An enlightening moment for me was when my wife Ginny and I attended the annual mid-May Tawas Point Birding Festival in East Tawas several years ago and seeing the amazing amount of folks who took bird watching quite passionately. Michigan is located smackdab in the middle of both the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways and countless songbirds flying north while following the shoreline of Lake Huron, are literally given a “right hook” at Tawas Point, which abruptly turns them south, and they perform what is known as the Great Fallout, and the birds land in mass … Read More
Whenever hunter-pressured whitetails go nocturnal, nothing beats an old-fashioned deer drive.
At high noon a few December muzzleloader deer seasons ago, I was on a deer drive with friends and acting as a stander at a likely location on the corner of a briar-infested woodlot bordering a hayfield. According to all the fresh tracks there were plenty of deer seeking refuge in the thick and snarly cover, and I was anticipating plenty of action, which can be the case with a well-organized deer drive. Deer drives don’t have to involve a lot of hunters, especially when everyone knows the lay of the land. In this instance, … Read More
Pursuing wild ringnecks in the long grass
Native only to Asia, the pheasant can be found in many parts of the world today, primarily due to the fact it is an outstanding upland gamebird. It belongs to the Order Galliformes, the same as as chickens and peacocks, a couple of reasons rooster pheasants are not only colorful, but a delight to eat as well. The first official release of pheasants in Michigan occurred in 1917, which were already hybrids from game farms involving Chinese ringneck and Mongolian blood. Subsequent private releases from hunting clubs as well as escapees from game preserves would … Read More
Reflections in The December Woods
There’s just nothing like deer hunting with snow on the ground. For those of us in Michigan, that seems to be a rare occurrence these days and your best chance of getting to hunt in some snow (while there is still no guarantee) is during the month of December. Well, my friends, if you are hunting in December and are still looking for a big buck, that means you’re either pulling your archery equipment back out of the closet or you’re grabbing the old muzzleloader. Well, at least it used to. In recent years in … Read More
Tuscola County’s monster “Seney Buck”
The late Mack Seney of Reese had his share of memories, with a couple of them relating to being very lucky. The first relates to a day in 1944 as an infantryman with 35th Infantry Division in France during World War II. The German forces were being pushed back so fast that American soldiers had to hitch rides on any sort of vehicle they could, including on top of tanks, to maintain the front line. Mack was in the back of a truck when it screeched to a stop and everyone was bailing out and … Read More
.41 Great Lakes – a new and truly amazing straight wall cartridge
When Michigan’s Shotgun Zone became the Limited Firearms Zone in 2014, it would completely change the complexion of deer hunting in southern Michigan, and other midwestern states with shotgun zones would soon follow suit with similar formats. A key feature is that only straight wall cartridges .35 caliber or larger, with a minimum case length of 1.16 inches and maximum case length of 1.80 inches are allowed. This is a straightforward approach which is easy to understand, and I do appreciate it. This would easily allow handgun-related calibers to be used in rifles, and I … Read More
Buckshot – an often misunderstood and maligned deer round
Buckshot has a long history of being a useful and efficient element in the American deer woods which dates from the flintlock era until now. It turns smoothbore firearms typically used for firing birdshot at small game, wild turkeys and waterfowl into useful hunting pieces for bagging larger game, such deer and wild hogs. It remains to be a favorite round for hunting in southern states per swampy and thick areas where even seeing the quarry is a close-up, fast-moving encounter in dense cover, an atmosphere for which buckshot is ideally suited. Single projectiles are … Read More
A Coastie turned Huntress
By: Nicole Foguth. It was October 1, opening day of bow season in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Unseasonably hot, I sat in my tree stand, bow in hand, batting away the gnats that were flying around my face. I had never dealt with bugs before while hunting, and let me tell you, I was annoyed. I should state now that I didn’t grow up hunting. Born and raised in small-town Colorado, mucking horse stalls and playing with chickens was what I knew. I had shot a gun a few times, but only every few years when … Read More
It’s Always An Adventure In Michigan’s U.P.
By: Ryan Foguth. Being born and raised in Michigan, I grew up hunting, fishing and trapping and was blessed with my dad building a cabin in the eastern Upper Peninsula In 1999. I spent large chunks of my childhood at that cabin, hunting and trapping until I joined the Coast Guard in 2011. When I met my wife Nicole, who was also active duty Coast Guard, while stationed at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, she had never hunted before. With it being one of my life’s greatest passions, she didn’t have much of a … Read More
Arrowheads – A Steady Evolution
Being able to create fire was, without question, the main element for helping prehistoric humans to begin climbing up the food chain. Creating fire may have led to another advancement, the creation of the bow and arrow. I can easily see a “Firestarter” using the bow and stick used for drilling into a piece of wood to create friction and thus fire, playing around with matters once a fire was created. It would be discovered the bow could cast the starter- stick quite a way, and the lights came on to create a larger version … Read More