archery season. The photo quality is not great because it’s a scan of the newspaper but I’m sure you can see how impressive a buck this is.

Jerrold Wade of Arcadia became the latest deer hunter to take advantage of Stokes County’s penchant for producing big bucks …Joey Thompson, an official scorer for the N.C. Bow Hunters Association, met Wade when he brought the buck to John Brown’s Country Store No. 2 in King late that evening to register his kill. Thompson put a tape on the big 11-point buck and green-scored it at 1584/8 non-typical and 1452/8 typical.

 

Check out Dan Kibler’s article for the rest of the story “Jaw Dropping: Huge buck taken on 1st day of archery season”

It looks like the 2 buck limit is working and hopefully we’ll see that statewide at some point. We’ll also keep looking for information on any other large bucks killed in North Carolina.

 

Written by Daniel "Moose" McLaughlin · Filed Under Deer, Hunting, North Carolina, Trophy Animal 

Brent Mabrey’s NC State Record Deer with a bow

July 17, 2006

Here’s Brent Mabrey with the mount of his state record, with its incredible “double-beam” right side.
Photo by Dan Kibler and NC Game & Fish

NC Game And Fish has the story of  Brent Mabrey’s record shattering Non Typical buck he took in Halifax County last September. 

Mabrey’s buck, sporting a “third beam” and sticker points everywhere, was the biggest non-typical ever killed with a bow and arrow in the Tar Heel State. Scott Osborne and Mike Seamster, wildlife biologists with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, scored the buck in early December, and the numbers were astonishing.
Twenty-one scoreable points.
A 19 6/8-inch inside spread.
Brow tines over 6 inches long and a third brow tine on one antler that pushed 7 inches. One tine that was 11 3/8 inches long.
An enormous non-typical point curving out of the right antler, between the base and the brow tine, that measured almost 20 inches long.
A net non-typical Boone and Crockett score of 176 7/8 points, more than 10 inches larger than the buck that formerly held the state record, a Forsyth County buck killed in 1998 by Bill Froelich of Mocksville that scored 166 1/8. 

Wow what a buck I’m just posting some quotes about the scoring but the story covers the whole hunt and is well worth reading. 

The buck had a 4×3 main frame rack, with four points on the left side and three on the right. The main beams were 22 and 20 3/8 inches, and the left antler had one tine that was 11 3/8 inches long, a brow tine that was 7 3/8 inches long, and five sticker points, including a drop tine 4 1/2 inches long.
The right beam was the real story, however. In addition to the three points on the main beam, it had a 6-inch brow tine, a second brow tine that measured 6 7/8 inches, and a 19 6/8-inch-long third “tine” jutting out of the antler between the base and the brow tine. That extra tine had several sticker points, and the right main beam had several more drop points — a total of nine in all, giving the buck 20 scoreable points. The non-typical points measured a total of 59 1/8 inches. The main frame of the rack had almost 15 inches in deductions, so when Osborne and Seamster finally put away their calculator, they came up with 176 7/8.

That is an area that is not covered by the 2 buck limit (4 bucks are allowed) but it sounds like an area that got very limited pressure.  They estimated the age of the deer to be 5 ½ years old and it goes to show what can happen if bucks get the chance to live past 3.  I hope in the near future a 2 buck limit is set for the entire state.

Written by Daniel "Moose" McLaughlin · Filed Under Deer, Hunting, North Carolina