Turkey Scouting the Woods of Western Montana

First off, I have to say that I have never turkey hunted before and I have never scouted for them before, so I wasn't too sure what to look for. But a few weeks ago I spotted a flock of turkeys on private land, but near some public land that I frequent, so I figured this would be a good starting point for turkey scouting. I was able to head back to this area on Thursday, and do some scouting. I somehow managed to stumble upon what I believe is a roost, right on the border of public and private land.














A few years of fly tying has led me to believe that the feather pictured belongs to a turkey along with these droppings.

The area that I scouted is in a permit only area so if I draw tag here I definitely plan on hunting this area, but I need to scout some over the counter tag areas, just in case my tag drawing doesn't pan out. Just three weeks to till the opener of turkey season!

Review: Camofire.com

I thought that I would do a review for camofire.com. I first heard about camofire from the community over at Bowcast. After checking out the website I quickly added their RSS feed to my iGoogle page. Every day a new deal of the day related to hunting gear is posted, and let me tell you the prices can't be beat, and I have almost pulled the trigger several times, on items listed. Well finally last Friday I saw that they had two Primos stake out blinds and a turkey hunting DVD for an excellnet price so I decided to make the purchase. Now some of you may be wondering what qualifies me to write this review. Aside from being someone who enjoys getting hunting gear at a great price, I have worked for many years in retail and specifically in an internet based store where I perfomed the shipping for all orders.

Ordering

This was a breeze the shopping cart was easy to navigate, and I never had any hang ups while placing the order.

Confirmation

I received a confirmation email that my order had been recieved, on the day I placed the order.

Shipping

I placed the order on Friday, the order was shipped on Monday, and being only to UPS days away recieved the order on Wednesday. I received a delivery confirmation email with the UPS tracking number, the day that the order shipped.

Product

The product arrived to my house as adverstised, in a timely fashion. What more could you ask for.

I hope to take out the blind and shoot from inside it soon, and then use and abuse it during turkey season. Be on the lookout for a review of the ground blind in the future.

A New Season Begins, Training for Archery Season

Here in my chunk of Montana the weather and the calendar are battling to decide what season it should be. Even though we are still a few days away from Spring, the weather as of late has been Spring like with temps tipping the 50 degree mark. Except for this morning when I was greeted to an inch of snow and temps in the mid 20s. Admist this change in seasons I started mine. Sunday March 1st marked the beggining of archery season for me.

After not shooting my bow for two months I have picked it back up and begun shooting blank bale in my basement. While I strongly agree with the mindset of year round practice, I felt I needed to take a break from constant shooting. And I hoped to start strength training and up my poundage this year. While I started off strong on the strength training, I have slacked off for the last month due to the burden of school.

I'm lucky enough to have a basement in which I can shoot and it happens to be just about 10 yrds long. Aside from blank bale shooting I can step back a bit and target shoot. This setup is perfect when I'm pressed for time or it is too dark to shoot outside at my local range or the proshop is closed.

Here are a few shots of my practice space. As you can see I manage to squeeze in 10 yrd shots. You can also see my crudely fashion paper tuner. It gets the job done, however, for a good paper tuner check out this Bowcast Blog, by Matthew Burrows.

Last Day of my Montana Game Damage Hunt for Elk

Well after an unsucsesfull weekend of hunting last weekend, and a pummelling in school that did not allow me to hunt at all during the week, I was excited to head out and try and hunt some elk on the last afternoon of my game damage hunt.



















As I stated before I was allowed to hunt on three pieces of property and I could glass them from various roads around the area. So I headed out to look for elk on these properties.



















I was dismayed, after some driving and glassing I couldn't find any elk on the property that I was allowed to hunt. I was even further dismayed when I found about 75 elk on piece of property conveniently located between the three pieces of property that I could hunt.

















These elk were a ways from the property that I could hunt and would not be heading that way before dark.
This kind of put a damper on the hunt, so I glassed up these elk for a while and headed home.

I took these photos through a pair of binoculars with my handheld camera. The process is called digiscoping and I first heard about it on Bowcast on the this podcast.

Well that is it. That puts and end to my big game hunting season for 2008-2009. Now all I can say is bring on turkey season.

Montana, Elk Game Damage Hunt: First Two Days

So Saturday the 7th was the first day of my game damage hunt. I had been out a few mornings and evenings before the hunt, and did some glassing from the road, and was pleased to find elk on both of the properties that I could hunt on during the game damage hunt. After a restless night of sleep I woke up and headed out for what I hoped would be a great morning of hunting.




















When I awoke it was lightly snowing outside and I took this as a good sign. Unfortunately when I got to my hunting grounds I was greeted by a ground hugging fog. The property that I was hunting was mostly open ground so I didn't have to many trees for reference. These are vertigo inducing conditions and made it virtually impossible to hunt. And my rangefinder was not liking these conditions as well.



















For reference the first picture is of the ground in front of me. This second picture is of the sky.




















This gives you and idea of what I was up against. Needless to I decided to head home until this fog lifted. I never cut a track in the fresh snow while I was in the fog, and once the fog lifted I didn't glass up any elk on the properties that I could hunt.
























So I returned for an evening hunt. I setup in an ambush position near a well beaten elk path. I spent the remainder of the evening heavily glassing for elk heading my way. And watches a heard of elk across the valley from me on property that I was not allowed to hunt.



















And while I never managed to see any elk on the property I was hunting. I was able to watch a beautiful Montana winter evening unfold before my eyes.

Sunday morning I was again greeted with ground hugging fog so I waited for the evening hunt. Once again I didn't see any elk, but was treated to one of mother nature's s beautiful light shows!

Game Damage Hunt Preperation; Lead Sled

My game damage elk hunt is a just a few weeks away. Since I didn't rifle hunt this Fall I figured I better get some practice in. So I borrowed a buddies lead sled and headed out the range. My .270 was shooting good at 100 yrds, and I took a few shots off the bench with out the sled, once I had it dialed in.




















Next week I plan on dialing the rifle in at 200 yrds. Given the open nature of the area I will be hunting I'm thinking that I will be taking a shot longer than I'm used to while hunting the forests of Western Montana. However, the hunting area is in close proximity to a few subdivisions so single lethal shot is of utmost importance, and I will need to have my shooting skill it top form and make sure that I execute a good shot.

Venison Breakfast Sausage

Now that the regular hunting season has ended a great way to savor the hunt is to do some game processing. I didn't have much time to grind and process my deer while butchering this Fall, so last night I decided to grind up some venison for breakfast sausage. I also decided to try out the meat grinding attachment that is available for Kitchen Aid mixers. While I do own a grinder from Northern Tool, I was given this Kitchen Aid attachment and had never used it.

























I selected a recipe from "The Venison Sausage Cookbook", put out by Lyons Press. I picked this book up a few years ago and I think it is great. It is loaded with great sausage recipes, as well as step by step directions, and recipes for your already made sausage. I had four pounds of venison and added a little less than two pounds of pork, add to that a nice assortment of spices and your ready to grind.



















The first grind looked pretty good.

The Kitchen Aid mixer did pretty good. I wouldn't want to have this as my primary grinder, but I think it would suffice for someone who wanted to make small batches of burger or sausage every now and then. I don't think that it would handle the rigors of grinding 20 pounds of venison into burger or sausage, in one shot. Clean up was pretty easy, but I did feel the plastic parts didn't clean up as easily as the metal parts on my other grinder.

The second grind is when things started coming together.

The real moment of truth came this morning when it came time to throw a few patties in the frying pan.

It turns out that I will be savoring this hunting for many mornings to come.