The Hog Blog

In this season of giving thanks, here’s something many of us CA bowhunters can be thankful for… Chopper Snyder is re-opening his Wild Hog Adventures for bowhunters. 

Chopper’s place is set in the hills just below Hollister, and for several years he ran semi-guided archery hunts.  I was fortunate enough to hunt there several times over the years he was in business.  I can honestly say I missed more pigs there in all the times I visited than most public land hunters have ever seen. 

OK, it’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but hey… hunting hogs with a recurve on open land is no mean feat.  It may have something to do with the phenomenon called “target panic”, but that’s neither here nor there.  The point is, the hunting can be pretty danged good there.  It’s open land, and pigs can come and go from the property, but they’re generally on the place somewhere for those who are willing to put in the effort.

What started as a once-in-a-while deal evolved into a full-time, day in and day out business.  That was a little more than Chopper had bargained for, as he suddenly found himself working with hunters every weekend (and many weekdays).  Between the hunts and his regular job, he didn’t have time to spend with his family, so he finally put it to a stop… always with the idea that he might re-open later. 

And now he has.  While he’s only planning to run a limited number of hunts, it’s a great opportunity for bowhunters who want to hunt hogs without competition from gun hunters. 

The hunts are generally for two days, beginning at 0900 on a Friday and running until noon on Sunday.  The hunt cost is $400/hunter, and included in the cost is a stay in the hunting cabin (a comfortable cabin in a beautiful spot, with room to sleep seven, a fireplace, gas stove, grill, and hot-and-cold showers, and a temperamental electric generator that may or may not provide electricity for the evening), access to a covered skinning shed, and a walk-in cooler. 

The hunt itself is totally unguided.  Chopper will do an orientation tour of the ranch when hunters arrive, and after that, the hunters are pretty much on their own.  Pay attention during the orientation, because while there are plenty of roads, they can get confusing.  You probably won’t get totally lost, because all roads either hit the fence or loop back to where they started, but it sucks to burn up good hunting time trying to find your way around.   This is the voice of experience speaking, by the way.

You’ll also need a decent 4-wheel drive with good clearance, especially during the wet, winter months.  I was able to hunt most of the place with my stock, Dodge Ram 2500, although it’s more comfortable in my Samurai as some of the roads get a little tight.  Most of the hunting will be on foot, though… if you think you’ll drive around and kill hogs, you’ve got another thing coming. 

Anyway, it’s a great hunt opportunity.  To set up a hunt, shoot Chopper an email at: chopper1709@yahoo.com or you can call at:  831.682.0468

Remember, there will be a limited number of hunts, so if you’re interested, you’ll want to get in on it quickly.

So, the other day when he shipped the meat from my NC doe, my brother mentioned he was shipping me something else too.  He was kinda secretive about it, but I didn’t think too hard on it, figuring I must’ve left some of my gear behind.  He sent the second package by ground, because the overnight service we used for the meat was a little too pricey, so it took a couple of extra days for my package to arrive.  I’d almost forgotten about it. 

Today, I noticed a big ol’ box in the doorway with my name on the label.  “Hmm,” thinks I, “what the heck is this?”

I have a short memory sometimes, and the rest of the time I have no memory at all…

I sliced open the tape and started digging through the cellulose peanuts (no one uses styrofoam anymore).  I felt a board… and on lifting it from the packing I saw the coolest frickin’ thing I’ve seen in a long time!

So ya’ll may remember that I mentioned in the story from my NC hunt, that, when I was feeling pretty sure I’d lost another animal to the bow, I broke the offending arrow on the running board of my brother’s truck? 

In frustration, I took the unlucky arrow, laid it across the running board of Scott’s truck, then stomped it in half.

Well, when I broke it, I tossed it in the back floorboard of my brother’s truck (don’t litter, it’s rude).  Well, the sneaky, and thoughtful, little devil saved if for me and made me a gift I’ll treasure for a very long time…

 

It’s better than any set of horns or skin!  I don’t know if you can read it (click it to see a larger image), but it says the date, and “The Jinx is Broke!” 

That’s just downright cool. 

I hope to put a lot more animals behind this bow in my hunting career, but no trophy will ever be as important to me as this one right here.  Many, many thanks to my little brother, Scott!

On Saturday afternoon, after about three hours of sweating, crashing through the cat-claws and spider webs, and being eaten alive by chiggers and mosquitos, I had a really bad feeling.  As the blood trail seemed to evaporate into thin air and the ground was crisscrossed with fresh tracks and trails, it was looking like I’d be bringing home another sad tale of lost game.  We’d covered almost every nook and cranny on my brother’s little place, with no further sign of my deer.  The blood first looked like someone had turned on a spigot, then suddenly became a few scant drops about fifteen yards apart… and then… nothing.

So let’s back up.

Saturday was the opening day of the NC archery season, and as a birthday gift, my mom offered to fly me back home for the event.  I couldn’t turn that down, even if there were no hunt, since I haven’t seen the family in a while.  I booked the tickets, and on Friday morning I was on the ground and saying, “hello” to my old Carolina home.

My brother, Scott, had done plenty of pre-scouting, and had even hung a stand for me in the woods near mom’s place.  That would allow me to maximize the hunting-to-visiting ratio, since I could walk to the woods from the house.  Unfortunately, that property is being sold off and my brother lost his hunting rights.  We regrouped, and returned to his property down the road.  He’s got a ton of deer there, and since I’m meat hunting, I really didn’t need to find a monster (although he’s got a couple of real nice bucks there). 

Saturday morning at first light found me up the tree.  The stand is set on top of a dirt mound, which put me about 25 feet up from the ground.  It’s the same stand I was in last year when I had the sad tale of the lost buck that became bear food, but I didn’t let that bother me.  In fact, I decided to use the same arrow and broadhead I’d used then… sort of pushing back against luck. 

Before light, several deer had moved through the thicket behind me, but after that things were pretty quiet until around 0900.  I heard a deer blow a little ways up the trail.  I couldn’t tell what it was blowing at, and didn’t hear anything bolt through the woods, so I stood up and started looking around.  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught something through the brush directly behind me.  Sure enough, a big old doe was meandering along the trail. 

I eased around and lifted the Mathews off the hook, then turned ever-so-slowly back to face the deer.  She was oblivious, but moving painfully slowly.  Finally, she entered a clear spot.  When her head went behind a tree, I drew, and when the near leg moved forward, I let the arrow fly.

Now I haven’t shot a lot of arrows at a lot of animals, but most of those shots I have taken were errant.  The thing is, there’s always a moment after you release that I have to wonder if I just screwed up.  And usually, I did.  But this time there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that I was looking at a dead deer.  The chartreuse and white fletchings lasered right into the spot I’d aimed at, and angled through perfectly to stick in the ground on the other side.  It looked textbook from where I was standing, and in my mind a cheer went up… finally!

The doe hopped the creek, and I could see her for about fifty yards through the oaks and briars.  She disappeared, and then things went quiet.  I didn’t hear her crash, but I was certain she’d laid down and gone to sleep.  I glassed the arrow, and even from 17 yards away I could see it was well-covered in blood. 

I sat back down in the stand and played with the video camera for a few minutes… trying to be patient so as not to push too soon.  I may have lasted 20-30 minutes, which may not usually be enough time, but I was extremely confident in the shot.  I just knew the deer was laying there, already dead.  The day was warming up fast, and I was excited, so down the ladder I went.

The arrow looked and smelled perfect.  It was soaked in blood, and it smelled like a chest cavity (distinct smell if you’ve ever dressed a deer).  There was no blood at the spot, though, which was kind of odd.  I followed the tracks across the creek, and up on the bank I found my first drops.  It was scarce at first, then becoming a solid splash of red on the oak leaves and low branches.  I moved along in confidence as the trail avoided the thick stuff and stayed in the open path… a sure sign of a well-hit animal.  When the trail veered off into the thick stuff, that’s where I’d find her.

But suddenly the blood just seemed to stop.  She’d turned off the spigot!  I figured that she’d bled out and I’d find her under a bush or blowdown, but I didn’t.  WTF?  I kept backtracking to the last blood, then circling out on likely trails.  When that didn’t pan out, I circled out on unlikely trails too.  Still, nothing.  I went back to the last spot and stood there, scanning the ground and trying to think. 

Then there was a drop, barely visible on an overturned leaf.  I moved up and stood there scanning again.  About ten feet away I saw a glistening spot, and on investigation it was another drop of blood.  I found one more, and then was stumped. 

My brother had come out of his stand, and I heard him out at the barn so I hollered for him to come over and give a hand.  But try as we might, we couldn’t find another single drop!  We crawled on hands and knees, pushed through brambles, and spread our search out until we’d eventually gridded the entire 20 acre woodlot.  He even brought in his dog, but she got hung up in the same place we did.

After about three hours, hot, scratched, bug-bitten, and hungry, we decided to back off and get some lunch.  Back at the truck, we talked about what happened.  We were both at a total loss.  We consider ourselves pretty fair trackers, and we’ve found some tough animals, but this one looked to have given us the slip.  Still, we kept thinking back to last year’s buck… it turned out to have been laying less than 50 yards from where my brother gave up the search.  And the year before, we kept almost giving up and then going back to look some more, until we found his doe.  Persistence pays in the tracking game… but this one had really maxed us out. 

In frustration, I took the unlucky arrow, laid it across the running board of Scott’s truck, then stomped it in half.  We loaded up and went back to mom’s place for sandwiches.  He was going to run home and shower and get a short nap, then we’d decide what to do about my deer.  The options seemed slim.  Either go back and look some more, or call it a loss.  Neither of us wanted to give up, but it didn’t look good.  He drove off, and I stretched out on the couch.

I was sleeping pretty hard when I heard Scott’s ringtone (an elk bugle) on my cell phone.  I rolled off the couch and answered.  “Is it time to go already?”

“Hey,” he said.  “Get over here to my barn and skin your damned deer!” 

On his way home, he’d thought about one trail we didn’t search.  (This is the benefit of having such an intimate knowledge of your property.)  He walked down that trail, and then started up a side trail on a whim.  A few yards in, he hit blood.  A couple hundred yards later, he found my doe.  The shot had been exactly where I’d described it, and he was purely amazed at how far she’d run. 

While waiting for me to arrive, he went ahead and gutted her to avoid spoilage.  In the process, he performed a little post-mortem.  Two things conspired to almost cost me my deer.  First, this doe had unusually tiny lungs.  My shot had been nearly textbook, but I only passed through one of her lungs. 

The second factor was probably the extreme angle.  I was 25′ up and 17 yards away.  The doe was stepping down the creek bank, and quartering slightly away.  My arrow went in about 2/3 up and about six inches behind the shoulder, and exited a few inches above and behind the off-side “armpit”.  It went just behind the heart, and completely severed the esophagus (yuck!).  How it missed the second lung is beyond me, but there ya go.  And even so, it’s amazing how she managed to go so far with the massive internal injuries! 

I can’t thank my little brother enough for his perseverance and patience, not to mention for all the effort he always takes to try to make sure I have a great hunt whenever I go back home.  By finding this deer, he really salvaged my confidence in archery tackle… and possibly my entire future as a bowhunter.  As much as I love everything that goes into archery hunting, I don’t take lost animals lightly, and this would have been my fourth (two hogs with the recurve, and the little buck from last year).  I was seriously contemplating surrendering the bow for good…

By the way, you’ll see the sign I’m holding in the picture.  Accent Outdoor Adventures is my brother, Scott’s new guide service.  He’s offering whitetail hunts in southeastern NC and in South Carolina as well.  He also guides waterfowl during the season along the Cape Fear River.  If you’re interested in a hunt, give him a call at 910-612-1620. 

Well, as I write this I’m sitting in the airport in Las Vegas, NV.  This is the first of two stops before I find myself back in Wilmington, NC… just in time for the archery deer season opener on Saturday morning! 

Last year’s hunt was exciting, but the bear got my deer before I did… and that just doesn’t seem fair.  So I’m heading back to try it again.

I’ll be on and off this computer thing while I’m out there, but unless something big comes along, I doubt there’ll be any updates until I get back to California. 

In the meantime, here’s hoping for a great big whitetail buck!  It’s time to end this archery jinx!

Dang, this bowhunting is hard!

I think I’ve whined that before, but I was reminded again this weekend at the Golden Ram’s Hedgepeth Ranch. 

First of all, just finding a deer was a challenge over the weekend.  The small handful I saw were does and youngsters, nary a buck in the mix (not even a spike).  With all the youngsters in the mix, though, I knew there must be some bucks around.  They just wouldn’t show themselves for me.  That may be due, in part, to the huge moon that’s waxing right now. 

What the place was lacking in legal deer, though, it more than made up in hogs!  Hogs to the left of me, hogs to the right, rooted and plundered (apologies Lord Tennyson). 

I had the first close encounter early on Sunday morning, as a big old sow came trotting across the meadow right to me.  She stopped on the edge of a ravine, broadside, and I guesstimated the distance at 40 yards.  Unfortunately, she only stopped long enough for me to guesstimate the range before she dropped into the ravine and headed even closer.  I moved up, and waited with the bow up and ready for her to appear. 

She didn’t appear.  Then I heard rustling almost directly under my feet.  She’d turned in the brush, and was now less than 10 feet away.  I eased around to ready for a shot just as she came clear of the brambles… eye-to-eye.  Pigs have rocket assisted take-off.  You might have never known that, but this girl demonstrated a turn and burn that would’ve made a fighter pilot proud.

I was already at full draw, and instead of letting off, I touched the release to watch my arrow skip off the hard pan and disappear into a thicket.  Crap!  That’s sixteen dollars I’ll never see again!  The same can be said for the pig as well, as she dove over the ridge and into the thick woods.  I could still hear her running two or three hundred yards away.

That was exciting!

After a failed stalk, I made my way back to camp.  I’d taken my friend’s 15 year-old son, Payton, out for his first hunt (he was observing), and they had to head back early.  I got him and his mom on the road, took a little breather, and headed back to a new spot I’d just been shown.  Major thanks to “Mike”, for the generosity… sharing a great little honey-hole with me.  I never saw the big buck he’d been trying to arrow, but the hogs gave me quite a show.

About an hour after I settled down, I heard rustling coming from the manzanita below me.  Then I heard a droning kind of grunt… not loud like a feeding hog, but just kind of moaning.  Weird!  I peeked around the tree I was set up under, and spotted movement low to the ground.  A group of about eight tiny pigs were rooting around at the edge of the trail.  I readied my bow, hoping that they’d be accompanied by a larger generation of siblings or cousins, or something… but the little crew fed across in front of me (often at less than five yards), and moved away up the hill. 

After fifteen minutes of waiting for adults, I realized they’d apparently been orphaned.  They were still tiny, but seemed completely able to fend for themselves.  I briefly thought of the juvenile golden eagle I’d seen hunting earlier, and figured at least one of those guys wouldn’t make it through the evening.  Fortunately for them, the raptor had moved on to another area. 

I listened to the little hogs ravaging the underbrush for an hour or two, before things finally settled down again.  I spotted hogs across the canyon, and watched some deer, but things were quiet until about an hour before dark.  I was glassing the far ridges, and when I lowered the binos, I caught a black shape at the edge of the manzanita.  A 120-pound hog was standing there looking at me, about 18 yards away.  I froze.  He froze.  I waited.  He waited.

Finally, he lowered his head and I was able to raise the bow.  I leaned behind the tree and came to full draw, then leaned back out to settle the 20 yard pin just behind his shoulder.  A chip shot… this was one dead pig walking.

I eased the release, and the arrow sprung out toward the hog.  Straight as an arrow… or not!  Just about halfway to the target, I heard a barely audible “snap”, and the arrow dove hard to the left and passed just behind the hog’s butt!  He looked at me briefly as if to say, “well I gave you a chance,” and then he spun and bailed over the hill and back into the manzanita and poison oak. 

Disappointment and frustration tried to shake me down, but I fought it off.  I walked out to see where he’d been standing, and it was only when I looked back at my spot that I saw the manzanita bush sticking up a lone branch, like a desperate center-fielder reaching for a home run ball.  The top two inches of the branch were leaning, clipped nearly in half by a razor-sharp broadhead.  I went down to look for the arrow, but it had gone into a dense patch of poison oak.  Another $16 bucks gone! 

It looks like my archery jinx is still holding tight. 

That wrapped up the A-zone archery season.  I may try to get out for B zone archery, but August is looking kind of busy this year.  May have to find my deer with the rifle this year. 

I’m hoping to get back out after hogs with the bow as well.  I’ve got some redemption to get.

In the meantime, there’s no joy in Mudville tonight… the not-so-mighty Casey has struck out. 

(Hopefully I’ve got some good video of the weekend… I’ll try to get that online ASAP)

Yeah, there’s a lot to be experienced in North Carolina, and I got to get up close and fairly personal with all of it over my recent long weekend.

I was hoping to have the story of my weekend on video, but that’s gonna have to wait until later this week.  In the meantime, here’s a word-centric version for those of you who’ve been wondering how I did.

 Some of you will remember the catalyst for this whole trip, a trail-cam photo my brother sent me.  Allegedly, this buck was on his property, and allegedly, he has this big boy all figured out, from bedroom to dinner table and all points in between.  Allegedly…

Well, I jumped on it, made my airline reservations, and let my mom know she’d have an unexpected house guest for a few days.  I’d arrive on Thursday night, spend the day Friday visiting and relaxing (and doing a few hours of work), then plan on hitting the opening morning on Saturday.  Based on my brother’s stories, I figured we’d have a deer each on the hook by 10:00, and relax on the river the rest of the day. 

The best laid plans of mice and men g’ang aft agley!
Robert Burns

Brother Burns had it right.  So did Murphy.

Saturday morning dawned hot and muggy.  Sweat soaked my new, lightweight clothes, and ran down my spine.  I was thankful for my Thermacell, as I could hear the mosquitoes plotting their assault, only to be thwarted again and again by the vapors from this magical device.  The wind was absolutely still, and with the dense humidity, scent dropped to the ground and stayed there. 

All this detail serves a point…  Stink.  The hunters’ bane.  Deer don’t like us.

About an hour after first light, I was scanning the woods when I heard the dreaded “huff”, and turned my head in time to see the white flag flickering through the catclaws and pin oaks.  The deer had been within 15 yards and I’d neither heard her, nor seen her until she hit my scent and blew out.  How long she’d been there, I’ll never know.  The dense, late-summer foliage made it impossible to see anywhere except the shooting lanes my brother had cut.

I sat tight, waiting for quite a while, until I was sure the deer wasn’t going to circle back (as they sometimes do).  I hung my bow on the hook, and settled back into my seat.  Morning dragged on, and the effects of staying up late the previous night, and rising at 0400 were catching up.  Keep in mind that I still hadn’t had an opportunity to switch from Pacific time to the East Coast, so my internal clock was all out of whack and I was dog tired.  I caught myself nodding from time to time, and knew I wouldn’t last much longer.

I shot a little more video, and considered climbing down and heading back to the truck.  As I was doing a little monologue, I heard a snap in the bushes.  I froze, and put the camera away, slowly.  I couldn’t see anything, but as I scanned the brush I heard it again… the whoof of exhaled air, and the crash of brush.  This time, I saw the deer breaking away to my left, heading for an open spot.  I lifted the bow, hoping for a shot, but just as the deer hit the opening, he disappeared!  A ditch runs along the property line right there, and it is apparently a regular escape route. 

I held tight for another hour or two before climbing down.  It was too hot to be there anymore, my back was aching, and I was a little disappointed that all of the main trails were directly downwind of my stand. 

Back at mom’s place, I took a brief nap, had some lunch, and took some practice shots with the Mathews.  Before long, it was time to get back in the woods.  To summarize the evening hunt, nothing happened.  Just before dark, I heard some deer blowing, and thought my brother may have had a shot.  Turns out that there were a couple of smaller bucks sparring in the creek, too far for him to shoot and nowhere near my stand. 

North Carolina is one of the handful of states that still doesn’t allow Sunday hunting.  This worked out OK this trip, because it was an opportunity to spend some time with the whole family… nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters-in-law… you know, the whole shebang.  It was fun, and definitely a highlight of the trip.  Sunday came and went, and after over-indulging on good, homecooked food and a few drinks, I went to bed fairly early.

My schedule had me departing at 1125 on Monday, so the plan was for me to sleep in and then have a good breakfast before heading on over to the airport.  I’d expected to have at least one deer in the cooler by then, but as we’ve seen, that wasn’t to be.  So, instead of laying in bed, I was up and out at 04:00 again to get back in the treestand.  I blame my little brother, who insisted that even if I shot one at the last minute, he’d track it and process it for me. 

At 06:45, as the morning light was still filtering through the trees, I caught the movement of legs in the trail.  I raised the Leicas and, sure enough, a small buck was browsing on something right in the middle of my shooting lane.  With tiny, three-inch spikes, he was too small for even me to take, so I enjoyed watching him for a while.  Another deer was with him, and while I couldn’t see antlers, it was about the same size, body-wise, and I figure it’s probably a sibling.

After watching them for a few minutes, they suddenly stopped still and stared back into the thicket before bolting up the trail.  At first I thought my brother had just shot something, or was walking up the trail, but then I spotted a larger deer coming in.  A quick scan with the binos told me he was a decent little cowhorn, and certainly good enough for a first archery deer.  (A “cowhorn” is a spike with antlers over six inches or so.)  I slowly lifted the bow from the hanger, and got ready.

It all went so perfectly, as he eased right into my shooting lane.  As his head went behind a clister of branches, I raised and drew back.  He stepped into the open and lowered his head, stopping almost perfectly broadside.  Textbook! 

I centered the pin, took a deep breath, and I’m pretty sure I gently squeezed the release trigger until the arrow zipped into the air.  A split-second later, I heard the thump of the impact, and the deer spun and took off into the bushes.  I listened to him run, hoping for a crash, but didn’t hear it.  With the damp ground, I figured I might not hear anything, so I sat still for a half-hour, then climbed down to check the arrow and the sign.

And here’s where it all fell apart.

I estimated the range and the angle, and decided to hold a little high on the shoulder.  The thought was that the angle would carry the arrow down, through the shoulder, into the lungs.  But I over-estimated that angle, and the arrow apparently went right under the spine, but too high to hit any vitals.  The arrow was covered in blood, but I couldn’t find a single drop on the ground for yards. 

I packed my gear out to the road then went back in after another half-hour wait.  By now my brother was down, and the two of us scoured the woods for sign.  We circled outward.  Finally, about 100 yards from where I’d made the shot, I spotted a splotch of blood on a dead leaf.  We soon spotted another drop, then followed the likely trail until we hit more blood at the creek bank.  We could see where the deer had run down the creek bank and crossed.  He was heading toward a bedding area, and my hopes were getting pretty high.

Unfortunately the sun was getting higher too, and I realized it was way past time for me to go.  It was two hours before my departure time, and I still had to drive back to mom’s place, get my luggage packed, and have her drive me to the airport.  Regretfully, I left the tracking to my brother and took off. 

Waiting for my connection in Atlanta a few hours later, I gave him a call.  He told me he’d followed the trail without finding more blood, but as he entered the bedding area, a deer jumped and took off.  He’s assuming it was my deer, and based on its movement, it wasn’t hurt too badly.  He gave a brief pursuit, but found no indication that this deer was fatally hit.  He finally gave up the search, and headed off to work.

So there we go.  I’m blown away by this new bow, and the accuracy it offers.  But even with this technology, there is no sure thing. 

The streak continues… I have yet to take a big game animal with a bow.

 

Heading out this morning, into the sun

Heart, Dreamboat Annie

This is the song that’s been running through my head since I woke up this morning.  Besides the fact that it’s one of my favorite Heart songs, it’s also apropos, since I will be boarding an east-bound jetliner later this morning and heading back to NC for a few days.  The archery deer season opens this weekend, and my little brother has totally conned me into giving more money to the greedy airlines in order to come out and sit in a tree, in the sweltering, late-summer, southeastern heat. 

And I can’t wait! 

How’d he convince me to come out?  He sent me this danged picture of a fine whitetail from one of his trail cameras. You’ll need to click the pic to enlarge it, but when you do you’ll see that no self-respecting deer hunter could turn down the opportunity to get back home and try to stick an arrow in this sucker! 

Even worse, the time stamp is my birthday!  Is that a sign, or what?

So the new Mathews is packed up in a brand new SKB bow case, I’ve got a dozen arrows, half of them tipped with 100 grain Slick Trick broadheads, and the other half tipped with field points for practice…  and the skinning knife is tucked away as well. 

In addition to the hunting, of course, I’ll also be visiting with family.  Didn’t have much time back there on my last visit, so I’m looking forward to relaxing a bit at Mom’s house, and just taking it easy for a while.

---

On another, mostly unrelated note, no, I haven’t forgotten the significance of today’s date.  It’s one I’ll never forget, the same as any other American.  But I’m not gonna try to stick together some kind of flashy or heartfelt memorial.  That’s been amply done around the blogosphere, including tributes from several of my Skinny Moose Network compatriots, including:

Her Outdoors

From the Stand

Moose Droppings Blog

Not to mention several outside of the network, like Arthur’s Simply Outdoors, are also commemorating the day.

 

 

 

Most of you, like me, are just about at saturation with the Summer Olympics.  Yeah, they’re still thrilling, but there’s only so much you can watch… especially if you’re watching on network TV and listening to the banal observations of the “experts” and announcers.  The only way I can bear it, sometimes, is just to remember the announcer in Christopher Guest’s mock-umentary,  ”Best in Show“.  It reminds me to see the humor above the annoyance, and I get by… but barely.

But what I’m not getting enough of in the televised coverage… actually, what I’m not getting ANY of on network TV… is the shooting sports.  Archery, pistol, rifle, and shotgun events have been part of the games for ages, but in recent years televised coverage has dropped to nil.  Some folks believe there’s an anti-gun/anti-shooting sports reason for this lack of television exposure.  I’m not sure I completely buy that.  The more logical argument put forth by the networks is that these aren’t really crowd-pleasers and they don’t generate enough attention to merit coverage… which amounts to the fact that if they don’t generate enough advertising they don’t rate air-time.  I guess that’s valid enough, since TV is all business.  But it still grates on me. 

Another reason you won’t see a lot of the shooting sports on US network TV is that the US has generally been fairly tepid in the Olympic shooting sports.  Our shooters put up a great effort with an occasional stellar performance, especially in the shotgun sports, but we’re often outgunned by other marksmen (and women)…particularly the northern european countries.  That makes it tough for some of the flag-waving crowd to get behind, but dammit, these shooters are all the BEST IN THE WORLD!  That’s how they got to be at the Olympics in the first place!  They ALL deserve recognition and coverage.  I believe that’s sort of the point of the Games.

Anyway, since you won’t hear a lot about this in the mainstream, I just thought I’d let ya’ll know that so far the U.S. shooters have taken three medals.  There are still some events left, including a couple where our team should make a good showing, but for now we have the following:

Women’s Skeet – Kim Rhode won the silver following a three-way tie and shoot-off for the gold. 

If I remember correctly, this is Kim’s third or fourth Olympic medal, going back to the 1996 games where she won gold as a 17 year-old competitor in Women’s Double-Trap!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women’s Trap – newcomer Corey Codgell took the bronze medal. 

As the press-releases tell, Corey wasn’t even expected to make the team this year, much less medal in the events.  As a brand-new face at the Olympic Shooting Camp, she was just there to learn more and train fo the 2012 games in London. 

Following a pretty awesome performance in the qualifications, and in other key shoots, she suddenly found a spot on the team and with this bronze medal win, made her own mark in the annals of Olympic history.

 

 

Men’s Double Trap - Glenn Eller took the gold, and set a new world record in the process… 190 out of 200 targets! 

This is Eller’s third Olympics, and his first time on the Podium.  As of right now, he shows promise to be there again in London, four years from now. 

 

 

 

 

 

You can learn a lot more about the US Shooting Team by going to the USA Shooting website.  Read up on the program, and the participants, then find out what you can do to help this great organization continue to bring us even more world-champions. 

There’s a lot of great stuff going on in Archery too, and as that competition begins to gel, I’ll bring you a salute to some of America’s (and the World’s) best archers! 

In the meantime, I just want to recognize the intense drive, determination, and dedication these shooters and archers have demonstrated in order to get where they are.  This isn’t the kind of thing you just learn to do overnight. 

Just got this from the good folks at Bowtech.  Pretty serious stuff for any bowhunter, whether you’re hunting hogs or deer. 

Check it out:

Well, first of all… I didn’t get sprayed by a skunk. I’m a little gun shy of those things. In the last video, when he raises his tail I think there was a coyote down in the draw with him. He had no idea I was there.

For those who haven’t been keeping up, I was bowhunting blacktails during the California A-zone archery season. This was my first outing with the new Mathews Drenalin compound, after many years shooting a recurve. The hunt took place on the Hedgepeth Ranch, which is leased by the Golden Ram Sportsmen’s Club. It’s a great place, and I had success there with a hog and a deer last year.

Anyway, once again as in so many of my hunting videos, there won’t be any kill shots or spectacular close-ups with trophy game (except that skunk). But I hope you enjoy it anyway…