I thought I’d post a picture of a fire we had in our Tipi and taking a few moments to share yesterday’s bowhunt with you.

Yesterday was a beautiful day in the Northwest territories, Canada, at 10 degrees fahrenheit with absolutely no wind, a heavy blanket of snow had already covered all that needed to rest for the winter and the sky was filled with huge snowflakes. As my wife and I made our way out to our communities logging road located approximately 8 kilometers North of the main highway, we both looked at each other and shared how good it felt to be alive. As we arrived to the turn off that led to the logging road, I saw a black dot on the snow bank, yes, that was our first chicken as we call them, a beautiful and sometimes very confused spruce grouse 🙂 Little to say, she immediately flew off int he bush not to be seen again. I thought to myself this was perhaps going to be a good day for a veteran bowhunter. Actually, the veteran bowhunter was sitting next to me and she was as excited as I was to be going out for a walk with the stick and string.

I parked the truck and as I opened my door, two more chickens flew off towards the thicker tree line, “You know dear, I think today is the day this old fella is going to show you today how we shoot chickens !”, my wife immediately gave me the ‘ the look ” and we both started laughing.

“Oh my !!! There’s one dear, don’t move, I’ll try and stalk this one”. To my surprise, this was not a spruce grouse but a ruffed grouse. Only then my heartbeat started pumping harder because these are the ones we really like to harvest, white meat, and ever so flavourfull. Now imagine this, I have a 18 yard shot through a bunch of willows and this little thing does not want to stand still for me 🙂 My wife tell me ” So, are you going after it?!”. I replied” Guess I should, should I and laughed”. Well, let me tell you that a weiry ruffed grouse does not stay in one spot for too long and the moment I tried to get closer, it flew off. I watched the fleeing chicken’s flight path only to to notice it had landed in a big jack pine, I’d say about 30 feet above ground. I made my way and as soon as I got close, I resumed my Northern stalking techniques 🙂 Wow, I got to 10 yards of the tree and right above was this gorgeous chicken, moving around on that branch like if it was a dance floor. I took an arrow from my quiver, picked a spot and as I drew ” Shoot the Bull” believe it or not, the moment I released, a snowflake hit dead vcenter of my right eye, darn I missed by a mile 🙂 LOL Guess I can;t blame this shot on snow but all I could here was a little chuckle behind me, yeap, my wife had followed me in the bush.

Little to say that’s all the birds we seen but the one thing we mentioned that made our day was the opportunity we had of being out there together doing what we love to do, walking with our traditional bows enjoying each other and nature.

Both my wife and I want to wish all of you a great day and thanking you for sharing a fire with us.

SB