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  • Charles Ek
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      Post count: 581

      Nobody ever raised snowshoe hare for a restaurant menu, which I have seen done in Anchorage with rabbits. Here’s a good hare recipe:

      https://honest-food.net/tuscan-hare-sauce-and-pappardelle/

      On two separate occasions, I have found two arrows nestled one over the other behind a target on my home range after the snow melted. I usually have good luck finding arrows in the field in the spring, partly because I recall where I shot them and the frozen ground is harder to penetrate.

      Charles Ek
      Moderator
        Post count: 581

        These are snowshoe hare I’m hunting. We have both hares and cottontail rabbits in town, but it’s illegal to hunt anything in Duluth except deer (during a city-sanctioned bowhunt.) The rabbits are ill-equipped for deep snow and I rarely see their tracks outside the city.

        Finding arrows is hit or miss sometimes and their (temporary, mostly) loss is part of the game.

        Charles Ek
        Moderator
          Post count: 581

          The hare season ends here tomorrow. Despite leaving some exceedingly fresh sign, this rascally bunny kept hisself safe this week by keeping his cool.

           

          Charles Ek
          Moderator
            Post count: 581

            We have a massive amount of depth hoar in the woods now (which would have scared the bejesus out of me when we lived in AK and WA). I was sinking up to my hips yesterday on my second-largest pair of snowshoes. That will be remedied for future excursions this winter.

             

            https://www.mtavalanche.com/sites/default/files/MSA%20January%20Final_0.pdf#:~:text=Depth%20hoar%20forms%20when%20a%20shallow%20snowpack%2C,difficult%20for%20these%20grains%20to%20bond%20together.

            Charles Ek
            Moderator
              Post count: 581
              Charles Ek
              Moderator
                Post count: 581

                The inexorable advance of climate change has been slowed this month in Minnesota’s Arrowhead region. We’re enjoying a good old fashioned winter here at the Head of the Lake, with a recent storm dropping a fresh mantle of snow over the decaying remnants from earlier this winter.

                Went out yesterday to set a trail camera in hopes of getting another shot like this one from January. First one is au naturel; second is a composite with me added for scale.

                Charles Ek
                Moderator
                  Post count: 581

                  Thanks for posting. The bow in my avatar photo was made for my father in 1943, the year before he entered the Navy at age 18 and then sailed for Japan in ‘45. VJ Day arrived before his ship did.

                  Charles Ek
                  Moderator
                    Post count: 581

                    2025 all-years e-Bird sightings

                    Charles Ek
                    Moderator
                      Post count: 581

                      Thanks. I never imagined that turkeys would make it this far north:

                      2014 MN DNR planning map

                      2025 all-years sightings

                      Charles Ek
                      Moderator
                        Post count: 581
                        Charles Ek
                        Moderator
                          Post count: 581
                          Charles Ek
                          Moderator
                            Post count: 581

                            Late in posting this, but it also took a while to improve on this sorry record:

                            https://tradbow.com/forums/topic/always-bring-two/

                            My wife and I were hiking around my grandparents’ now-vacant farm in Embarrass, MN back in mid October. In one of the grassy fields, I saw some ravens on the ground. I took a few steps and realized they weren’t ravens. And there were six of them. Forty miles from the Minnesota/Ontario border as the crow flies. (My cousin had trail cam pictures of them a couple years ago, but I had dismissed that evidence as not worth pursuing.)

                            On the following Thursday I was back at o’dark hundred with a deer cart loaded with my hunting pack, two popup blinds, a longbow, some sharp sticks and a couple of sorry looking, cheap decoys. I dropped the cart on a woods road a couple hundred yards from where I saw the birds on Tuesday. Looked for them in that field but saw nothing.

                            Went back to fetch the cart. As I was entering a smaller field on my way back to the Tuesday field, movement to my right caught my eye. They were coming off a pine ridge for their breakfast. I grabbed an arrow and stood with my bow at the field edge for thirty minutes as they fed out of bow range.

                            When they continued into the Tuesday field, I crossed the smaller field, set up a blind and brushed it in. I figured at the end of the day I might intercept them on their way back to their roosting location, About an hour after setting up and eating an early lunch, they came into view to my right. I hadn’t even started calling. I thought it would take much longer for them to find their way back to their roosting location.

                            When they appeared, I was able to track them the whole time through my see-through blind and call them to my two decoys with my feeble calling skills. Once they made the turn toward me, I picked up my bow and got ready for what turned out to be a six yard shot. The bird’s crop was stuffed full of bits of green vegetation.

                             

                            Blinded by the sight

                            Charles Ek
                            Moderator
                              Post count: 581
                              Charles Ek
                              Moderator
                                Post count: 581

                                I have searched my usual hunting area in vain for signs of buck activity over the last few weeks. Meanwhile, one of the Three Amigos saw fit to rub my nose in it outside my bedroom window:

                                 

                                Charles Ek
                                Moderator
                                  Post count: 581

                                  The 2025 Three Amigos Viewing Season opened this past week at the Kenwood Deer Sanctuary in Duluth, MN, with the on-time arrival of the smallest of the bunch. You will have to take my word for now that he is indeed smaller than his brother and his father (the latter dubbed “Eikthyrnir” at the suggestion of my sister and for good reason):

                                  https://youtu.be/eVxEWE_4X7I

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