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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.
Thanks. I never imagined that turkeys would make it this far north:
2014 MN DNR planning map
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.
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:
It has been a (too) long time since I posted anything. Here’s something to whet appetites for the not-so-distant archery seasons.From a video I shot this morning as we rolled down our driveway here in Duluth, MN. He’s the biggest of the three bachelors that were hanging out together – on my archery range.
