It was a cold crisp Thursday morning, and three of my buddies and I are about to go moose hunting. We are going down to my cabin in a place called Taylor's Bay, which is about a nine-mile ride from our town by boat. The only way to get to it is by boat, so the weather was good, there was no wind and that would make for a great trip on the water. The weather has to be real bad if I can't get back in my boat because it is a 26 foot fiberglass boat that is really seaworthy and it has a shelter up on the front and that will keep all our supplies dry.
We had planned to stay there from Thursday up until Tuesday, which was providing we didn't get our moose before that, in which case we would leave to come back the following day if we did get lucky and killed one.
My cabin is an old shed that I had rebuilt, it was only small but I got it made into a 3 bedroom cabin with a kitchen and a living room, with a propane stove and propane fridge, and a wood burner for heat. The size is 28 feet long and 24 feet wide. The reason I built it so big was because at the time I had kids but they have grown up and gone now.
Tailors Bay is a small bay that runs inland for about three miles with beautiful hills and trees on both sides and there are two major rivers that run into it. People use to live there one time in a place called Millers passage, but after the government resettled everyone back in the 60's everyone moved out. It is really a nice peaceful place to go hunting, fishing, or even camping and there. Usually there isn't many people around the bay so you are usually successful getting your moose.
They're three main places where we hunt in Taylor's Bay, the first being a place called Jackie's woods, it's the closest place to the cabin it's about a 20 min walk up a old road where there use to be telegraph poles, and its easy to get the four wheeler there to bring anything out if we are lucky to kill something.
Before recorded history, people lived along the shores of Henderson Inlet. These people were the Nisqually. The historical evidence of Nisqually habitation in the area is the presence of a shell midden on lower Chapman Bay by archaeological explorations. The natives lived in small groups, their livelihood was determined by availability of food and the local topography. Because a fresh water stream meant a source of potable water and proximity to salmon runs, these small groups were always located along a steam or near its mouth. Marian Smith, an ethnologist, provided a more exact location as “on South Bay or Henderson Inlet between the creek at the head and that on the south.” She called this small group tuts’e’tcaxt. While the exact location of this small group is no longer known, some uncertain conclusions can be made about Native American activity in the Woodard Bay area. Tuts’e’tcaxt was a permanent village, consisting of two cedar plank houses that measured approximately 30 feet by 100 feet. Here the natives lived during the severe winter months. (Andrew Poultridge. 1991)
Duck hunting is an absolute passion for me and nothing could possibly interrupt this annual event. For me, sitting out in a duck blind at 5:30 in the morning with the brisk cold air biting at my skin is something I look forward to each and every year. Even having to break through a layer of thin ice to make it out to my blind never gets old. The frigid cold on my hands can get unbearable at times, but the possibility of frostbite is never at the forefront of my thoughts. After all, when the ducks start to fly, nothing can force me off the lake.
It's three o'clock in the morning. I've been sleeping since eight p.m., and now my alarm clock is telling me that it's time to wake up. Most people are sleeping at this hour of the night, but I'm just now waking up to pack up my gear and head into the forest for the morning. Last night I packed my .30-06, tree stand, a small cooler full of food and a rucksack full of hunting equipment including deer scent, camouflage paint and a flashlight. I've been planning a hunt for two weeks, and the weekend has finally come. I get up from bed, shake off the cold of the morning and get ready to leave by four.
There are several different genres of hunting and many of them require the same set of skills. Hunting is an exciting hobby, but it’s also a hobby that many people do not know much about. Coyote hunting is one of the fastest growing genres of hunting that requires a variety of skills.
"The Bull Moose" is a poem by one of the great Canadian poets, Alden Nowlan. It is a finely crafted poem by a very talented poet. It reminds us how far away from Nature the lives of ordinary men and women have strayed. This is something common to all of us who live so much our lives in buildings and who so rarely experience Nature in its raw form. Nowlan creates powerful layers of images, and contrasts them in a way to make us feel just how damaging to our minds and souls this separation from Nature has been. His poem is Romantic in the way it tries to remind us of how far we have fallen and how hollow our idea of progress is. Indeed, Nowlan suggests that we may be more of a beast than the moose.
I have to admit that I do a lot more deer hunting these days, but once I tag out or the deer season ends I like to grab my grandfathers old Stevens.22 rifle and hit the woods for a day of relaxation and an old school squirrel hunt. There is nothing more relaxing than hunting squirrels the old school way. Open sights always makes it challenging and I like to use calls that my grandad or an old timer taught me back when folks actually had conversations about squirrel hunting, like in the old barber shop on the square. Those were the days of the day. Old school squirrel hunting to me is just a great way to spend a day in the woods and hopefully bring home enough squirrels for dinner.
Since the beginning of time man has been hunting animals for food. Even before fire, man needed to hunt, because hunting was the only way to eat. At first man used things such as spears and rocks to kill its prey. As man evolved, they started using bows and arrows. Next came an early model of what we use today, the firearm. It is powerful yet easy to carry around. It puts the animal through less suffering and is a lot more efficient than previous techniques. Hunting was once a necessity, but now it is a tradition, passed on from father to son as a way to spend time together, enjoy the outdoors, and experience what our ancestors went through in hunting their dinner. Since it is considered a sport some think we are killing off the deer population, when in actuality, “While most other big-game species have declined with the spread of urbanization, the whitetail has been able to adapt to its ever-changing environment. Through the efforts of state agencies and conservation groups like Whitetails Unlimited, wildlife officials estimate today’s whitetail population to exceed 30 million” (www.whitetailsunlimited.org).
Strait and Ungava Bay; on the east by Labrador (Which is a part of Newfoundland),
"The Bull Moose" by Alden Nowlan is a finely crafted poem which reminds us of how far man has strayed from Nature. Through a carefully constructed series of contrasted images, Nowlan laments, in true Romantic fashion, man's separation from Nature.
In the state of Pennsylvania there are only seven days to legally rifle hunt antlered and antler-less white-tailed deer. Out of the insignificant seven days of the hunting season, it is only legal to hunt on six of them. There should not be a law that makes it illegal to hunt on Sundays. It should not be a law because it is attempting to force religion on people and because they are not in church they are not allowed to hunt. There were also other laws like this in PA and most of them were repealed, but why wasn’t this one? I know that some people are religious and believe that Sunday is a day for God and if they don’t think killing an animal on Sunday is a good thing to do they don’t have to. There is also a very limited time that you can legally hunt in Pennsylvania, December 7-14, so if there is a one-week restriction we should be allowed to hunt on every one of those days. There are few days to hunt and hunting being illegal on Sundays is not getting us closer to the amount of time the public wants in their hunting season.
The climate differs from zone to zone, and woodland moose prefer only the zones where the average summer tempeture does not much exeed sixty degrees. Wind chill help the moose to stay cool in the costal and the relatively humid zones, as well as in the much drier interior. But the moose has had to adapt both to humid and dry climates, and to dense and open habiats.
It was the middle of October, and it was finally time for my long awaited moose hunt. I have waited ever since I was a little girl for this opportunity, and it was finally here. So, my father and I packed up our stuff and left the warmth of Phoenix. We were leaving the "Valley of the Sun" and headed for a place called Wyoming. After two days and fourteen long hours of driving, we made it to our hunting unit.
Many people have misconceptions about hunting. One such misconception is that hunting is easy and any person can go sit in the woods and wait for an animal to cross the hunter’s path. However, people who believe this are sorely mistaken. Hunting is not just sitting in the woods with a rifle; there are many other aspects that must be considered. An individual must have all preparations complete, purchase or gather the equipment needed, and know what to listen for while in the woods.
As you wait for the boat to come pick you up, make sure to unfasten your boots. Hold the board out of the water in order to allow other boats to see you clearly.
It was a beautiful October afternoon as I climbed to the top of my tree stand. The sun was shining, and a slight breeze was blowing from the northwest. I knew that the deer frequented the area around my stand since my step-dad had shot a nice doe two days earlier from the same stand, and signs of deer were everywhere in the area. I had been sitting for close to two hours when I decided to stand up and stretch my legs as well as smoke a cigarette.