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Outdoorsmen Adventures, The Outdoor Television Series That Gives You Less Talk and a Lot More Hunting and Fishing!
Reprinted from South Dakota Walleyes Unlimited January 2010 Newsletter.
South Dakota Walleyes Unlimited have their 13th Annual Lake Francis Case Walleye Tournament planned for Saturday April 17th.
The rules’ meeting is scheduled for the evening before April 16th at 7:00 pm at the Americinn in Chamberlain.
Prizes will be awarded for 1st through 20th place with 1st place paying (based on 100 teams) paying $3,000.00.
There will be will be $17,700 in prizes awarded during the tournament (based on 100 teams).Entry fee is $225.00 per two-man team.
For more information on South Dakota Walleyes Unlimited, tournament entry forms and rules go to www.sdwalleyesunlimited.org… Continue reading
A couple of times each year, we head north to do some fishing on Lake of the Woods, once during the summer and again during the winter.
If you’ve never been up north, it’s quite a treat as it’s big water where there are hundreds and hundreds of icehouses on the ice, every size, shape and variety.
As a matter of fact, this year, the Zippel Bay Igloo made its appearance on the ice.
Resembling a large igloo, this large icehouse/bar is a big attraction as it has a full bar, big screen TV, tables and benches where you can not only eat a pizza, you have an opportunity to wet a line while enjoying your favorite drink.
The largest fish taken by anglers in the Igloo is a 48” northern that Desire, the young lady that runs the establishment took the first week in February.
Ice fishing is extremely popular on Lake of the Woods, part of the reason being that in the winter you’re allowed to use two rods and the limit for walleye and sauger is raised to eight (4 walleyes and 4 sauger).
Walleyes are the larger cousin of the sauger, reaching over 10 pounds with the average size probably being in the 2 to 4 pound class.
Walleyes are identified by their greenish gold color along with the white tip on their lower tail fin.
Sauger on the other hand are much more streamlined and more aggressive than walleyes. Primarily a river fish, the average size for sauger would be 1 to 2 pounds with a fish over 3-pounds being a real trophy.
Getting on Lake of the Woods out of Zippel Bay is easy as ice roads are plowed out onto the 30” of ice, allowing fishermen easy access to their houses. Streets are all marked with street signs such as Perch, Big Fish and Walleye, making it easy for anglers to get to the right spot.
On this trip, we were filming with Nick and Deanna at Zippel Bay Resort. Joining us were Team Outdoorsmen Adventures members Larry Myhre, Sioux City, IA. and Jon Thelen, Crystal, MN.… Continue reading
It may not look like it right now, but the Spring Snow goose season is underway.
With all the snow thats covering the upper Midwest, many are wondering if there will be many geese coming through our area.
Today the tempoerature is in the mid 40’s, which will help cut the snow as will the rain that’s predicted this weekend.
Right now it sounds as if a lot of Snow geese are stacked up in northern Kansas and Southern Nebraska waiting for the snow to melt before they head north.
Snow geese unlike their darker cousins don’t need open water as they’d just as soon set in a flooded field as on a lake or pond.
What they do require is food and all of… Continue reading
When Duane Filsinger, Butte Nebraska and his son headed out on their spring turkey hunt last spring, the farthest thing from their mind was taking the highest scoring Merriam ever taken with a firearm that was recorded by the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF).
Well that’s just what they did, putting Duane’s name at the top of the NWTF list for Merriam turkeys.
Like most of the state, Northeast Nebraska has as excellent turkey population, with the majority of the birds found in the area being Merriam.
Merriam turkeys are similar in many ways to the other species of turkeys such as the Eastern, Rio Grande and Osceola, which, all can be found in the United States.
Adult Merriam males are easily distinguished from these species, but closely resemble the Gould turkey of Mexico except that they have a blacker appearance with the lower back and tail margins on the Merriam are nearly white.
The Merriam’s original territory was Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, but through stocking programs the birds were stocked out of their original Rocky Mountain terrain.… Continue reading
There’s nothing more exciting than calling predators as you never know what might come calling, as there are all types of predators out there.
That’s what we found out a couple of weeks ago when we called predators in the Sandhills near Mullen, NE.
The word predator is defined as: a carnivore, an animal that lives by capturing and eating other animals.
According to that definition, a predator can be any number of things.
When it gets right down to it, we humans are predators as are mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, fox, badgers as well as lions and tigers and bears “OH My”.
Depending on the location you’re doing the calling from, you might be surprised by what comes to the call.
Of course these aren’t the only critters that, once hearing the sound of distressed rabbit, fawn or other animal, will come running to investigate, taking advantage of another animals unfortunate situation.
It’s not unusual for deer, which are curious critters to come into a predator call as it has happened to us numerous times, especially when you’re in Mule Deer territory.
There are numerous other animals/birds out there that are opportunists and will eat what ever happens to be available.
Raccoons and skunks are a couple of the furry critters that will come in if they’re within hearing distance as well as hawks, eagles and owls, so you need to be ready for almost anything.… Continue reading
It was a nice warm spring day as we launched my boat on Lewis & Clark Lake, near Yankton.
On a previous trip, we’d caught fish in an area where the river channel rose up onto a “slight” hump.
When I say slight, I mean slight as one minute my locator read 15’ then up to 8’ and a few seconds later, back into deeper water.
As our baits started coming out of the deep water, banging into the upstream side of the hump, one of our trolling rods went crazy!
It was obvious by the way the rod was bent that we had a good fish on and after a short battle, a fat 5-pound walleye came into the boat.
Back then, the only way to get back to that Sweet Spot was to pick out a couple of landmarks on each shore and use them to attempt to come back to that spot again.
I’d lined my two landmarks up and then searched vainly for that hump, needless to say, I couldn’t find it, we were close, but when you’re fishing close doesn’t cut it!
I knew it was there, but after trolling through the area a dozen times, we gave up and headed for a spot that was a lot easier to locate, one where the channel ran along the shoreline.
That was the day that I decided that I had to have a locator/GPS unit, so I could find that sweet spot again and again without guessing.
On my next trip to Cabela’s, I picked up a Lowrance Locator/GPS and a LakeMaster Pro Master series Digital GPS Fishing Maps Chip.… Continue reading
A potential new Nebraska state record whitetail deer was taken in Richardson County. It’s estimated that the buck, a 38 pointer was 7-8 years old.
It was well after noon when we arrived at the Sandhills Motel in Mullen, NE. www.gliddencanoerental.com which would be our headquarters for our first Midwinter predator hunt of 2010.
After unloading our extra gear and changing into our snow camo, we pointed the pickup south out into the Sandhills where we’d look for areas the cattle were using as cattle always attract coyotes.
As we turned off the blacktop, proceeding through the Sandhills, I spotted something working its way across the alfalfa field to our left.
Through our binoculars, we spotted the first coyote of the trip hunting his way through the meadow.
He headed west into the hills, so we tried to figure out how far ahead of it we’d have to be in order to set up and call.
A gate ½ mile down the road was the only entry into the field, so we drove in, parked the pickup and proceeded to hike off across the hills looking for a spot suitable for calling.
Calling coyotes is not all that difficult; it all depends on the terrain you’re hunting and the number of individuals you need to hide.… Continue reading
For those of you who haven’t heard of the SHOT Show, it’s “HUGE” with everything from airguns to military weapons and body armor.
If you hoped to cover all of the displays and booths at the four day show, you’d need to run through the show, so these items listed below are just a few of the hundreds of new items that we saw at the show.
Beretta unveiled its new semi-auto shotgun, the A400 Xplor Unico, an extremely fast, light and easy to shoot shotgun.
Their upgraded recoil reduction system will reduce recoil by as much as 70 percent.
It features a shortened receiver, 3 inches instead of 3 1/2-inches decreasing the overall gun length.
Their patented Kick Off recoil-reduction system that houses two hydraulic dampeners, reducing recoil by up to 60 percent—was upgraded to “Kick Off Cubed,” which uses a third shock absorber in the stock bolt to further reduce recoil and mechanical stress when shooting the gun.
It also features their new Micro Core butt pad making the gun more comfortable to shoot which also helps the hunter to properly shoulder the shotgun.
For more information on the Beretta A-400 check out www.beretta.com
Last week, I attended the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Technology or (SHOT) Show as it’s called which was held in Las Vegas.
This is on huge show where every manufacturer of anything and everything that has to do with shooting and hunting introduces their new products to dealers and the media.
Over the last several years, because of what’s happening in the world, there have been a lot of paramilitary dealers he show with all types of body armor, weapons, special ammunition, scopes and equipment made especially for Special Forces and SWAT units.
Prior to the opening of the show, we were given the opportunity to test fire many of the newest pistols, shotguns and rifles using the latest and greatest types of ammunition.
There were several things that caught my eye at the show including several new guns. Listed below are some of those that really caught my attention.… Continue reading