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These 5 Essential Hunting Tips Will Help You Become a Better Hunter.
Hunting is a popular outdoor activity that takes a lot of patience and preparation. However, becoming a better hunter is not easy. It takes years of practice and study before you can truly call yourself an expert in the field of hunting deer, elk, moose, or any other big game.
There are so many different factors that come into play during a hunt, it can easily become overwhelming if you’re not prepared for even the most basic of them. There are plenty of ways to get into hunting, but for this post, we’re going to focus on the five essentials that every hunter should know before heading out into the field.
1. Invest In Good Shooting Equipment
During the course of a hunt, you will get more than one chance at taking down your prey. You might even get multiple chances in a single day!
Being able to make the most out of each shot is key to hunting success and can mean the difference between bringing home dinner and going back empty-handed. So, the first thing every hunter needs to invest in is good shooting equipment.
You can choose from different sorts of guns, bows, and crossbows which will depend on your hunting style. Also, make sure you pick one that you are comfortable with and know how to use. So, if you pick mission crossbows, make sure you practice your shooting skills with them often to improve your accuracy. There’s no better way to test your skills than by going out with a buddy for some target practice.
2. Invest In Good Additional Equipment
Besides guns and arrows, you’ll need to invest in other items, such as scopes, knives, and binoculars. You’ll also want to have a good pair of boots, gloves, and camouflage clothing so you won’t stick out while trying to get close enough for a shot. These will come in handy during your hunt.
3. Familiarize Yourself With the Area
One mistake many hunters make is assuming they know where a certain game can be found. This can lead to hours or even days spent searching for prey that is not there! What you want to do first, before heading out into the field, is to familiarize yourself with the area.
This means knowing where specific species of game are located, what type of terrain they tend to inhabit, and how you can get to them with minimal effort.
It is very important that your hunting trip doesn’t become a wild goose chase. For example, if you’re looking for moose, you’ll want to check out areas where moose are likely to be found, go for high ground, and don’t forget the waterways. Also, make sure there is plenty of available food in these locations because it can make or break your success as a hunter.
4. Know Basic Animal Behavior
Arguably, one of the most important tips for any hunter is to know your prey. It’s not as simple as just memorizing what an elk looks like and where it can be found. No matter if you’re looking for deer, moose, or another type of big game, it’s important that you understand their behaviors and habits.
Different types of games will behave and react to your presence in different ways. Also, you should know that hunting success rates vary depending on different factors such as time of day and weather conditions. For example, it is always best to avoid early morning during deer season because they are more alert than usual due to their nocturnal nature. So, if you’re planning to hunt deer, it’s best to aim for late afternoon and nighttime.
5. Be Mindful of Your Surroundings
When hunting a big game like moose or elk, one mistake hunters make is not paying attention to their surroundings. Not staying aware of your surroundings is not only dangerous, but it can also lead to missing out on good hunting opportunities.
For example, you want to be mindful if there are other hunters or hikers in the area that could potentially scare away the game. Also, note that hot weather and bright sun can cause prey to seek shade in secluded areas, making them easier to spot.
Hunting is an activity that takes time, patience, and skill. The tips of a great hunter can help you become more successful in your hunt by following the steps that include knowing your prey, familiarizing yourself with the area, and staying aware of your surroundings. The top 7 tips for you to remember as a hunter are essential characteristics that every successful hunter has.
Estonian Hunters’ Society
It is known that the first hunting organizations in Estonia were established in 1869 in Pärnu. A turning point in the development of hunting in Estonia was the adoption of the Hunting Act in 1934. Hunting organizations were constantly appearing and in 1967 the Estonian Hunters' Union was formed, whose members are now the majority of Estonian hunters who take care of game and hunt in about 85% of Estonian hunting grounds.
EJS deals with public relations, legislative proposals, hunting tourism, hunting economy, hunter education, hunting shooting, hunting dogs, hunting trophies, organizes meetings, etc. EJS publishes the only Estonian hunting magazine Eesti Jahimees.
Kuristiku 7
EE-10127 Tallinn, Estonia
TEL: +372 602 59 70
WEBSITE: www.ejs.ee
Shotguns, Bows & Fool Hens
by E. Donnall Thomas Jr.
Although the termination dust had yet to fall, it was the kind of September day that demands the acknowledgement of the seasons’ passage. Although fresh silvers were still entering the streams, the heart of the fishing season lay behind me. Bull moose were starting to round up their cows, and lines of migrating geese undulated against the crisp, azure sky.
Since I’d been in Alaska long enough to know what lay just around the corner, I felt determined to wring as much experience as possible from the outdoors before the sun disappeared and winter seized the North Country in its icy grip. And on that particular day, I meant to do it with my shotgun.
If I had nothing else with me as I walked out the door of our remote Kenai Peninsula home, I certainly enjoyed plenty of confidence in my dog. I regarded Skykomish as the best hunting Lab I’ve ever owned, and the passage of three more decades—and a number of very good retrievers—has yet to alter that opinion. Sky had certainly enjoyed plenty of experience with Alaska waterfowl since our move north the year before, but he’d been raised and trained as a flushing retriever on the game-rich plains of central Montana we’d left behind, and I knew he missed hitting the upland cover as much as I did. He’d enjoyed a fair amount of experience with ptarmigan by that point, but the nearest of their kind lay at least a modest expedition’s length away. That afternoon we were going to have to try for something closer to home… and more imaginative.
The woods around our house teemed with spruce grouse, but it had taken me a season to figure out how to capitalize on them in sporting fashion with a shotgun. As subsistence fare, spruce grouse are hard to beat, but the same naivety that makes them so appealing to hungry moose hunters at the end of a long day also nearly ruins them as a serious wing-shooting quarry. I know, I know: when in Rome… But for better or worse I was raised to regard shooting a sitting grouse with a shotgun as a crime against nature. Fortunately, Sky’s enthusiasm and a bit of imagination on my own part had finally revealed a solution to the dilemma.
A hundred yard hike down the gravel road leading to our house brought me to an intersection with an old, abandoned seismographic trail. With Sky fixed firmly at heel, I dropped a pair of shells into my shotgun and stepped off the road and into the big woods…
On paper, Alaska offers a moderate variety of game birds to choose from above and beyond its widespread and justifiably esteemed ptarmigan. Trouble is, with one notable exception, the state’s other four grouse species occupy limited ranges. Blues are largely confined to the coastal rainforests and sharptails to some open terrain in the central interior, with ruffs occupying limited habitat in Southcentral (although their range is expanding courtesy of deliberate transplants). Well and good if you happen to be in the right place at the right time, but rarely enough to satisfy those who enjoy hunting upland birds as much as waterfowl and big game.
That leaves the spruce grouse as the only reliable alternative to ptarmigan throughout much of the state. In terms of numbers and wide distribution, Falcipennis canadensis certainly fulfills the criteria as a major Alaska game bird species. Although they’re uncommon in many parts of Southeast, they’re plentiful throughout most of the forested terrain in the rest of the state. The brown band on the tips of their tail feathers readily distinguishes them from the sharptail and ruffed grouse. (The “Franklin” grouse farther south lacks this field mark; although formerly regarded as a separate species, it is now considered a subspecies of the spruce grouse.) In areas where their ranges overlap, spruce grouse can be distinguished from the far larger blue by the mottled appearance of their breast feathers.
The problem, from the pure wing-shooter’s perspective, isn’t the bird—a small, attractive grouse that can explode off the ground when it wants to and actually provides fine table fare—but its habits. Spruce grouse are more likely to rely on their excellent natural camouflage than their speed on the wing. And since most of the threats to their survival come from ground-based predators, they’re usually content to flutter up into the nearest tree and wait for danger to pass when they’re alarmed. While that’s a logical defense against foxes and lynx, it doesn’t offer much challenge to a shotgun.
The behaviors that make the spruce grouse the definitive fool hen certainly aren’t all bad from the human hunter’s point of view. As survival fare, they’re hard to beat. Cut up and stewed with rice or noodles, they have provided a welcome respite from canned or freeze-dried food on countless wilderness big-game hunts. Friends regularly carry .22 pistols into the bush for just that purpose (although rocks will do the trick in a real emergency). But for those of us who choose to hunt big game with bows and arrows, producing a fool hen dinner at the end of a long day in search of moose or caribou can become a legitimate sporting exercise in its own right.
The prohibitions against shooting sitting grouse that my father beat into my head when I was a kid certainly don’t apply when I’m armed with my longbow. In fact, a grouse twenty feet up ina spruce tree and partially concealed by overhanging branches can make a very challenging archery target. Furthermore, an errant shot may well result in a lost arrow a long way from the nearest replacement. I’ve certainly spent plenty of time kicking through the brush looking for lost arrows, often with the grouse that offered the original target already in my backpack after a clean pass-through. When space and weight constraints allow, I pack along an extra dozen relatively expendable “grouse arrows” for just this purpose when I’m hunting big game.
Experienced Alaska bowhunters hold a variety of opinions about the optimal head to use on spruce grouse. Rubber blunts, Judo points, old .38 caliber shell casings, and the specialized small-game heads offered by some broadhead manufacturers all have their advocates. But I learned a long time ago that if you really want to kill something with a bow, you better shoot it with a cutting broadhead, and I keep a supply of old, non-replaceable blade heads that are a bit too beaten up to use on big game for just that purpose. Of course that has obligated me to some tree-climbing gymnastics when I’ve left a head stuck in a spruce trunk, with or without a grouse skewered on the shaft, but that seems a small price to pay for a clean kill and a grouse dinner. I never cease to be amazed at the way a grouse can sometimes absorb a solid hit from a rubber blunt shot from a heavy bow and fly off apparently unscathed.
Autumn float trips for big game—or fish, for that matter—offer particularly abundant spruce grouse opportunities in suitable terrain because of the birds’ seasonal habits. At that time of year, grouse are eager to fill their gizzards with gravel ahead of the impending winter, and they often appear on stream banks in considerable numbers early in the morning and late in the evening for just that purpose. One advantage of the bow in this situation is that the hunter can quietly pick off enough birds for a real feast without spooking whatever big game might be in the area.
Spruce grouse meat is dark but generally delicious in the fall, although it can taste strong in the winter when the birds are surviving on spruce needles. Cooked in a real kitchen with a range of supplemental ingredients available, they can provide the core of a terrific wild game dinner. However, the vast majority of spruce grouse I’ve eaten have been prepared in the field over an open fire, often at the end of a long day that left me too tired to worry about imaginative cooking. My standard wilderness spruce grouse recipe is about as simpleas camp cookery can get. Bone and dice the bird. Poach lightly for 15 minutes, using a bit more than one cup of water per grouse. Add one packet of Ramen noodles per bird and simmer for five more minutes. Wolf it down, crawl into your sleeping bag, and get ready for another day.
As gratifying as I found this utilitarian approach to spruce grouse and their pursuit, it did nothing to address the need to enjoy some real wing-shooting that I experienced so acutely after moving from Montana to Alaska. That, after some experimentation, was where the dog finally came into play, as illustrated by events on that long ago September afternoon.
Once we were safely away from the road, I released Sky from heel and watched him disappear into the woods. A flushing dog that is out of control does no good in heavy cover, but, guided only by an occasional trill from my whistle, Sky tacked steadily back and forth across the old cut without ever getting out of shotgun range. Suddenly the explosive sound of wings erupted from the trees to my left, and by the time the bird roared across the cut I was ready for him. The quick shot that followed reminded me of classical New England ruffed grouse hunting. As a handful of feathers drifted slowly down to earth, Sky appeared from the trees to do what retrievers do best. That bird was the first of three our team picked up during an hour’s hike through the cover, enough for a mealfor my family… and more than enough to make me feel like a real bird hunter again.
Operating in their fool hen mode, spruce grouse will never rival ptarmigan as Alaska’s premier wing-shooting quarry. But whether they’re providing an emergency source of excitement for your shotgun and dog or a memorable meal around a wilderness campfire, they always seem to find a way to remind us of the North’s vast outdoor bounty.
