Turkey, fish and bone

Finally, after the cold winter it is time to be back in the woods. I am eager to shake off the winter and get back into the sunshine, nicer temperatures and even play in the mud a little bit. This year spring means turkey hunting, fishing and looking for some sheds on the hunting property.

This will be my third turkey hunting season and I am hoping that the third time is the charm. The first year, we called one tom and three jakes in but didn’t bring any meat home. Last year, I went out with a guide and blew my shot by sitting in a spot that prevented me from shooting to my right. I did get to see the tom drumming and strutting right towards me but I couldn’t finish the job. This year will be different; I have all of my camo ready including gloves that I purchased this year, a ThermaCELL ready to go and a few different places and people that I will be going out with in hopes of bringing home one (or maybe two if I am really lucky) turkey. I will do it this year!

I am also returning to Chet’s Camps in Grand Lake Stream to do some fishing. It was a great trip last year and I caught a small salmon while trolling with a fly rod. I am not even close to being a fisherman yet, but feeling the fish bite and the fly rod in my hands… I have to be cautious or I could get sucked into this sport with no hopes of turning back. Until I am ready for that, fishing trips are the safest way to go. And who can beat the views from a camp on the water far away from the city and traffic. Last year I could not get the Wi-Fi to work and it was fantastic. I am eager to get back there and unwind, relax, visit with Sue and Al and just be in the great Maine outdoors. Catching a few fish would be a bonus.

I will find a shed this season. I have been reading up on tips and what to do and not do. I would love to find one or the set from either of those big eight pointers that are on the trail cameras. It would be a great scouting tool and it would be great to see how healthy and big those deer are. Even the six pointers looked pretty thick through ‘em last fall. I also want to get a dog at some point this year and begin to train it to find sheds. There are training kits to buy and Jeremy Moore has a great one that Mark Kenyon spent an entire ‘Wired to Hunt’ podcast talking about. I hope that by next spring, I have a dog ready to go help me find some sheds. Until then, it’s all me.

It should be a busy spring for me and I hope the weather is nice enough to get outside and be productive. It would be great to report back to all of you that I got a turkey, some fish and a few pieces of bone. Plus, Dad and I have a treehouse to build in preparation for deer season (you can read more about T3 on my blog). There are so many great things to be doing outside that I am sure that we will be busy!

Healthy Coyote coming through

I still have a few trail cameras out to see what the deer are up to. I have gotten pictures of the big buck that is around and most recently, I got these pictures. Normally, I wouldn't be too freaked out but now that we have a dog, it is a little unnerving. Add that this camera is about 50 feet from our lawn and less than 100 feet from our front door... I hope that this one is just passing through. (Sidenote: I put new batteries in this camera so the date and time are wrong BUT I walked in front of it so it would take my picture and I could figure out what the actual time and date were: 7am Saturday morning.)

Where are the women?

This week, my interview with Steve at The Maine Outdoorsman went live. Steve said yesterday 200 people hit his site viewing over 500 pages. That is a lot of people reading about little ole me and hunting. Why? When I think of women who are in the general public's eye and hunt, I can think of 2 - Country singer Miranda Lambert and Sarah Palin. Why only two? Why is the female hunter such a fascinating thing? (I should probably note that I do not have cable so any and all female hunters on the hunting stations are lost to me. I'll keep it to the general public because that's what I am familiar with.) People/media were fascinated by the fact that they could get footage of Palin and her gun, shooting (and gutting) animals but I feel like the nostalgia would be lost if they had the same footage of McCain. Lambert and her hubby Blake Shelton tweet photos of their kills, and comment on what/where they are hunting. I only know this because I follow both. That's it....

Utilizing technology to make you more aware

Staci and I were roaming around the woods on a piece of property that she knew. It was snowing and we were chasing deer tracks to see if we could find some early sheds. It was a perfect day to be out in the woods and we were relaxed and not really paying attention to where we were going. We knew the border of the property and we knew that if we walked long enough we would hit roads or the bog and find our way back. We got to a point where we thought we knew where we were but we were not sure. Staci got out her compass to take a waypoint to make sure we were going in the right direction to get back to the truck. I took out my phone and turned on OnX. Within seconds we knew where we were, where the property borders were in relation to us and we could watch the dot (that represented us) on the map move as we walked out of the woods and got closer to the truck. In another adventure, my son and I headed out on a shed hunting mission. When we got into the woods, I turned on the trac...

and a strong cup of coffee

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