Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

Hunting Season is upon us once again and the members of Team Outdoorsmen Adventures wishes you the best season of all!

North Carolina Archery Season has begun with many other states opening soon. A bow hunter is someone who gets to know his prey up close and personal. He is of the land and knows the patterns and movements of the game he intends to harvest.

This is what makes a great hunter out in the woods. “Make No Mistake About It!” That is exactly the key element in a bow hunters mindset he must be mentally ready and prepared for the shot.

The hunt starts before season when he picks his bow up each year. It makes sense to not take the shot if you have not completed your homework.

The first task to cover is to inspect our bow for damages. Inspect it anyway, even if it has been locked in your case for the past year. If your string looks worn, it’s time to replace it. I like to replace my bowstring every two years regardless of the wear and tear on it. Strings will stretch over time. Inspect your arrows and anything else on the bow. Look for cracks, a bent arrow, torn or bad fletching or anything than could cause an arrow to fly incorrectly.

Make sure you oil movable parts of your bow with scentless oil. Wax your string each time you practice. Proper care of all bow hunting equipment is essential to success in the field.

Once all this has been accomplished you are ready to shoot again. Practice everyday no less than a month before season. I feel if you’ve put in shooting time every night till the opener you’ll be prepared physically and mentally for you shot at a game animal.

By this time your shot should become a repetition of steps that you do automatically without thinking.

Even at this point, here in North Carolina with a longbow season practice should be performed periodically during season to ensure your form and shot have not went south.

When the game animal is in front of you the less thinking you do the better. This brings me to a point on the many sights that are on the market.… Continue reading

Deer hunting has quickly become one of the more popular big game animals.

The reason for this is simple; they can be found almost everywhere. These animals are very adaptable and can live in close proximity to man.

No matter where we’ve went there have always been deer around, both whitetail and mule deer.

One thing that I figured out a long time ago is that deer are like any other critter, including man, as they will take advantage of anything that makes their life easier.

I found this out the first couple of years while hunting near my cabin.  The deer, especially the bucks seemed to always come out in a certain area while avoiding others.

Unfortunately, the area they were using was impossible to hunt unless you sat on the ground as there was no place to conceal a ground blind and no trees big enough for a tree stand.

The next summer and early fall, I spent a lot of time in the woods, trying to figure out why one trail would be used more than others as all of the trails eventually led to their bedding area which were all in the same area.

Let’s look at the difference between these trails so we can understand how to make the deer come out in front of you instead of the other side of the valley.… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

It had come down to a simple trigger pull from success.

A bighorn ram stood on a mountain side 536 yards away.

Sixteen years of applying had finally yielded a $2,266 sheep tag for Tim Delance of Early, Iowa.

He teamed up with good friends and longtime outfitters Justin and Sandra Wright of Mule Shoe Outfitters at Pinedale, Wyo.

They set up base camp a full day’s ride from the trailhead in the Wind River Range. Sandra stayed to manage the camp and take care of the pack mules.

Justin and Tim, with Justin’s dad Earl and wrangler/guide T.J., remounted and set out for another day’s ride where they set up a spike camp.

From here, they glassed the mountainsides for two days.

On Sept. 1, opening day of sheep season, a group of rams had been sighted and a stalk begun.

The rams, however, disappeared into the rocks and were gone.

Yet, a quick look through the spotting scopes revealed this ram, a nice trophy, 500-plus yards up the mountainside.

And now, Tim tried to regain his breathing 13,000 feet up in the thin mountain air. He settled the crosshairs above the ram and his 300 Winchester Mag sent out a missile.

The mountains reverberated with the sound of the shot echoing between the valleys.

“Shot under him,” Justin advised.… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

Fords Hunting
Guide Service

Chris Ford, has been guiding bear hunters since 1995. Today he also guides for deer and fish on Lake of the Woods as well as offering island transport and tours.

He typically puts out 110 to 120 bear baits and narrows that down to only the best ones come hunting season.

The first week of this year’s season he had 11 clients and nine of them took bears with 18 opportunities. The second week five hunters had five opportunities and killed three bears.

For more information about his hunts, go to www.fordshuntingguideservice.com

BAUDETTE, Minn. —  The forest had gone dead quiet. The camp robber jays had disappeared. The red squirrel which had been prancing back and forth in front of our ground blind for the past hour was no where to be seen.

I thought I saw movement in the brush behind our bait pile, a hole filled with donuts and pastries covered by logs.
And then it was there. A black bear and it was a shooter.

I nudged Gary and pointed, turning on the video camera at the same time.
He brought his Escort .270 mounted with a 3 X 9 scope to his shoulder and waited.

The camera was running and the bear stepped into view broadside a mere 25 yards away.
I heard Gary slide the safety off…and so did the bear. He was gone as quickly as he had appeared.

We were disappointed but it was only 5:30 p.m. There was plenty of time for another chance.h

We were hunting with Ford’s Guide Service out of Williams,  Minn. Our headquarters was Zippel Bay Resort where Chris Ford pus up his bear hunters.

Chris had said we were on a good bait so we were confident there would be another bear that evening.
But the real story happened in another ground blind a few miles away.

There Terry Ubben, Ankony, Iowa, was sitting alone watching his bait when there was a noise behind him.
He turned and saw a big bear poking his nose into the back window. He also noticed the bear’s paw  under the blind.
Then the bear tried stick his head under the blind.
Twice.… Continue reading

Game Camera Photo by Scott Ulrich

Game cameras are a great and invaluable tool for the hunter today. A hunter using a camera has several extra advantages giving the hunter clues that he wouldn’t have even if you are an avid woodsman.

Cameras give us that extra edge when were trying to figure out the deer herd or scouting for that trophy buck. Cameras give you the actual time an animal arrives at a certain spot as well as the date and temperature reading, giving the hunter the ability to hunt twenty-four hours a day seven days a week without having to be in the field.

Another thing the game camera can help you with is to show you the direction animal is traveling. This is especially true if you have know where the game trails are and what direction they are going.

In a short period of time, a game camera lets the hunter know if there’s a game in the area he plans on hunting.
They’ll tell us if there are trophy bucks in the area and give us an idea as to the number of deer that are using the area.

Lastly the camera can help person with a trained eye to determine the approximate age of the deer. Game Cameras are one of the greatest tools or innovations to come, helping deer hunters to become more successful.… Continue reading

If you want to make outdoorsmen and women feel truly uncomfortable, causing shivers to run up and down their spines all you need to do is to bring the word lease up.

It’s pretty easy to figure out why mentioning the word lease causes such problems, it’s because the word means that another piece of land is locked up and no longer available for the average person to hunt on.  With less land being available there will be more demand on the remaining land that’s out there.  Because of this, there will be more hunters vying for the fewer and fewer acres that remain.

If you’re a family man with kids, it means it will be harder for you to find a place to introduce your children to the sport or to take them hunting.

Even if you’ve leased some land or have a place to hunt, you can bet that when the landowner is approached by someone with a few bucks, he’ll lease it out or sell it out from under you in a heartbeat.

Leasing land without some sort of written agreement can be an iffy proposition as the days when a hand shake were as good as gold are long gone. Unless you have a legal document drawn up by a legal adviser with everything and I mean everything listed in black and white and if you don’t, you may just end up on the outside looking in .

I’m not saying that land shouldn’t be leased; I’m simply saying that because of all the land being leased, in a few years; there may be little if any land to hunt on and leasing may be the only way anyone will have land to hunt.… Continue reading

It’s every deer hunters dream to have the opportunity to harvest a beautiful trophy buck.

With the decrease in habitat, the number of people trying to find land to hunt on along the declining number of acres available for the average person to hunt, it’s a pretty good bet that very few of these dreams will become reality.

The main thing we need to do to insure that we have good bucks is to not shoot every buck that walks by.  We need to let those smaller bucks walk by, letting them grow and start reducing the doe population.

If you do this, you’re heading in the right direction but there are several things that can be done to help an average buck to become a true trophy.

Number one is the genetics.  Genetics set the limits for antler size and growth.  If you have only small spike bucks in the area you’re hunting, then the chances are that spike bucks will be the only deer available.… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

It was one of those days when the clouds come down and wrap themselves around the landscape like a damp blanket.

Fog and mist filled the air as Boone Huffman guided his pickup through the huge native grass pasture. We were a few miles outside of Chadron, Neb.

Gary Howey, Hartington, Neb., had an antelope tag in his possession and I was clutching my camera.

Boone, who operates Ash Creek Outfitters, had taken us to his grandfather’s ranch where several groups of antelope could be found. We had scouted here the night before and found a good buck residing near a bunch of does and a smaller buck.… Continue reading