I like that!...That's pretty good.

30 Days to go!!!



“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

--- Aldo Leopold

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

--- Aldo Leopold

If this is true, and I suspect it is, should it also apply to coyotes?

It's definitely an interesting thought to ponder isn't it? If you'll start a new thread and post up the quote with the question, I bet you'll get a lot of responses. I doubt very many people will respond on this thread though so that it doesn't get derailed.

Hey, hey...my crew made it. Only a month fellas!

We're one day off on our countdown...gonna have to recalibrate. Holding on Day 30.

It depends on if you count the day of bow season I never do cuz I'm gonna be hunting that day

It starts on Sat the 15th....The day before (Friday the 14th), I'm counting it as if that morning we'll post up "1 day to go". Counting backwards from there I get 30 days from today. Correct?

30 days it is. Here is one of the first bucks Otis found last year!

Awesome!.......

Seems I remember that being a pretty good recovery story. Can you dig it up and post it?

I thought I remembered writing a better story than this but I found it. It was probably the thread in its entirety that we are recalling........This was indeed Otis's first find of the year.




"That was a really fun track to watch unfold. Otis and I have been training for the last year and half and to watch all of that come together was just awesome. Otis is a really smart dog and I think he’ll sure enough be fun to watch when he gets some more experience. After watching him work, one of the instructors at the tracking seminar I attended over the summer said he was a “thinker”. As soon as he can learn to control his excitement then I think he’s going to be one heck of a dog. Right now he’s just so excited even on the training tracks that he’s about to pee on his leg while I’m suiting him up and then he has to cut doughnuts for a minute or two when I cut him loose.

He did the same thing yesterday at first, running sloppy circles wide open at the hit site. Once he calmed down a little though, I restarted him and you could see him start using his brain and nose. It didn’t take but 4 or 5 minutes after that and he found the deer. It wasn’t a long track at all really for that type of wound. The deer was probably within 200 yards of where the hunter shot it but it had taken a hard right out in that thick stuff compared to where the hunter thought it had gone. He was hunting in a good setup just off the edge of the thickness you see in the picture. If you had been looking blindly for this deer you would have likely followed the deer trail on out into the thickness that the hunter saw the deer exit on. This deer may have moved during the night but it actually wasn’t 80 yards or so from the edge of the cutover…..however, it was probably 100 yards or more down the hill from the trail the hunter saw him enter the cutover on. He either ran into the cutover and made a hard ninety degree turn once the hunter lost sight of him or he moved during the night. It would have been really easy to assume that the deer kept running the deer trail he was on. That's what they often do. This will be really interesting over time to see what these wounded deer do as compared to what I would have always assumed before when trying to track them on my own. Several trackers have told me that they also often have a tendency to double back on their trail."

One important fact to this story was that we decided to let this deer lay over night. Prob 16 hours between shot and recovery. Rigamortis had not even set in yet when we found the buck so he hadn't been dead long. No telling how far he would've run if we would've pushed him that night. But because of Otis's hard work and our decision to stay out helped us recover this deer no more than a couple hundred yards from the shot.

Amen!....I'll probably do another rant about it just before opening weekend but giving the deer plenty of time is something very few folks do.

29 Days to go!!!




Mathew 5: 43-47

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”

28 Days to go!!!



You have to save the habitat, you have to save the population - not individual animals. What you want to save is the foundation, the basic infrastructure from which resources are produced. You can't save Fifi and Boo-Boo and Thumper.”

--- Ted Nugent

27 Days to go!!!



"Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."

--- Bruce Lee

I remember this deer last year. That thing looks ancient.