July 22nd, 2008
In my 35 years in the hunting business I have seen and heard about all sorts of crazy things. Remember wild turkey scent? But this Bigfoot Challenge thing just might be the craziest of them all.
Not that people haven’t caught some wild and bizarre images on their trail cameras, mind you. Cougars in the Midwest where the authorities swear to God there aren’t any. Albino deer. Heck, some people have even used them to catch burglars in their yards. But Bigfoot? Are you kidding me?
I mean, Bigfoot is a myth, right? One of those fantasies that rate right up there with the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. Right? Sounds like something you’d hear on one of those late night AM radio talk shows. I can see it now, George Noory on “Coast to Coast” booking in the Bushnell team to ask if anyone has a confirmed sighting of Bigfoot yet and if, perchance, they haven’t also got some good pictures of UFO’s in the process.
But I have to admit, that million dollar reward is sure enticing. I use trail cameras all the time, and just maybe this year I’ll have to put a couple in a secluded canyon near my brother’s house in northern California. That’s where Bigfoot is rumored to hang most of the time. I deer hunt there a lot, and I have seen some strange, unidentifiable things there on occasion.
The downside is, when I get that picture of Bigfoot and claim the reward, my best deer hunting spot will be toast. Which makes me wonder, would it be worth it, really? Would it be worth it to you?
April 21st, 2008
Serious turkey hunters will do anything and everything they can within the law to draw a gobbler in close. Lately the hip technique has been using full-bodied strutting tom decoys dressed to the nines with a real fan, beard, and sometimes even real body feathers. These decoys are selling like hotcakes, and they aren’t cheap. But the question is, who is the real turkey – the gobbler or the hunter?
I have seen hot gobblers literally attack strutter decoys, running at them from a hundred yards away to pick a fight. Man, is that exciting or what? Then it is like shooting fish in a barrel. On the flip side, I have seen gobblers shy away from these dandified fakes like they had the worst case of buffalo breath on earth. When that happens the hunt is ruined. And it happens more often than you might think.
Oh, I still carry one with me. It has the real fan and beard and I have even modified it so that it dances enticingly in the slightest breeze. This spring it helped me shoot a dandy bird, but I also saw a couple strut well out of range and refuse to come closer. So the question is, instead of the one bird I shot over the decoy and the two that walked off, would I have killed all three relying solely on my hunting skills and not the decoy?
They may be marketed as about as guaranteed a technique as you can buy in the turkey woods, but truth be told, too many folks buy these things thinking they will help them overcome a lack of scouting, poor calling skills, and lack of hunting experience. They can certainly be a part of your hunting plan, but not a backwoods sort of government bail-out plan that magically will solve all your problems.
