Deer Hunting

Sunday morning, my brother and I decided to walk in on the PLOTs near the boat landing. I went to the NE corner, while he went to a rockpile close to the SE corner. I saw a buck come running over the hillside off to the south and it ran right by him (he said it was just a spike). A bit later I heard 2 shots and saw my brother stand up and motion me over – he had shot 2 does that were about 40 yds away in the CRP. That was the good news, the bad news was we were over ½ mile away and would have to drag them out – uphill. It took about an hour, and we were pretty tired, but it was good to have 3 deer hanging.

After breakfast at the cafe, we quickly walked the farmstead that I missed the doe in again (and saw nothing), then spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon butchering up the 3 deer. We then drove around for a few hours until sunset before heading home and putting a cap on opening weekend.

We were really disappointed at the number of deer. From what I heard from other hunters and read on message boards, we weren’t alone. There’s a number of things that could have contributed: nearly full moon (deer maybe feeding all night and bedding all day), super-warm temps in the 60s (less activity), farmers all in the fields combining soybeans (less hunters), and standing corn (providing a deer sanctuary). Still, we harvested 3 deer and hopefully can find Dad a buck before the season is over. I also still have a doe tag.

Deer Hunting

Saturday morning, we decided to drive around and scout a bit, trying to locate some deer to push. My brother and I picked that unposted land to the southwest to watch (where we saw nothing yestesrday, but had lots of cattails). A bit zealous in trying to get further out than we should, we got the pickup pretty stuck and had to get Dad to come give us a pull.

A farmer friend of Dad said we could hunt his land near the lake, so we drove over there but found it was now surrounded by lake cabins and didn’t really have anything worthy of hunting. We then headed over to a shelterbelt on some of our land south of town, and my brother and I pushed it but kicked nothing out. I didn’t even see much sign in there.

A local farmer was out chopping corn just west of a long shelterbelt that we have hunting access to, so we decided to push a bit of that, hoping there’d be something in there. Dad posted on the west end of a short north-south shelterbelt while my brother and I pushed it. My brother spotted a doe that ran down, but Dad never saw it. Somebody’s really hitting this area hard bowhunting – there were 3 bait piles, 2 treestands and a ground blind in there.

For the last walk before the evening hunt, we targeted some PLOTs land on the north shore of of the lake, near an abandoned farm that a local outfitter owns (and has an elevated stand in). It was a long walk and again, no deer – but lots and lots of beds. This is a piece of property we’ll keep in mind for future hunts, even though this wasn’t successful. It’s over a mile long section of CRP grass, with a few trees, right on the shore of the lake.

We were starting to get pretty discouraged by now, with no deer and a lot of miles under our boots. For the evening, Dad again wanted to sit in the corn, and my brother and I went to our aunt’s. He went more into the cattails, while I went and sat near the old abandoned farmstead on the south end. As he dropped me off, 3 does got out of the slough right next to the house (before my gun was loaded). The only other deer I saw all night was a small forkhorn that ended up heading over near him, and chasing 3 does around. He was able to harvest one of the does, but had to drag her out a long ways through the cattails. Dad didn’t see a deer.

We headed back to Dad's, skinned the doe out, then went up to the bar for a few beers and some pizza before retiring early again.

2009 Deer Opener

DAY ONE: 11/6/09

2009 was the first year since 2002 that my brother and I have deer hunted together, and the first in probably 15 years that Dad and I have hunted together. In an effort to try to get a whitetail buck tag while applying for a mule deer tag, my brother and I must apply in the same zone and chose the unit he and Dad hunt in because it holds a chance of getting a whitetail buck on the 2nd drawing, the unit I hunt in normally with my in-laws, holds no chance of a whitetail buck on the 2nd drawing.

My brother and I left at about 9pm (my daughter had staking lessons, and my brother got stuck in line for 3 hours with his kids waiting for an H1N1 vaccination shot) and got to Dad's about 10:30, had a few beers, and got to bed around midnight. The next morning, we scouted the PLOTs land near the boat landing (which butts up against some prime hunting land that we don't have access to), but saw nothing, so we had some breakfast, and headed up to some good PLOTs land that looked to have a lot of promise to claim that as our starting point for the 2009 deer opener. There was a Wisconsin group waterfowl hunting behind it, but they pulled out at about 11am, and we had 3 groups come to try to claim that place as their own while we were waiting, including a local farmer (whom we know) who drove through it to go post his CRP behind it. This made us a bit skeptical, coupled with the shooting the waterfowlers had done, that the land would hold deer – but our next option (PLOTs on a hill just south of us) already had someone sitting there, so we stuck it out.

Just after noon, we started the walk, while Dad posted – I never saw a thing, but Dad shot at a small buck, and my brother saw 2 does run out – he took a 200yd shot, but we didn’t get anything. Not a terrible start to the season though. Those does ran south into some tall grass near the lakeshore (which was still PLOTs), so my brother and I walked that as well, hoping to kick them up, but they must have gotten away somewhere.

Next, we went down to some unposted land to the southwest that looked promising – a nice thick shelterbelt, along with lots of cattails. My brother and I walked the shelterbelt and Dad posted – again, nothing.

For the last walk of the day, we went to a local farmer's place north of Dad's and walked the pine trees near his house. I had a doe run out to me at about 40 yds and missed her somehow, so I also blew a chance at a deer, like Dad had earlier.

As it was nearing 3:30pm, we planned to have Dad sit at one of our fields, near the rock pile where we had a picture of a buck on the game cam, and figured the drainage ditches in there would be busy (it’s got un-harvested corn on it, as does the neighbor's just south of there). My brother and I planned to watch my aunt's old abandoned farm from the south side but on the way, saw a doe standing in the field near a neighbor's farmsrtead. We drove up in the yard, and he wasn’t home (it also wasn’t posted but it was close to his house so we were going to ask), so my brother got set up for about a 150 yd shot, but missed.

My brother and I came in on the north side of my aunt's and spread out, I to the east and him to the west. We saw a total of only 3 deer in the cattails tonight – the closest to me was 329 yds, while my brother had about a 150 yds shot at one, but she was in the middle of water. Dad had a gun malfunction, causing him to not get a shot at a small 4x4 at the cornfield (broadside at 40 yds). He also saw 3 does.

Overall, we were disappointed at the deer number on opening day, but had we shot OK, Dad would have had a buck, and my brother and I each would have had a doe.

Duck Hunting

Last night, Dad and I put up some game cams at a couple key locations for deer season – the first time the 3 of us will hunt deer together in roughly 10 years. We were both pretty tired and beaten down from the way the snows treated us yesterday so the plan for today was to do an old-fashioned water hunt, at one of two quarters of our land, that have some perennial sloughs in them – one looked more promising than the other on the nightly drive, so we tied up some decoys and weights and used the ATV to haul ourselves in to stand in waist deep water and hope for some early morning duck action.

It was great to be back in there – my brother and I used to hunt that spot a lot as kids, and I bet I hadn’t hunted this field in over 10 years. For some bonus nostalgia, as I was trudging through thick reads with a bag of decoys on my back in the dark (of course I forgot a flashlight this morning), I came across 2 old decoys that I’m sure my brother and I put out sometime back in the early 90s – brought back some good memories as I got ready to try to make some more.

About 15 minutes after sunrise, the birds started coming in and we got some shooting. The highlight of the morning was a flock of about 200 lesser Canada geese that flew over us, just within range, but managed to elude us. After we had a half dozen birds, we talked it over and decided that shooting a couple more wasn’t going to make the morning any more successful so we picked up a bit early, even though there were still some birds flying. We got a great mixed bag – some of these are referred to as “garbage ducks”, but I hadn’t shot any of these species in a number of years. We shot a nice drake widgeon, 2 redheads (I’ve probably only shot 2 total in my lifetime) – one of which would have been taxidermy-worthy if a misplaced BB hadn’t wrecked the head, 1 shoveler and a scaup.

We headed back to Dad's, cleaned the ducks, had breakfast, and met up with my brother for the drive home.

This will probably wrap up the waterfowl season for me this year – I remember the “good ol’ days” when I hunted 10+ days per season, but nowadays 3 or 4 times out is enough. I’ve grown to like deer hunting, particularly bowhunting, and pheasant hunting quite a bit in the past 5 years and hope to spend some time doing that yet this Fall.

Snow Goose Hunting

My brother and I had planned this weekend a few weeks in advance, in hopes that that migration would be in full swing and we could get a chance to try out the snow goose decoys on the always elusive snow and blue geese this Fall. It’s been a number of years since we’d done a big spread (and a lot more years since we’d done it successfully), but with plans of a Saskatchewan hunt next season, we had snow geese on our minds this weekend.

Dad scouted during the week a few days and found tons of snows on a neighbor's field just south of where Dad used to live (and just east across the road from some of our land), but his hired man lives on the farm on that field and wanted $200/gun to hunt it. There were also a good number of geese, according to Dad, back on the field we hunted last weekend and some huntable numbers of Canadas further south on some unposted land. Nothing in the area of snows and blues on a field we could access. One thing he did find was mud, lots of it. They got 5” of early snow, and rain nearly every day this week, making the fields nearly impossible to drive in. But, we had planned this hunt and decided to go for it anyways.

My brother and I took off early from work at about 3:30 and took off north (an area that seems to always have more snows than further south where we usually hunt ducks and Canada geese). After quite a few miles of seeing nothing, we got a text message from a friend, saying there were snows back in our normal hunting area, so we headed back and found a field with about 1,000 just north of a very large body of water, on land owned by another friend's father. It was stubble, but obviously muddy, and not posted – and our minds were made up as soon as we saw the flocks circling from a couple miles away – this is where we’d be in the morning. The landowner and his wife drove by while we were looking and said to go for it, so we agreed to meet back at 4AM to start putting up all the decoys along with our buddy's cousin and a friend of his.

This was probably the hardest I’ve ever worked on a field setup – ½ mile out, with one ATV, 5 guys and around 300 decoys, including all the windsocks, flyers, shells and Canada and duck full-bodies we had, along with 3 of the new “goose kites” – similar to a robo-duck, they spin but you fly them like a kite.

The first flock came off very early, and landed in the field….400 yards southeast of us. Birds were constantly in the air for the next hour as flock after flock of 50-100 snow geese came in and landed where the first flock had gone. It was a healthy reminder to us of how hard these birds are to decoy. We were pretty disappointed, with around 8 ducks cooperating just enough to not make the morning a total disappointment. Both my brother and I stated that the next time we do that, we’ll be north of the border – it’ll be a LONG time before we do that south of the border again, the birds are just too wary.

Oh well, that's why it's called hunting and not shooting.....

Long Overdue

It's been a crazy year, and I haven't been out in the field much at all - a couple small summer fishing outings, but for the most part - it's been work and family. But, Fall is here and it's time to get back into it. So, enough with that, time for the first hunting journal entry of 2009.....




My brother's been renting out his cabin to hunters, so he made it out to check on the cabin and hunt last weekend – they did OK with some ducks, and jump-shot one blue goose, but no geese to speak of. The hunters left Saturday, so he headed out in the afternoon to do some scouting, and I’d meet up with him and Dad at the cabin that evening after my wife and daugter got home from a birthday party.


Scouting went good – they found a great field of mallards near the cabin on the north shore of a very large body of water and it wasn’t posted. They also found a couple hundred geese on my great aunt's farm (which has been vacant for probably 50 years now), which we had posted. I got out to the cabin around 9pm (and forgot my robo-duck), we had some food and a few beers and went to bed.


At 5am, a buddy met us at the cabin and we left for the un-posted field, only to find it had somehow gotten posted in the last 8 hours. It was disappointing, but thank goodness we had a backup plan – my great aunt's. After getting setup, it started snowing and the temp dropped like crazy into the 20s – but it was great waterfowling weather. The ducks (what there were of them) cooperated, decoying nicely and allowing us to bag a dozen of them, including a couple very nicely colored northern drake mallards and a nice drake widgeon. The geese, however, kept flaring (one trio came in pretty close, but our buddy was hiding too much in his blind to see them and the rest of us didn’t have a shot without putting him in harm’s way so we didn’t fire). On the bright side, there was a LOT of birds in the air all morning, including a couple flocks of snows that actually worked our spread for about 30 minutes – my brother and I got tired from all the calling we did, and in the end they left, but that’s as close as I’ve gotten to a committed flock of snows in a long, long time.




The plan is to head back out on Friday, stay with my Dad (there's a new group of hunters at the cabin this weekend) and hunt them again Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully, we can find a flock of snows and blues worth decoying, and we can unleash our full arsenal of decoys on them. In addition, today was probably the first time my Dad and I have waterfowl hunted together in over 10 years together, which was nice.

Ice Fishing the Northwest Angle (3 days)

Day 1 - 2/13/09

Ten of us returned to Angle Inn Lodge on Oak Island in the Northwest Angle for 3 days of fishing. We left Grand Forks at 6AM and got to the lodge around 10AM on a beautiful calm, sunny day.

By about 10:30AM we were in 4 separate fish houses. Within 15 minutes, my buddy (there were 3 in my house) had a keeper walleye on and it only got better from there. The fishing was so great this weekend I didn’t bother to try asking the other houses detailed questions on how many fish they caught, but tried to keep track of our house. On Friday, from 10:30 to 5:30, we caught about 30 walleye and sauger of which about 10 were really nice keepers (we threw 12 and 13 inch walleye back). Another house with 2 in it had the best luck this day catching about 15-20 nice keepers between the two of them, having good luck with a jigging rap tipped with both a minnow head and a full minnow on the trebble as the bait. The rest of the houses did OK - not fabulous, but not bad either.

The trick for us on Friday was aggressive jigging, pounding the bottom, and slowly lifting – using primarily medium sized, non-rattle spoons – which outperformed deadsticks by a wide margin. I personally did the best on a pink Frostee, going about 30 minutes of not being able to keep it in the water, but we also had some luck on kastmasters, Swedish pimples and other similar spoons.


After a little poker after dinner, we were all in bed around 10PM, ready to hit it hard the next day.




Day 2 - 2/14/09


Day two of the trip can best be described as Heaven On Earth. Up until today, my best day of walleye fishing ever was the first day of our first trip to the angle in 2006, when we had our limits easily by noon. Today, it was that good all day long. My house iced well over 75 fish with over 30 of them being 15” and over, along with a few bonus jumbo perch.

One of the other houses in our group (with 2 guys in it) – they estimated they caught around 60. We caught 35+ walleyes of 15" and over today – it was just a fantastic day of fishing – the best day any of the three of us had ever had (same goes for the house with 2 in it). The other houses did OK, but not as good as ours - and they moved around a bit. Angle Inn had extra houses for us, and one group actually tried 3 different houses.

I’d estimate that our group caught around 175 fish this day – close to the total for last year’s trip, with us catching around 75 and the other hot house catching about 60.

There wasn’t a presentation or key lure today – we caught them on buckshots, jigging raps, chubby darters, plain hooks, standup jigs, and pretty much everything else – both jigging and deadsticking. We did, however, fish extremely hard – I tried probably 25-30 lures this day – if I marked a fish and it followed the jig and didn’t bite, I changed up and the fish took it.

I had a lot of fun catching 7 or 8 on a non-baited firetiger perch Salmo chubby darter with a fly knot – they’d hammer it as I dropped it and I could throw it back down the hole right away without re-baiting it. I had a ton of luck on a chartreuse standup jig as well. One buddy did great on a pink walleye weapon (he bought from a vendor at a show – I’ve never seen them before, kind of like a lead head with a spinner), the other did great on a buckshot with a dropper hook that’s a cross between a gold Genz Worm and a Northland Weasel (I’ve also never seen this exact jig before). The fish were super-aggressive today, the kind of fishing where it was hard to keep the lines in the water.

Saturday night, most of us were in bed pretty early again after a couple hands of poker, and a fantastic fish fry comprised of some of the smaller eater-sized keepers from Friday.








Day 3 - 2/15/09


Most of the guys fished a few hours and headed for home at noon, while the 3 of us in my house stayed until early afternoon. We fished until 2:30, today was slower that Saturday, with more smaller fish – but it was still good fishing.



We had 8 keepers, 6 over 15”, and 3 more bonus perch today. Lots of small sauger today, in contrast with Saturday when 75% of the fish we reeled in were keeper-sized. We finished the day with about 30 fish between us, but most were small throwbacks. Today, deadsticking was the key – and we had the best luck with small gold jigs – Genz worms primarily (the medium sized one). We also got into a few stinky tulibee today. After a bit of a delay at the video phone on Young’s Bay, we were on the road and home at about 8pm.

We had 6-7 fish in the slot this year – one rookie (first time not only to the angle, but ice fishing in general) had the biggest, a 24” fish. The guy that had the farthest drive (from Bismarck) had 2 fish in the slot, as did one of the guys in my house (I did not catch anything over 20"). We had lots of small dink throwbacks as well, but we didn’t keep any marginal fish – our limits were comprised of 15” and over walleyes and nice saugers. I totally lost track of how many solid 16” walleyes we caught this trip – it was that good.

This was the best trip to date, but every trip up there has been fantastic fishing – we’re already booked for 2010. Estimated fish totals for the trip were 285 walleye/sauger, 20 perch and 15 tulibee. My house caught about 130 of those fish. I personally caught around 50 on the following lures:
1. 15 on a chartreuse standup jig
2. 10 on a pink frostee
3. 6 on perch chubby darter
4. 5 on a plain hook
5. 3 on a gold/red doodlebug spoon
6. 3 on a gold genz worm
7. 2 on a gold buckshot
8. 2 on a perch/gold jigging rap
9. 2 on a zip
10. 2 on a white fat boy

Ice Fishing Upper Red Lake (3 days)

Day 1 - 1/30/09
Two years ago I gave my brother and Dad a weekend in a sleeper house on Lake of the Woods for Christmas, and we had a great time. My Dad thought it was a good idea to make this an annual thing (although we didn’t find time last year), and this year we decided to try Upper Red Lake, where my brother had great fishing 2 years ago at a bachelor party on ice. He said the fishing was very good (although not spectacular), but all the fish were nice, with 16-20” being the common fish. I had high expectations for something similar, along with the dreams of slab crappies.

I was in charge of booking an outfitter, and after about 10 calls, I found two operations with openings. From research on the Internet, I had found 2-3 of the top respected outfits (who were full) so I called one of them and he recommended one of them, Pat Foster and Club Red – so I booked 3 days, 2 nights with him.

We met Pat 8 miles out on Hillman’s road at about 10:30 AM on Friday, after the 4 hour drive to Waskish, and 1 mile further (near the reservation line at 10 miles out) we found the house – it was very crude, with gas lines running on the inside, but we made the most of it and it was warm. At 11am we were fishing.

While setting up Dad’s bobber, I heard a “bloop” and realized my cell phone, which was in my sweatshirt pocket, had fallen down the ice hole. 10 minutes later, I forgot about it as my brother reeled in the first fish of the trip – an 18.5” walleye. It was in the slot, but a nice fish and it got me excited for the rest of the weekend.

The rest of the day, however, was VERY slow. My brother caught 1 more fish, my Dad caught 3, and I caught 1. Out of them all, 1 was a 12” walleye (that Dad caught) that we kept. After some good supper and a card game, we set up the rattle reels and hit the bed early. We had 2 rattles go off in the middle of the night, but didn’t land either fish.





Day 2 - 1/31/09
Day two was slightly better than day one, but we fished extremely hard this day (my forearms are sore as I type this from all the jigging). My brother and I probably tried close to 100 jigs by the end of this day, in which we managed 8 more fish (5 walleyes between 12” and 13”) and 1 nice perch. Still very slow when you consider we fished from 7am until 8pm. We then decided to go to bed after cards at about 8:30, when a rattle reel took off and Dad landed a 12” walleye. I turned the Vexilar on, and marked a lot of fish (some of which I could make come up off the bottom), so Dad and I set up again and fished for 2 more hours (my brother was so exasperated at the poor fishing that he stayed in bed), but to no avail – we didn’t land another one.

The weather this evening was abysmal – 50mph winds, although warm, accompanied by freezing rain (there was a number of fish houses that had damage). The wind howled through the house like crazy, almost mocking us for daring to fish.






Day 3 - 2/1/09

Since we were in bed so early, we got up early to fish well before sunrise, at about 5:30AM. I was able to catch a small 12” walleye this morning, and we marked a few around sunrise, but it remained slow. We decided to head out early and stop in Blackduck for breakfast on the way home. We got home around 1pm, and I gave the kids snowmobile rides before settling down to watch the Superbowl. Next year, I think we’re going to try and find a sleeper house on the NW Angle.

I checked a number of reports when I got back, and it was slow everywhere on Red this weekend. A bit disturbing were the way some of these poor reports were worded, as if to say that this isn’t that out of the ordinary on Red Lake. Reports like, “managed 20 fish between 8 guys over 3 days – enough for a few to eat.” 20 fish between 8 guys is less than 1 fish per person per day, and there’s no sugar-coating that. Other reports include 12 fish for 24 guys over 3 days, 1 fish for 3 guys over 3 days and 3 fish for 3 guys over 3 days (in reality, our report was the best I saw from this weekend).

I think it's safe to say that we'll be making our annual trip to a different lake next year, or at the least, through a different outfitter if we were to return to URL.


Total fish for the trip was 15, I caught 4 (two 12” walleye, two dinks), my brother caught 5 (one 19”, one 18.5”, one 12”, two dinks) and my Dad caught 6 (one nice perch, two 12” walleye and a 13”, and two dinks).

We caught them on the following:
· 4 on a plain hook and splitshot
· 2 on a blue forage minnow standup
· 1 on an orange jigging rap
· 2 on a shrimpo (curved genz worm)
· 2 on red doodlebugs
· 2 on demon spoons
· 1 on a black ratso
· 1 on a kastmaster

Ice Fishing Jigging Techniques

Here are a few techniques I have that has helped me catch fish through the ice. I've learned these through the years (the development of underwater cameras has really helped us see exactly how our lure responds to what our rod is doing), some by trial and error, some from the best ice fishermen in the world that I've had the privilege of fishing with due to my upbringing near Devils Lake, ND.

First off, a few "rules" that I jig by:

1) Except for the occasional enticement lift or flutter, I don't jig with a full minnow - I use a minnow head predominantly for walleyes when I'm jigging (full minnow on a deadstick) and either spikes, waxworms, a minnow head, or perch eyes for perch.

2) If you tie on a Buckshot or Rattl'r or some other rattle lure - make sure you're jigging it aggressively enough to make it rattle - otherwise, you're not really using it properly (you've got plenty of other spoon-type lures to choose from that don't rattle if you're going to jig lightly).

3) The #1 mistake I see made by ice anglers - MATCH YOUR LURE TO YOUR ROD. You don't use the same rod to fish a rat finkee or microjig as you do a Salmo Chubby Darter or even a heavy Genz Worm. You want a rod stiff enough to have backbone for the target species, but you also need to be able to feel the fish and let the rod flex when you've got a fish on (to prevent it getting off or breaking the line). I like to hold the rod parallel to the floor with my jig tied on and I want the rod to be straight, but to bend when I pull slightly on the jig. If it doesn't bend at all, the rod is too stiff for that lure. If it bends without you pulling on it at all, it's too weak. Quite often, I see guys missing fish because of too heavy of a rod. In addition, if you're using a rattle jig with too weak of a rod, it's impossible to make it rattle down there - you're rod is giving too much to sharply lift the lure up and down, which is required to activate the rattle.

4) Rod actions between manufacturers are NOT consistent. You can't go by a rule like "medium" for walleye, "lite" for perch. I've got perch rods that are medium-heavy and walleye rods that are light (from different manufacturers). Similarly, I may use a "walleye" rod for perch if I'm using a large lure (like a fireye minnow as a flasher spoon above a hook - too heavy of a setup for a lite or ultralite rod)

The biggest trick when you're fishing, is to figure out how to catch the fish (seems obvious, but how many guys sit out there all day using there "go-to" lure under a bobber all day, not catching a fish, only to come to shore and find out the guys around him hammered them with a different presentation?) Then, what do these guys do next time out? They tie on the lure that other guys had success with last weekend, and hope for the best.

Quite often, when I'm fishing with non-hardcore friends (I've got about 3-4 friends, and my brother, who all take ice fishing very seriously - it's great fishing with guys like this because we always seem to be able to find and trigger the fish, because we throw everything in the book at them all day long), I end with the best success of the day. I may not catch the first fish or the biggest fish, but I usually catch the most fish - and very often, everyone at the end of the day has a lure tied on that I've been using (it may have taken me a while to figure out what that lure or presentation was, but I usually find it). I'm not trying to brag or anything, I'm just saying that lethargy breeds failure - keep trying these different presentations, and different lures, and even if you can't figure the fish out - you'll stay occupied all day, and you'll go home KNOWING that the fish weren't biting that day, not wondering if Lure X would have worked or if jigging would have worked better than a deadstick.

1) Tease and Lift: Drop the lure down, but don't let it hit the lake bottom - stop it about 3" above the fish. Wobble it a bit for about a second, then slowly (very slowly) begin lifting it. Continue lifting it until you're about 6' off the bottom. Very often, fish will think the "food" is leaving and race up and hit it.

2) Aggressive Rattling: Using a rattle lure (Buckshot spoons are the most common) - rattle it very aggressively a few inches above the fish. Continue doing this until your wrist is sore - oftentimes, it seems to "tick off" the fish, and they eventually come up and hit it. One important thing to note on rattling in general, if you rattle a fish in and he comes up to your lure, DON'T STOP RATTLING! It's very likely the rattling that got his attention, and the great thing about this presentation is that it's very easy (if you've got the rid action rod and are rattling correctly) to sense a strike - you'll stop feeling the lure that you've been rattling.

3) Shaking: This is what Dave Genz calls "pounding" in a lot of his articles. You're trying to "vibrate" the lure - not nearly as aggressive as you jig a rattling spoon. This is basically done with your hand and wrist - almost like having the shakes from too much caffeine. It's a very subtle movement of the hand that makes the lure react this way and it's almost impossible to tell that you're doing anything. I have success by first tensing up my entire arm (flexing, if you will), and I find it easier to control this subtle shaking technique when my muscles are already flexed. If you're moving your arm at all on this, you're not doing it right.

4) Bottom Bounce: Pretty typical, you "pound" the bottom - maybe lift it up a ways first and then just let the lure go. You want a bit of a violent "crash" between the lure and the lake bottom since the point of this is to stir up sediment from the lake floor, making it seem as if baitfish are feeding to your targeted predator.

5) Standard: What most guys call jigging. Lift the lure 4" or so and set it back down, with long pauses between. I often will occasionally jig my deadstick like this if I'm not having luck leaving it completely stationary.

6) Tronson Spaz: I've been on the lake with Tony Dean, Dave Tronson, Jason Mitchell and have participated in Ice Team trap attacks with some very serious, hardcore fishermen. Noone comes close to Dave Tronson, one of the founding fathers of Devils Lake's famed Perch Patrol. Dave recently passed away, and I'm thankful for the many things my brother and I were able to learn from him over the years. I've never seen anyone fish like this man - he could "follow" a school of perch, picking up and moving while the bite was in full swing, only to get ahead of the school and continue catching fish while the rest of the group tapered off. It was very common to see a lot of guys sitting in the parking lof of the baitshop when he was inside, waiting to follow him out on the lake to see where he was fishing. One thing I'll never forget was a day on Black Tiger Bay when my brother and I were fishing perch - we were marking lots (like Christmas Tree on the Vexilar lots) but not having great luck. Dave pulls up and says, "You boys found my school this morning, good for you!" He then pops a hole out his pickup door, hops in the seat and begins pulling in fish after fish after fish. 5 minutes later, we hadn't caught anything, and Dave pulled about a dozen out of the hole, we asked him "what's the secret". He sheepishly replied with a smile on his face, "Watch this" - he proceeded to lift the rod up above his head (probably 4' off the bottom) and have what looked like a seizure - the most violent jigging action that he could physically perform, for about 5 seconds. He then slowly dropped the rod back down and before he could get within a foot of the bottom, a fish would come up and hit it. Besides that day, I've only had marginal luck with this presentation, and I oftentimes wonder how many "secret techniques" Dave had, but usually give it a try, for nostalgia sake if nothing else. I'll be honest, I'd have never come up with that one on my own.

Do you have any other techniques you've had luck with?

Help Me, I'm an Ice Fishing Lure Addict

I'm extremely excited about my upcoming trips to Upper Red Lake (12 days) and the Northwest Angle (26 days). I've created a countdown on my Google Homepage, Armor-All'd my Vexilar, and just got back from buying another $50 worth of ice fishing jigs that I flat out don't need. I feel like a kid in a toy store when I'm in the fishing section, with all of these shiny, colorful, glow-in-the dark little "toys". I feel like I have to have every one (and of course, two of them, nothing worse than having a great day on a particular jig and then a northern bites it off - or, if I'm feeling really generous, I can loan it out to my fishing partner).

You can see how crazy I am - I keep my micro-jigs in the metal flybox (on a serious note, this works GREAT - I can fit about 250 jigs in this little box and carry it in my back pocket), and have 3 storage bins in my tackle box - one for "miscellaneous jigs" (that are too big to fit in the flybox), one for dropper rigs and spoons, and one for rattle lures and crankbaits. Of course, it wouldn't be complete without around 100 sticker decals highlighting the name of each one (and another sticker on the bottom of the case showing which ones are GLOW and which aren't - really handy if you're chasing crappie or burbout at night).

You know it's bad when you're in Scheels and "looking for a new lure" means trying to find one that you don't already have.

My Top Ice Fishing Lures

I've updated my stats on the left side of the screen to show you what my top lures have been over the past 5 years on perch and walleye. As far as bait goes, I've got the most perch on a full minnow (121), then waxworms (81), then minnow head (25) and spikes (25), a few on perch eyes and 1 on artificial (Berkely Gulp!). For walleyes, 312 were caught on a full minnow, 89 on a minnow head, 9 on waxworms, 5 on spikes, and 1 on perch eyes.

It's important to know how I fish to use these numbers to your advantage. Number 1, I never deadstick (fish below a bobber) with anything but a full minnow. I very rarely jig with a full minnow (I may occasionally jig a deadstick, but if I'm jigging, it's with a minnow head or waxworms or spikes). When I'm targeting walleyes, I only use minnows or minnow heads. When I'm targeting perch, I often start with waxworms or minnows, but sometimes use perch eyes or spikes.

Futhermore, you should know that I consider spoons to be a jigging type lure, so I don't deadstick things like buckshots (what's the point - you have to jig it to make it rattle) or Rapalas. So, when I'm using these, I'm rigging them with a minnow head if I'm targeting walleyes, and either a minnow head, waxworms or spikes if I'm targeting perch. Lures like Jig-a-bits, plain hooks, and standup jigs are usually fished as a deadstick (under a bobber) with a full minnow. One other thing I do, especially for perch, is to use dropper rigs on jigging spoons - this entails taking the treble hook off of the lure itself (like a buckshot) and tying a 4-6" monofilament piece of line on it, and then tying the hook to that - basically moving the hook from the lure itself to a spot further down. This is a very common practice for perch on Devils Lake, ND and is also fairly common for walleye on Lake of the Woods.

Most of you know what most of these lures are, but here's some pictures so you know. Note that I use different sized lures for panfish vs. walleyes (I've had hooks break on smaller Genz worms, for example, when fishing walleyes - so even if the hook looks big enough to land the fish I'm targeting, I want to make sure it's "beefy" enough.

Genz Worm - I really like Gold, Chartreuse, and Orange





Hali - I've got every one of these dropper lures I can find








Buckshot - Perch and Red are my top colors







Jig-A-Bit - Gold and chartreuse are great on walleyes




Teardrop jig - Chartreuse and White are my favorites, but try lots of colors





Rattl'r - Gold, Silver and Perch are great for walleyes








Swedish Pimple - Hammered Gold/Silver or colored with droppers

2008 Recap

After just returning from my first outing of 2009, it's time for me to recap my past year in the outdoors. The biggest thing I noticed is, much to my dismay, I spent not nearly enough time hunting and fishing this past year. Since 2003, on average, I spent 33 days and 156 hours doing what I love most. This past year, only 22 days and 123 hours. There are a number of factors that influenced this - all out of my control. The first was weather - I can name at least 2 waterfowling trips, the opener of deer season, a saltwater charter in FL, a bowhunt, and 2 December ice fishing trips that I wasn't able to make due to inclement weather. Second, with two young children at home, one of whom is now getting involved with activities, I'm finding the quick "I'm going hunting tomorrow" trips a thing of the past. I need to plan further in advance, and maybe make less, but longer, trips. Hopefully in a few more years, I'll be able to take the little ones with.

Ice Fishing - GOOD

Ice fishing was one exception to my lack of outdoors participation. In the past 5 years, there was only one year I hardwater angled more than 2008. In my 61 hours of ice fishing this past year, which I spent targeting walleys for 35 hours, perch for 19 hours and pike for 7 hours, we iced 237 fish of which 129 were walleyes and 81 were perch. That is my best ever walleye season, and the best perch season for me since 2003 (although, many of the perch were small - caught on Matejcek Dam, 2003 was a banner year on Devils Lake). In fact, I only fished Devils Lake one day this past season (I'm a perch fanatic, but since they've been down I've began exploring other lakes even though I grew up near the shores of Devils and know it well). I fished 2 new lakes in 2008 on the ice - Matecjek (twice, including a tournament that was fun) and Homme Dam. I also returned to Lake of the Woods, and made our always phenomenal (I'm dreaming about it every day - and it's now only 36 days away) trip to the Northwest Angle. For 2009, I've made one trip to Lake of the Woods, have a 3-day trip again planned to the Northwest Angle, am planning a 3-day trip to Upper Red Lake (which I've never fished) and would like to try Devils Lake with my brother, running-and-gunning for perch, at least once.

Summer Fishing-Good

I didn't spend a lot of time fishing this summer, but that was overshadowed by the fact that I caught the biggest walleye of my life in June on Creel Bay of Devils Lake, ND out of my brother's boat, slip-bobbering in the trees - a fat 27" walleye that I would estimate to be between 7 and 8 pounds (my biggest walleye before that was only 5 pounds - which I'm constantly reminded of in my circle of friends that know how many hundreds, maybe even thousands of days I've fished in my life). I also took my daughter fishing again, and made some memories.

Waterfowl Hunting - Below Average

This is the one area of my outdoor time that has dropped dramatically. 5 years ago, I was the biggest waterfowling nut you could find - spending well over a dozen days in the field, logging thousands (that's no exaggeration) of miles scouting for birds, creating huge maps of certain areas in the Spring to keep track of what crops were there, going days on end with 2-3 hours of sleep, spending every spare dime (and hiding a few from the wife) I could find on amassing more decoys - then better decoys, and living for those cupped wings into the spread. As our family has grown (and I've gotten older), putting in 4 hours of scouting, getting up in the wee hours of the morning to setup decoys week after week, with only about a 2-3 hour hunt to follow all that prep work, my time as a waterfowler and passion for it has dropped. If I get two days to go hunting in the Fall, I'm going to try to spend as much time as possible hunting - waterfowling requires so much prep time and scouting in relation to how much time you actually hunt (I'm a field decoy hunter - not a water hunter for the most part) that I have decided to cut back on it. I only got out one time this year - I had a blast, and we got a few birds. I know that had we had one of those fantastic mornings, I'd have been out doing it again - those "limit in a couple hours" days where you just sit there with a full bag and take pictures of birds coming in are what waterfowlers live for - I had a day like that in 2007, maybe I'll get one next year. All that being said, my brother and I have decided to make a multi-day trip to Saskatchewan, Canada in the Fall of 2009 to hunt birds with no distractions - just him and me and our fanatacism for finding the perfect field. It should be fun, and it will guarantee that I'll get in some more time doing what he and I do best, and what first introduced us to hunting - chasing snow geese. I can't wait.

Upland Hunting

For the second straight year I did not hunt pheasants. I did get a contact and access to some private land near Mott, ND and hope to make a trip out there next fall with "ND Goon" (see his blog link on this page) and his dog, along with a few other friends. I really love pheasant hunting, but haven't made time for it - it's just SO busy in the fall with bowhunting, waterfowling, fishing, and upland all open at the same time. I really hope to get out in 2009, in fact I'm going to promise myself that I will. In fact, my wife has indicated that she'd be interested in pheasant hunting so maybe in the next year or two (definitely NOT the same trip that a few buddies and I make together) she and I can have our first hunt together.

Bowhunting - Below Average

I put in a lot, and I mean A LOT, of time scouting around my house this year (within 5-15 miles of it, anyways) and located some nice bucks - but just couldn't obtain landowner permission. Thus, I was forced to hunt the farm only, which is 70 miles away, and I only got out to bowhunt 4 times. I also got a rifle tag this year, so I didn't hunt with a bow during the rut as I spent a lot of time in November trying to pin-down a particular whitetail monster with my rifle. Next year, I hope to be more successful - bowhunting and ice fishing are my 2 favorite outdoor recreations, so I know I'll spend the time scouting - just hopefully I can close the deal in 2009.

Deer Hunting (Rifle) - AVERAGE

I found a specific buck and targeted him over 6 hunts in freezing temperatures, before finally giving up and tagging a decent 4x4. Overall, this season was poor at for our group (although from what I saw on the Internet, it was very good for people overall), with no GREAT deer taken (my niece’s 9-pointer was probably the nicest), 2 of us took management bucks, and one ate his tag (albeit plenty of opportunites for decent bucks, this guy only shoots taxidermy work). This also likely marks the end for a while for me and whitetail hunting at the farm as my brother and I begin applying for mule deer tags in western ND (he went this year and loved it) so I will begin whitetail hunting in a new unit with my brother and Dad (just like old times, too bad that unit doesn't have near the quality whitetails that we have at the farm). I'll be doing this because of the way the ND lottery system works - you get a 1st choice and a 2nd choice. If you don't get your 1st choice, you get "preference points" and a better chance next year at your 1st choice. The unit that the farm is in doesn't have a lot of tags (I only get a buck tag 50% of the year with it as my 1st choice), but the unit that part of my farm is in (with less deer) has a much higher success rate, i.e., I may be able to build up mule deer preference points while still drawing a whitetail buck tag in that unit.

Overall, 2008 was still a good year - hundreds of walleyes - including my best ever, a decent whitetail buck, a few ducks and geese, and great memories. However, I'm really hoping for a banner 2009 with new opportunities on an ice fishing trip to Upper Red Lake, a snow goose hunt in Canada, the challenge of whitetail hunting in a new unit along with the hopes of a western ND mule deer hunt, and the possibility (3 years of preference points now) of drawing a western ND antelope tag. I hope everyone that reads this appreciates these opportunities as much as I do.

Ice Fishing Lake Of The Woods

The day after New Year's, I finally made it out - taking vacation on Friday to head up to Warroad, MN and fish Lake of the Woods with a couple buddies out of Reel Adventures (my second trip with them). We landed around 35 fish (about a 50/50 mix of walleye and sauger), keeping 12+ inch sauger and 14+ inch walleye, we took home 18 fish.

The action was pretty consistent all day long (with a gap from about 2-3pm, but that was late in the day and we were having a few cocktails so you can take that with a grain of salt). We caught a fish every 15 minutes or so all day long - never had a double or fast action, but never went too long with anything. We also caught a bonus eelpout (I'm a big fan of them for tablefare) and cooked him up for lunch to go with our venison bratwurst.

I experimented quite a bit and found deadsticking with the occasional subtle jig worked best. Rapalas, Chubby Darters, Buckshots, and the like were too agressive today, we had the best luck on Gold Jig-a-Bits. I also landed a few on a hamered gold angeleye, gold genz worm, pink demon, but 90% of today's fish game on the gold jig-a-bit (just a curved gold hook with a bit of a leadhead at the end).

We were using chubs, not shiners, and putting a full minnow on (I tried minnow heads and jigging with no success).

Ice Fishing Rentals on Lake of the Woods

I'm getting the itch pretty bad so I did some research to tabulate all of the resorts on Lake of the Woods that rent fish houses in the winter. Maybe I'll save you some legwork - I've included their web site, phone number and the cost of a daily rental vs. a weekend in a sleeper.

I've stayed with a few of these and all have been fine (sometimes we didn't do great fishing, but I wouldn't blame that on the resort without knowing whether or not they move their houses regularly or if the fishing was just poor overall the weekend we were there). I've stayed with Sportsman's, fished in a day house out of Reel Adventures and Zipple Bay, and have stayed multiple weekends at Angle Inn Lodge at the NW Angle (I didn't include angle resorts on here).

Proceessing My 2008 North Dakota Deer

I can see from the blog stats, that this posting gets a lot of hits (where I critiqued some deer processors in the area):

http://ndoutdoorsman.blogspot.com/2007/12/deer-processing-options-in-eastern-nd.html

From that post, you can see that I really like the meat I've gotten from these three processors, with Hickory Hut being slightly better than both L&M and B&E, and each of them offering some unique things (call them for more info). What I'm looking at in this posting, is the financial side of it - I know I like the products from these 3 places, so is one a lot cheaper than the rest? My family loves the bacon burgers from Hickory Hut in Langdon, and noone else makes them - so I'm going to be getting one batch of them. The other thing we really eat a lot of is venison breakfast sausage. I like to have summer sausage and some pepper sticks as well. So, I'm really focusing on those 3 options and the pricing at these places for these products. I mentioned the bacon burgers at Hickory Hut as being unique, well I also really liked the Cheddar jalapeno summer sausage at B&E (the others don't make this) and the terikayi sticks at L&M which B&E and Hickory Hut don't make.

I shot 3 deer this year - a good sized buck and 2 small does, and while I haven't measured yet, I'm estimating that I have about 50 pounds of trimmings (I keep all the backstraps and tenderloins for steak).

Hickory Hut, Langdon

• Pepper Sticks: $60 for 15# batch (10# venison) = $6/#venison
• Summer Sausage: $49.50 for 15# batch (5# venison) = $9.90/#venison
• Smoked Rope Sausage: $67.20 for 27# batch (9# venison) = $7.47/#venison
• Bacon Burgers: $60 for 25# batch (16.5# venison) = $3.64/#venison

B&E Meats, Crookston

• Pepper Sticks: $36 for 10# batch (7# venison) = $5.21/#venison
• Cheddar Jalapeno Summer Sausage: $30 for 10# batch (7# venison) = $4.27/#venison
• Summer Sausage: $26 for 10# batch (7# venison) = $3.70/#venison
• Country Breakfast Ring: $27 for 10# batch (7# venison) = $3.84/#venison

L&M Meats, Grand Forks

• Teriyaki Sticks: $54 for 13.3# batch (10# venison) = $5.35/#venison
• Summer Sausage: $24 for 13.3# batch (10# venison) = $2.38/#venison
• Country Sausage: $24 for 13.3# batch (10# venison) = $2.38/#venison
  

You'll notice right away that the price per pound of venison is much higher on Hickory Hut products. Notice their mix ratio, they mix a lot of beef/pork in so you're paying for that. If you want all of your deer meat made into summer sausage, they're mixing in 10# of meat for every 5# of venison so you're going to get 3x as much meat back, and it's going to taste less "gamey" so maybe your family will be more apt to eat it, but it's also going to cost a lot more.

For my 50 pounds of meat, 16.5 is going towards a batch of bacon burgers at Hickory Hut, so I'm going to use rounded numbers and assume I've got 35 pounds of meat left to make breakfast sausage, summer sausage and maybe some pepper sticks out of:

If I go to Hickory Hut for that, I can get one batch of pepper sticks, 1.5 batches of summer sausage and 2 batches of smoked rope sausage. That will use 35 pounds of venison, cost me $269 and yield me 92 pounds of finished product.

If I go to B&E, I can get 1 batch of Cheddar Jalapeno, 1 batch of regular summer sausage, 2 batches of country breakfast ring, and 1 batch of pepper sticks. That will use 35 pounds of venison, cost me $146 and yield 50 pounds of finished product.

If I go to L&M, I can get 1 batch of summer sausage, 1.5 batches of country sausage, and 1 batch of teriyaki sticks. That will use 35 pounds of venison, cost me $113 and yield 47.25 pounds of finished product

So, the cheapest is L&M in terms of total price to process my 35 pounds of venison. But, what about the price in terms of total finished product received (notice I get 92 pounds of meat back from Hickory Hut, which is 42 pounds more than I'll get back from B&E and 45 pounds more than I get back from L&M). Even if I say my family can eat venison fine without a 2/3 mix of beef/pork, I still need to look at this because if they like it, then I should be happy to get a lot more of it.

In terms of price per pound of finished product:

• Hickory Hut: $2.92/pound
• B&E: $2.92/pound
• L&M: $2.39/pound

So, in reality, L&M is the cheapest to process either in terms of pounds of venison, or pounds of final product. Again, personal preference plays a big role here and that stuff at Hickory Hut is REALLY good (and B&E's stuff is really good too).

For me to process my 3 deer (2 were very small, but all 3 hits were good on these animals and I didn't ruin any full quarters), it will cost me $113 at L&M for a batch of summer sausage (10 pounds of venison, with 1/3 pork added), 1.5 batches of country breakfast sausage (15 pounds of venison, with 1/3 pork added), and 1 batch of teriyaki sticks (10 pounds of venison, with 1/3 beef added). That will give me 13.5 pounds of summer sausage, 20 pounds of breakfast sausage, and 13.5 pounds of teriyaki sticks. I'm also going to get one batch of bacon burgers from Hickory Hut at a cost of $60 (16.5 pounds of venison), which will give me 25 pounds of hamburger patties.

Not Exactly the End I Was Hoping For

The next morning, my nephew and I were back in our respective blinds. This morning was much more active. I had a number of deer come in close, including a nice 5x5 (my nephew actually texted me to let me know a nice deer was coming) - but he was a little "spindly". Although he was a nice deer, I get the feeling he's got room to grow and could be a GREAT deer in a year or two. A bit later, I saw two bucks approaching from the east side of the L-Belt, walking south to north, directly towards me. Before they got too close, I was able to get the binoculars on them - the first was an OK 5x5, the second was a very nice 4x4. I pulled my gun up, but just couldn't do it (I only had a split second, but the shot was there for a brief moment). Afterwards, I kind of kicked myself and decided that if that 4x4 came out I was going to take him. Right after that, my nephew called and asked if I wanted to be picked up (it's about a 3/4 mile walk into this stand) - I told him I wanted another 30 minutes, but it only took 5.

I saw a doe run out of the north side of the L-Belt, slam on her brakes, and look back - I knew there must be a buck following her. I ranged her at 224 yards, and got my gun ready. Sure enough, out walks a large bodied 4x4, walking north (getting further away with each step and already at around 230 yds). I turned up the scope, put the crosshairs in the middle, and squeezed - the large magnum round hit him hard, and he jumped in the air and landed on his back, with all 4 legs up in the air. I was excited, but disappointed at the same time - he wasn't a great deer, but he had some mass, but he definitely was not the one I was looking for. A couple other things factored into my decision - I'd been hunting 5 of the past 8 days, and had been gone 2 of the previous 3 weeks for work on a trip to Florida (and also spent a week in Chicago prior to that). Long story short, I missed my kids, felt a bit bad that I was not helping out enough at home lately, and was getting cold every evening and every night chasing after this big buck that I now had not seen in over a week - I decided to be happy with this harvest.











Now I can't be sure if I had mis-judged the 4x4 that I saw walking with the 5x5 (he was coming up a hill towards me and you can see how his rack kind of points upwards so that may have made him look bigger), but my 2008 buck is no monster. However, I hunted hard for him, he's a mature deer, and I do still have my archery tag to fill. Plus, as I was field dressing him, a doe decided to check me out and stand broadside at 100 yds, so I filled my last doe tag.

With 4 deer on the ground, my nephew and I got our money's worth out of our knives this afternoon. At 3pm, we finally finished - just enough time for a little lunch, and I figured as long as it was late afternoon I'd hunt one more evening before heading home, so I headed to my brother-in-law's ground blind with my bow.

My nephew again had a fair amount of activity, though none of the decent bucks showed themselves tonight. Then, just at sunset, I heard a loud "boom" and thought, "Great, now I get to butcher another deer - he'd better be a good one, I'm not going to get home until midnight now." I was very relieved to see that he had taken a coyote, not a buck. I, on the other hand, was freezing cold (I'm in a very small ground blind, with a bow - which means I can't lay the bow down and I can't move with an arrow nocked or I'll slice a hole in the blind) and I didn't see one single deer all night.

That's the end of the 2008 deer season for me, I'll be back with some posts on how bowhunting goes the rest of the season, and I'd really like to get a pheasant hunt in but with Thanksgiving, Christmas and two little kids that I miss at home all needing some time - it might not happen, we'll just have to see.

I'm also strongly considering applying for mule deer in western North Dakota starting next year. Which means I won't be able to shoot a whitetail buck for about 4 years if I decide to go through with it, unless I switch whitetail hunting units and stop hunting the family farm (it takes about 4 years worth of preference points to get a mule deer buck tag, and whitetail buck tags in my unit are hard to get - impossible if they're not your 1st choice, which mine would not be if mule deer was).







Maybe, just maybe, I'll get a shot at the big guy with a bow.

Some Friendly Competition

Saturday evening my wife and I got a chance to watch the Fighting Sioux hockey team from a suite at Engelstad, so I prolonged the weekend hunting trip until Sunday. With 4 hours of sleep under my belt, I took off west and got to the farm around 5:30AM. I decided to sit from another vantage point SW of the L-Belt and corn near grampa's to try and see the elusive buck. The morning was pretty dead, I saw a total of 7 deer from this location - 5 were bucks, but all were quite small. After some breakfast, my nephew showed up and wanted to fill some doe tags so we walked a long (1.5-mile) cattail slough, proceeding to fall through ice on more than once occasion - and didn't kick up a single deer. Admittedly, we weren't thorough on the drive, and 2 guys is not nearly enough to cover these cattails. My nephew, who was out the evening prior, tells me he saw the buck I'm after - and he is now hunting him as well. In addition, the ground blind I'd set up belongs to him and he is now going to be hunting it (this was all a friendly exchange, as the neighbor to the south near the L-Belt has a blind that we can use as well). That evening, we both set up between the corn and shelterbelt for a chance at him.

My nephew saw quite a few deer, harvesting two does. I had two does within 6 feet of my stand but didn't want to scare any buck that might be ready to come out of the trees, which are only about 30 yds from this stand. I should mention a bit about this stand - it's not exactly a double bull. In fact, it's a large water tank (the kind that farmers use in the Spring to mix water with spray for their crops) with some "windows" cut out of it, and an upside down water cooler for a chair. It does have the added benefit of blaze orange interior, which was a nice crafty touch added by its designer, the quirky neighbor to the south. "That blaze orange on the inside," he told me, "serves two purposes - for one, it makes any would-be poacher think that there's a hunter inside, at least during deer season, and secondly - it gets the deer used to seeing blaze orange inside the windows. For being a quirky guy, this actually made some sense.

After rounding up the does, we headed back to the farm for a few beers and a butchering party, followed by a grand meal of fried backstrap.

Frozen Feet and Bad Timing

The next morning, I got up extra early and headed back to the ground blind over an hour before sunrise - wouldn't you know it, those darn deer were out again. I can't be sure, but I think I spotted the big guy up on the hill when walking to the blind - I scared off about a dozen deer that ran south to the L-Belt.

As I watched the sun rise on the frozen landscape, I was again greeted by a number of does, but only 1 or 2 bucks this morning. I decided to sit a bit longer (even though my extremeties told me it was time to warm up) and it paid off. From my vantage point in the blind I could see the abandoned farm just east of the L-Belt, and the 3 bucks that came out of it. Finally, he came out, at about 9am, chased a couple does and then stood up on a hill for the world to see him. Luckily, noone drove by, and I watched him run off to the south into the neighbor's field. However, things got a little sticky when I spotted another buck - a really nice 5x5 (not the same 5x5 I spotted the night before) - headed my way. Like rutting bucks will do, he was eventually sidetracked by a doe and chased her for a while before heading into grampa's farmyard (when he was in my line of sight, he was right in front of outbuildings and grain bins so luckily, I didn't have to make the choice on whether or not to settle for him instead of the big guy). I assume he eventually headed into the corn.

I got back to the farm, packed up and headed home to watch the kids so my wife could go watch her niece in the Regional volleyball tournament in Mayville (and yes, my kids had backstrap for supper that night). 3 more days and I'll be back. I didn't fill my tag opening weekend, but I accomplished a big goal - I found a deer worth hunting and for me, there's no greater thrill than picking out a certain deer, trying to pattern him (as much as is possible during the rut) and hopefully harvesting him with respect. I also learned that in the case of this particular deer and the habitat he's in, I'm not going to be able to hunt him in the morning since I can't get into my spot without spooking deer. The only way I've got a chance at him is to sneak in to the blind in the afternoon, wait until sunset (trying to stay warm), and hope he comes out at dusk. Hopefully, he's sidetracked enough by his hormones that I haven't scared him off.

Back after next weekend with an update on how well I did what I'm setting out to do.

Trying to Get Close to Him

The next morning, I set up in the trees just west of the old farm, near the SE corner of the corn field (see pic in previous post). The buck had been chasing does in this area the night before, and although the rut was on and he could go anywhere, this was my best spot for cover. Unfortunately, when I got out there, I scared some deer as I walked up the hill that leads from the farm to those trees - not sure of the big guy was out already (this was still in the dark, but I could see the deer scatter with the white background even in the dark), but I never saw him come out this morning. I did see a few other bucks, and they were within 100 yds, but by now I was set on finding the big guy. It was an interesting morning, I was standing with trees around me, but was on a hill in blaze orange, standing up, and had does within 25 yds of me - I'd move to adjust or turn my scope, and they'd put their heads up and look at me, but as long as I stayed perfectly still they eventually went back to their business.

My brother-in-law sat near a field about 1.5 miles SW of where I was at and saw 3 nice bucks, 2 of which he said were huge. We call this field the "quack quarter" due to the amount of quack grass out there. It's not next to a road, so he was about 1/2 mile or more away but said he got a good look at them through his spotting scope. After the deer were done moving this morning, we decided to tackle my ground blind. We took an ATV over, and after nearly getting stuck (there was standing, somewhat frozen water, between the corn rows which we kept falling through) we got to the ground blind and what I was afraid of came to fruition - the blind had collapsed, water had come up, and the blind was frozen in water. I'd somewhat expected this so we used a chisel and hammer I'd brought with to get it out, but it obviously wouldn't fold up real neatly so he hauled it back on the ATV while I stomped through water, ice and mud back to the pickup. We hung it up in the shop to thaw out and it was good to go in 48 hours.

Now this wasn't our first "ground blind" event of the year - the previous weekend, while checking cameras, we found my nephew's double bull went missing - but a brand new Cuddeback game cam was still there right next to it so we ruled out burglary and found it in a cattail slough about 100 yds away. We brough that blind in to the farm last weekend to get it back in shape and by today it was good to go - except we had no stakes for it. Being the rednecks we are, we found some old rebar in the barn - used a chopsaw to cut it into sections, and an acetylene torch to heat them up and bend them into suitable ground blind stakes with 90 degree hooks on the end. I decided that I was too exposed that morning and that the top of the CRP hill between the corn and the L-Belt would be a perfect spot for it so after lunch, we set it up (again, deer were running around in the CRP midday out here which we scared off) and 60 minutes later, somewhat apprehensive about hunting a dark groundblind on a snow white hill that had only been there 1 hour for deer to get used to it, I climbed in to hunt it.

30 minutes into the hunt I had 22 deer within 200 yds of me. I'd brought my spotting scope and tripod so I was checking out every buck to see what they had to offer - and suprisingly there were 2 "late season shooters" - a standard 5x5 (not huge, but not small either) and a decent 4x4 (not huge either, but his browtines were great - almost as high up as his G2s). Then my father-in-law drove up in the yard and all the deer scattered (before I'd had a chance to check them all out) and I saw him - at about 125 yds on a dead sprint heading south to the L-Belt. I grabbed my gun, got the muzzle out of the blind, and he was gone behind a hill.

2008 North Dakota Deer Opener

Another opening weekend of deer season in this great state has come to an end, with 2 weekends remaining for us hunters to try and find that big one we saw this weekend and get him into our rifle scope instead of our spotting scope. Bad weather sure made conditions tough out there. The area I hunt had 6" of rain, 4" of snow, and 2" of ice covering everything (including the downed power lines, contributing to a 24+ hr power outage). Travel down some prairie trails was a bit tough, not wanting to rut up farmers' roads - heck I even used 4x4 on some gravel roads that were just covered in glare ice. I would estimate that the number of hunters was WAY down, based on what I witnessed over the past 3 days, and from what the local bar owner and convenience store clerk told me. Normally there's a big dropoff in hunter numbers from opening weekend towards the following two - however, I expect to see more hunters out this coming weekend than I did on the opener.

With terrible weather on Friday, I made the decision to postpone my season opener until Saturday morning. I left the house at 5am, and pulled into the farm at 6:30 for a cup of coffee and a bit of conversation before taking off with my nephew (who had spotted 3 large bucks the previous night and really wanted to go sit out in a field for them, however his Dad got delayed so he didn't have a rifle and would have to hunt with a spotting scope) to scout for the morning. I was very disappointed in the number of deer I saw - it was cold, white (making it easier to spot them), and with hardly another pickup in sight I figured the deer would be all over - I was wrong. We did see a few deer, but nothing of note, and I'd say we only saw 12 or so deer Saturday morning - not a good sign. At about 8:30, we headed into town for a Hunter's Breakfast - eggs, sausage, potato pancakes, fried dumplings, and toast - not a bad way to end the morning hunt.

I hadn't planned on even considering filling a doe tag in these muddy conditions, but on the way back to the farm my nephew and I spotted 3 does feeding in a recently harvested sunflower field, close to a tree row. We snuck through the trees, and each harvested a doe to at least get some meat in the freezer.

After that, we rounded up the game camera disks and then huddled around the kitchen table much like kids around a Christmas tree on December 25, waiting to see what "gifts" were there for us. I did run into one small snag - on the way to pick up one of the cameras, we passed by the corn field with the ground blind I setup last weekend, and saw that the water had come way up and the ground blind had collapsed from snow, ice and wind. Back at the farm, we were again disappointed - out of 150+ pictures on 3 different cams, we only saw a single picture of a single "shootable" buck.

I started thinking about all of the gibberish I read in my dozen or so hunting magazine subscriptions and how I could maybe apply some of these techniques to my afternoon hunt - after all, we were in a prime area for big bucks, had a lot of land access with very little pressure, and the weather conditions out there made the landscape look like one of those shows where some southern guy tags a monster in Saskatchewan. I know there are TONS of deer in this area, and they must be hiding somewhere. It was time to target the unharvested corn. The field with my groundblind (or at least I hoped it was still a blind) was inundated with water, so I chose the other unharvested cornfield on the farm and decided I would concentrate on trying to scout that out for the afternoon. At about 4PM, I drove over to "grampa's farm" and stayed at the end of the approximate 1/2 mile driveway on a bit of a hill, so that I could see the south edge of the corn field which opens into 160 acres of CRP with a large ridge across it, which then leads into an abandoned farm and the infamous "L-Belt".

The L-Belt is where I shot my 2005 bow and rifle bucks, my 2006 Pope and Young buck - it's that "secret spot" that every hunter should have, where you just know there are deer but you hate to disturb it and scare the deer out of their "sanctuary". The owner of the L-Belt didn't get a tag this year, so he was using his gratis and we all agreed to leave it for him until he tags out (and he was gone this weekend) so I was targeting the area between the corn and the L-Belt where I just knew deer had to be traveling. It didn't take long before I started seeing deer coming out of the corn and traveling along a trail that led to the L-belt. By 5:30, I counted 37 deer that came out of the corn - about 6 were distinguishable as bucks, but none of them looked very big. Then, at sunset, I saw him - the one I am now infatuated with. He's not a monster by any stretch - but he's somewhat wide, pretty tall and has decent mass and, most importantly, I now know where he eats and sleeps. It was pretty dark, but as he headed to the L-Belt over the hill in the CRP, he skylined himself and I could tell he was a shooter.

Often times, in ND especially where deer drives are very common (although I no longer hunt that way, but did for all of my adolescence), hunters experience a lot of ground shrinkage - a buck gets up in the cattails and they see antlers that they think are nice, they make a good shot, and find a young 4x4. When I started hunting with my in-laws, in an area with much higher concentrations of deer, and where they practice a bit of herd management (don't shoot young bucks just to fill a buck tag, and everyone gets extra doe tags to try to keep ratios in check), my brother-in-law told me a very simple method of how to tell whether or not a buck is a "shooter" in the heat of the moment. Simply stated, "if you have to think about it, he's not a shooter". When I saw this buck come out of the corn, after watching 35 other deer and a half dozen or so bucks, I knew right away - he was a shooter.