and a strong cup of coffee

Social media has added a new element to the world of hunting. There are great resources for hunting out there but until the boom of social media, they were limited.  Now, you can watch live video feed of deer feeders in Iowa to see what is coming in.  I have recently found maybe one of my favorite resources for hunting…podcasts! You can listen to hunters talk about African hunting, antler growth and how to cut shooting lanes... the possibilities are really endless.  Up until a few months ago, the word ‘podcast’ was something that I assumed as like a radio show but online (and it is).  I didn’t go looking for them or know how to get them.  And now, as I write this, I can not think of what it was that made me get started but I have not stopped.  There are incredible hunters, men and women, all across the United States who host weekly or monthly shows that are usually about an hour long that bring the best of the best to the forefront to talk about their...

BIG BEAR!  No one is scaring him off of that bait That is a normal sized milk crate! 300-400lb bear looking at you! My preferred bear: one that comes out during the daylight My shooter.  He came out at 6pm.  I would gladly shoot him and be happy.

Lance and Lorri putting some bait into an empty bucket The good smelling bait... mmm strawberry I was sure that beaver was the grossest smell ever, but I was so wrong. It is easily rotten lobster bodies - the kind that are put into black trash bags and left out in the sun and forgotten about.  I dont think any of us didn't gag, hold our breathe or pull our shirts up over our noses in an attempt to stop the smell from penetrating into our nostrils.  We added it to one of the beaver carcases and for the first time, I really had to question a black bear's eating preferences.  Of course, there is also the 'good' smelling bait that looks like it could be a bunch of $7 granola bars from Whole Foods dumped together and mixed with this great strawberry smelling stuff.  That, I don't mind being around. It was another day in the woods baiting with Steve.  We also had his girlfriend Lorri and their friend Lance with us. We headed yo a new-to-me spot where Steve ...

Here they come!  Site 1 and 2 now have bears coming in.  Steve said that they are very good looking bears and healthy, too.  These are from the trail camera memory chip that Steve puts into his camera.  He then takes these photos, of the camera screen, with his phone.  Don't worry - in a few weeks there will be a photo of the real thing ;)    

Dad has been gathering and rotating the camera memory cards for about a month now hoping to get a picture of something we like.  There are a group of does hanging around which we think are the same group that has been there for the past three of four years.  We kept telling ourselves that 'where there are does, there are buck' but it's just not the same.  Finally!  We saw what we were looking for.  Just two pictures but this one is good enough to get us ready to take to the woods. Bring on deer season! I called tibs on this guy! A nice eight-pointer walking through.

Steve went back out to the sites four days after we had and there were pictures at site 2.  Not the best pictures but there are bears around and coming in! We have a couple more weeks until the hunting season starts and then it runs for 14 weeks.  I'm trying to work my schedule to get out and help bait one more time before I head into the woods on the last week of August to try my hand at bear hunting. 

On left, unopened sweets.  On right, the goodies ready to be put out. I was lucky that it was only 73 degrees out!  I would have melted after we headed to the first bait site. I carried buckets filled with bait and some secret ingredients to keep the bears coming back again and again.  While I was glad to not be carrying the bucket with the cut up dead beaver, I was reminded of my position down wind of it after every few steps.  Making a bait barrel While I support bear hunting as it is now in Maine, I did not know a lot about it and felt that if I was going to support this fight, I should know what I was talking about.  So, I told Steve that I would try everything, including preparing bait buckets.  If you ever want to cut sweets out of your diet help out with preparing bait barrels.  For more than an hour, I opened packaged sweets that had the overall smell of a cheap bar. The smell wasn't what got to me, it was the fact that they c...