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in reply to: Practicing with Broadheads #26913
I don’t think I own any field points. All I ever shoot is broadheads.
in reply to: New To Traditional-Bow Advice #26910BW has a try before you buy program. My suggestion would be to have BW send you a 45-50# at your draw bow for you to shoot and make your mind up on before you dish out the cash.
in reply to: Interesting Bear Situation #53307Dave,
As of tuesday 50 had been checked total for northern zone. I’ve let one beast walk (had no intentions of dealing with a bear that size in there.), and almost walked straight in to a drop dead georguos 200-220#er in a rain storm wed. I would LIKE to stay my course and kill another deer or two before they get on my nerves too bad. But considering one ate the seat out of my treestand Wed afternoon and I sat for 6 hours on nothing but two straps?? They’re starting to make me wanna expose lung tissue on them now.
in reply to: Interesting Bear Situation #49999Alright dave!! way to go Man!! That is truly impressive and as I know the terrain you were hunting thats a feat within itself (especially getting it out!).
Were you one of the 9 bears that Frank Manning checked in over the weekend?? Can’t miss Frank. DNR…… blonde hair about 300#s
in reply to: Defining "Traditional" Bowhunting #40757Jesse Minish wrote: To me there is no “definition” to traditional bowhunting only opinions. Just as all other things in hunting. But I think the quote Dave said in his second post is spot on in my opinion as to what I consider traditional.
Amen Jesse,
I also honeslty believe today many attempt to redfine, reword and rewrite things to better suit themselves, than what they are doing. In other words if they do not fit a certain mold? then change the mold.
*IF* I honestly thought ANY person or group out there was using the term to attempt to preserve/help or protect the way we hunt I would throw my wieght behind them. But the only way I’ve ever saw the term used is as an adjective or excuse.
I personally shoot what I shoot because it works best for me. In all seriousness I shoot a recurve better now, than I ever shot a compound during the 4yrs I played with one. Recurves are what I started bowhunting with and what I use today. They fit me and my style better. I shot the last 2yrs of my compound days with no sights. But did not like the finger pinch or lack of pressure at full draw.
That said I place more emphasis on actually hunting than I do on what I am hunting with. I’ve been known to hunt with knives and spears and even be known to take rabbits with throwing sticks. I tend to be way more concerned with how I can get myself in to the right place at the right time to accomplish what I am setting out to accomplish than what other people may call what I am doing. I don’t have time to define what I am doing, I’m too busy trying to do it.
in reply to: Like Blind Man Chop Wood! Field Dressing Advise #40357Thanks to Ron LaCalir, there’s usually somewhere on my person or pack, a tomahawk. And it’s as sharp as my knives.
Most of my major field work takes place a long way from the truck. As in it doesn’t matter that it’s only a 100# doe. This isn’t a gut and drag job. So my tools need be light and the essentials and my method quick and clean. in a pinch or on a big animal the hawk saves me some time in places. sometimes especially in low light it’s easier to just “hawk off” the legs as opposed to feeling for joints with your knife point.
I plan on doing a few video tutorials this season on how Warren Womack showed me to cut quarter and carry out game. I’ll post it here soon as that happens. Hafta kill sumpin first:D
in reply to: Interesting Bear Situation #39752Yes his eyesight is real close to that of a hogs. If you’re total camo and still he’ll overlook you fairly easily. but move quickly and he’ll catch you. Sound like you’ve also found a teenager. Teenagers are these 125-200# young bears that think they own he woods. They like to pop jaws, growl, woof and try and bluff you. Be careful around them. Most of them are all bark and no bite. But you have to remember basically what you are dealing with is a 200# boar coon. I’ve watched bears instantly kill good solid gritty hog dogs that didn’t know they were supposed to leave bears alone.
We definately have no shortage of bears. We haven’t for quite some time now. Why DNR is so nitpicky over them is a mystery to me. One Biologist told me that once a mature bear learns how to hunt them it can decimate up to 60% of the fawn population in it’s area (and this is why there’s so many bears and so few deer high up in the national forest)
I had 15 sightings totalling 11 different bear in 3 days of hunting last year. The one MY wife killed had an identical twin with it when she shot hers. I could have killed it but I let it walk (mistake) Hers was enough trouble to get out of the woods. There’s another consideration. Imagine trying to pull/carry/drag 250#s of jello in a trash bag out of the mountains. It was a mistake because for the rest of deer season every time I turned around I was seeing this bear, rolling around in leaves, busting hickory nuts in his jaws and making so much noise that no good deer in it’s right mind would have came within a mile of the place.
There’s a fella here I know that gets his bear every year with a muzzle loader and he kills it by glassing trees early season. He likes to bascially hunt them like you would hunt a squirrel. Once he locates them in the tree he quietly stalks to within shooting distance of the base of the tree. He told me he usually waits until they climb down to change trees and just watches them for a spell. But he said he’s also been known to shoot one out of the tree and watch him fall to the ground. Told me a 250#er makes an awful big thud when it falls from 50′ up.
in reply to: Help for a rookie!?!?! #38883My best advice? Don’t hunt mediocre sign. If the signs not slapping you in the face?? keep walking. Wear the soles out on them boots if you have to but keep walking and keep looking.
If your major food source is like mine and is oaks. You’ll start to notice most deer trails in oak woods go from tree to tree to tree. these are primary feed trees. remember them, and watch for them to start raining acrons.
Don;t be afraid to get down and go somewhere else. If you’re not sure of your sign, give it an hour or so in the morning to make sure then get down and go find a better place. pay attention when scouting. You should scout like you hunt. last thing you want to do is bumble through and spook everything. take it easy and always find the hottest sign.
in reply to: Interesting Bear Situation #38879Dave,
I live and hunt in North Ga. I see Bears in trees all the time. Whiteoaks aren’t raining to the ground right now. So unlike Deer, bear can go to the acorns instead of waiting. There’s several ridges I can take you to that have both whiteoaks and hickories, short, knurled and broken because of years and years of Bears climbing them for acrons and breaking branches. (BTW pretty spooky when one comes climbing/freefalling out of a whiteoak with bark flying everywhere when ya spook em aint it?)
Bears noses are hard to beat. remember the rule of thermals if you plan on ground hunting and play the ridge to your advantage (set up on the side that gives you the best wind)
Unfortunately I can’t help you on the ground versus tree bnecause I carry a tree stand in with me. Yes itsa hassle, yes it’s even more of a hassle when you have to get it and game out. But I enjoy that hassle and have learned in these mountains with these winds I get to be involved in that hassle alot more when I’m up a tree. That said it’s not impossible and if you can get around their nose, they’re easier to take from the ground than a deer (eyesight not nearly as good) I had a lil 100#er walk within 10 feet of me on the ground last year. I was sitting on a rock base about 4′ off the ground with my form obscurred from skyline.
They’ll stay in those oaks until they tear off all the easy limbs or it starts raining acorns. If you’ve saw that many on a single ridge you should be able to find the bear trail. It’s flat like somethings been rolled down it as opposed to chopped up from deer hooves, sometimes it will have depressions in it where they put their feet in the same spot everytime (bears are bad creatures of routine and habit) And should be sort of ebedded in to the ground like it’s been used for many many years.
Use it. Get an ambush on it or pick a tree to watch or find a happy medium which gives you both.. Trust me the bears use it.
Right now you should be able to walk fairly quietly. I spent the most part of today walking mountains and most the leaf litter is decomposed and not too dry. Granted once leaves start to fall you may as well walk on cornflakes.
Hopes this helps and if you have any other questions I’d be happy to try and help.
in reply to: Have you ever considered a longbow ?? #30344I’m a tried and true, died in the wool recurve shooter. Bar none I make no bones about it. But this year me and a Longbow are going through our love hate relationship. (I’ve done this several times in the past) As in one day we love each other and the next day we hate each other.
Never fails. When I’m on with a recurve?? I am DEAD ON. When I am off with a recurve?? I’m still ok!! But when I am off with a longbow?? I’d stand a better chance of chasing a deer down and beating it to death with the longbow than actually hitting it. But again once more I think I’ve matured enough to give them another try and will be toting a new sleek little longbow in to the woods in a few weeks when season opens.
Hey Killdeer!!
in reply to: Bear hunting #30337Bears can be patterned just like whitetails during acorn mast falls. The key to that is to only hunt steaming fresh scat and sign. As in if it doesn’t have flies on it or a bears butt 10″ above it?? It’s not fresh enough. Like deer sign, the tell tale story of ancient poop, ol poop, poop from a day or so, and “wow thats still wet!” is your jackpot.
Bears noses are incredible. if you do not play the wind direction to your advantage you may as well be bird watching. Like Steve said they’re creatures of habit and we have bear trails around here that look like soccer ball imprints down them where they actually mainatain the exact stride all the time and form impressions in the dirt.
Doc Ashby gave me a recipe they used in Canada as a bear lure years back. It’s worked for him and I’ve had success with it as well. But around here my favorite is vanilla butternut cake flavoring mixed 50/50 with anise oil. Dip a drag rag in it and figure 8 a trail with your stand in the center, and don’t be afraid to keep some in a spray bottle to “spritz” out every so often.
I used to be bad about crushiung the apples from my trees in a bucket and adding the liquid from sour mash corn to it and allowing it to ferment. Then squeeze the entire mush through a screen and extract all the liquid. You could then pour the liquid over rotten stumps. But bears would come in and eat the dang stumps! DNR says anything they can actually eat drink or consume is classified as bait. So I stopped that.
The best way I personally have found to get on bears?? Just don’t hunt them. The more and more I don’t hunt them the more and more they show up and ruin my deer hunting. The less I look for them the more I see them:roll:
in reply to: Favorite Game animal to hunt and why? #30331You can mix anise oil and vanilla butternut cake flavoring together and dip a drag rag in it and keep some in a spray bottle to “spritz” out here and there on the way to your stand.
Works as well on bears as any doe in heat on a drag rag has ever worked on whitetail bucks for me.
in reply to: Telling stories on the wives (or husbands) #29919Oh man don’t get me started on my lil missus!!
She may not be a bowhunter YET.
But she’s as dedicated an outdoors person as any of us on this site are.
And she’s better at getting me to cater to, drag game, and “guide” a person. than any hunting partner ever has been.
She bats them baby blues at me once?
And I’m draggin animals!
And yall this is a lady that does NOT hunt on Sundays (because she’s busy teaching childrens church. Good GOD I love that woman!!
Oh and yea I could “tell on her” but as yall can see?? She’s one heckuva shot and I’m sort of scared of her.:lol:
in reply to: Favorite Game animal to hunt and why? #29914GTA,
It’s always good to check with your local DNR in person and find out exactly what it is they are going to prefer to see.
As a hint I befriend and get on a first name basis with a couple of our game wardens around here. Makes life alot easier. Heck I have one that will give you GPS cordinates to where he’s seeing the best bears on the WMA he watches over.
But around here it’s usually the case that our DNR treats you more like you are in a murder investigation as oposed to just trying to check your bear in. Considering baiting is illegal here, and every nature lover that has a house close to bear turf usually places feeders of some sort for wildlife on their property……. it’s not uncommon to find bear scat 3 miles from no where with corn in it.(bears the most opportunistic feeder in the world, he’s as bad as a feral pig). Since I have a good report and relationship with a couple of the local game wardens as well as my official check guy I usually don’t have any problems. But the beast my wife killed last year gave me a scare. When field dressing him I felt what I knew for sure was corn in his stomach (made me nervous because Lord knows I wouldn’t know how it got there and have no clue as to how I would explain corn reminants inside this bear to DNR)But fortunately when I cut his stomach open what I was thinking felt like a huge gut full of corn turned out to be a huge gut full of acorns and sour wood berries.
She killed that bear at 3:45 in the afternoon. It was 9:47 p.m. when I got him in the back of the truck. It wasn’t that far of a trip, it was just straight up (bears love to run straight down hill when shot) and although we may not be known for it, Georgia has some serious mountains!
3yrs ago a friend of mine killed a decent bear close to 4 miles from his truck. He cut quartered and packed it out. Man the local DNR up there gave him some serious grief! As in they actually laid the ticket book out to give him a ticket if his “parts” of bear did not reach the minimum wieght requirements for a legal bear in this state. Thing is our legal minimum wieght for a bear is 75#s. His bears hide and skull alone wieghed 60#s So there wasn’t really any doubt of it not being big enough and anyone experienced with bears could have looked at this ones head and known that.
Why our DNR is so protective over them is a mystery to me. We are over ran with them, only allowed one a year. and they decimate the local fawn populations. Nuisance bears have went for a rarity of maybe one a year at local camping spots to the norm of one or two a month anywhere cabins or camping sites border their areas. A local bar in Helen Ga. usually has 2-4 a night raiding and trying to get in their trash dumpster around 2-3 a.m. in the morning every night. This is in the middle of town.
I learned a long time ago. Spend your bowseason hunting bears and you waste a ton of valuable deer hunting time. But get to where you really don’t care if you see one or kill one or not and you’re over ran with them. Last year I had 15 bear sightings of 11 seperate bears in a mere 3 days of hunting one area. I never took one because I had already had the displeasure of getting one out of that area and did not feel like going through the hassle again. Besides there’s good deer in there and why would I mess up a good deer hunting trip for a stinkin bear?? One of my favorite deer hunting spots and what used to be my most succesful mt. hog hunting area is now nothing more than bear turf. They dig up yellow jacket and bumble bee nests and if you accidentally walk pass the nest the next day the ticked of insects left will wrap you up. Nothing more exhilerating than trekking through late summer Georgia temps, 6-12 yellow jacket stings a mile from your truck.
Bears get on my nerves. I shoot them more on spite than opposed to sport. I say that because I’m not going to leave one to waste after I kill it. I accept the responsibility of getting my game out of the woods. And although it’s not the greatest meat in the world there is an awful lot of it. So to me when I have a bear down?? It comes across more as a hard task and difficult job, than the rewarding pleasure of trekking your tasty venison out of the woods. I bring deer out, hot, sweaty, tired, exhausted, and smiling. I bring bear out hot sweaty, tired, exhausted and cussing.:P
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