By: Adrian Zarantonello The Smith family has been traveling to Michigan’s upper peninsula for the whitetail deer gun season for well over six decades. When I married into the family I became part of that tradition…a tradition I embraced and hold near to my heart. This year, 2016, ‘our opening day’ began with the first weekend of the season. Saturday and Sunday were marred by a snowstorm that had 20-30 mph winds and gusts of 45 mph. This storm dropped 2-4″ of snow on the eastern UP as well as drive temperatures down into the … Read More
Black Bear Hunting in Northern Ontario
By: Tom Lounsbury The older I get, the more choosey I am about who I go on adventures with in the “wild country” because if the chips are ever down, you need to know they will be right in there covering your “six” or enduring matters with you in a skillful manner. That is why when fellow outdoor writer Jay VanHouten of Midland wanted to know if I would be interested in going on a northern Ontario black bear hunt with him, it was a no-brainer for me to come back with an automatic “yes”. … Read More
Leave The Tracking To The Pros.
By: Laura Scharich Dave and I were heading back to a favorite bear hunting camp for my third bear hunt. I was so excited. I got hooked on bear hunting in 2013 even though it took seventy five hours in the bush to get my first bear. I had managed to get some video of small bears and had a bear destroy my ground blind the first night so it was still an eventful, memorable, and long hunt. Dave chose to do some fishing up there instead of bear hunting and our friend, Jeff was … Read More
“That Can’t Be The Bear I Shot!..?”
“Ground Shrinkage” is a term that black bear hunters become all too familiar with because bears often look bigger than they really are, especially to hunters who have seen few, if any, bears in the wild. It’s common for bear hunters, even those with plenty of experience under their belts, to shoot bears that they think are big only to find out they are smaller than they thought when they recover the bruin they shot. Is there a way to avoid ground shrinkage when bear hunting? There are no guarantees, but one of the best … Read More
Freshwater, no sharks!
It all began with a phone call from a fella in Florida’s swamp land. He identified himself as Chad, bearing that distinct southern accent that told me: “this guy ain’t from these parts”. He wanted to know if this was Wild Game Dynasty from Michigan. I quickly learned he was inquiring on a guided deer hunt that his girlfriend found while searching online. She apparently found a posting of a fundraising campaign in Michigan. This fundraiser was put on by a local charity in my home town raising funds for youth activities, which Wild Game … Read More
Increase In Bear Licenses Essential
By: Richard P. Smith. Even though there are now more black bears in parts of the UP than whitetail deer and that lopsided situation could worsen if bear license quotas are not increased significantly, the DNR does not plan on recommending any change in the number of bear licenses issued during 2016 because bear regulations are on a 2-year cycle. In other words, bear license quotas are supposed to remain the same as in 2015. The only way to change that mindset is for concerned bear and deer hunters who want to see the fledgling … Read More
For The Love Of Bow Hunting!
When I was a kid, maybe six or seven years old, my Dad took up bow hunting. I remember watching him shoot his Bear recurve in the back yard and I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to start shooting a bow. My first real bow was a green, fiberglass recurve with a white rubber handle that doubled as an arrow rest. I think it was all of 30 or 35lbs. draw weight. We shot wood arrows with glue on tips and feather fletching. I don’t remember there being any particular attention paid to matching arrows … Read More
A Fall Bear Hunt At Spring Lake (w/Video)
I checked and rechecked my backpack so many times, my wife thought the Velcro and zippers would be wore out. With bow and bait, Gary and I started the mile walk into the Mackinac Wilderness. Our destination was a strategically placed ladder stand, 25 yards from the bait sight. My first contact with ELO and Gary Morgan was from a laptop at the dinner table of a friend in AZ.in early 2014. I remembered Mike Avery speaking of ELO, and thought this was a place to start my quest for the first hunt in the … Read More
Making Sense Of Deer Scents.
Probably the most overlooked sense of humans as predators is the sense of smell. Yet we move through a world filled with odors, many of which can even jog the memory of past events. The odor of freshly baked pumpkin pie and roasted turkey for instance puts me in mind of Thanksgiving every time. The combined odor of Hoppe’s gun solvent and freshly brewed coffee reminds me of deer camp. Military snipers are a key example of tuning in all their senses, including that of smell, to locate their opponents. When in the field, snipers … Read More
What happened when I stopped baiting deer?
I stopped shooting 4 & 6 point bucks & started shooting 8 & 10 point bucks. I also started seeing fewer deer than when I was baiting. That was one of the hardest things I had to get used to but eventually I became convinced that I just wasn’t going to have success with bigger bucks as long as I was continually seeing and spooking the same groups of young deer. (left) Author’s impressive wall of whitetail fame of northern Michigan. I do have the advantage of having lived and hunted the same piece of … Read More