My kind of week

© By Othmar Vohringer

It stared with an unforgettable morning in the duck marsh and went on to become on of the most enjoyable weeks in my hunting career. In this blog post I will take you along on my outdoor journey illustrated through pictures. Enjoy.

As I said it all stared with that memorable waterfowl hunt. The day after that hunt I found myself sitting in my office cutting green cord pieces to the exact length needed to braid a duck call lanyard. With the memories that hunt stirred up in me it brought a knowledge that was buried deep inside me. The knowledge my father passed on to me of how to make your own duck call lanyard. It didn’t click right away but after the second try it all came back to me and within a few minutes I held a finished lanyard in my hands.

The next day I went back to the marsh for some more duck hunting. This time I was a little bit better prepared and knew what to expect. I planed on shooting a few mallards but ended the morning with a pintail hen, two gadwall hens and a green-winged teal. Mallards, the most hunted of the duck species, are very spooky at this time of season and to get them close to the decoys I have to camouflage the boat much better in the future. Still I had a good morning and I am very happy with what I got.

Two days later I headed out to scout at a new hunting area that I have discovered earlier in the fall. I found lots of deer sign, even some fresh rubs. The weather has cooled down over that last few days from warm to frost in the morning. That was all that is needed to get the deer in the pre-rut phase. Rubs start to turn up everywhere now. After the scouting I spent the rest of the morning hunting grouse. In the aspen grove draped in beautiful golden fall color I shot two grouse.

On Friday it cooled down even more which put the rainbow trout into a feeding frenzy. They have to eat as much as they can now to fatten up and make it through the winter when the lake is frozen over. This in turn makes for some excellent fishing. After changing lures a few times I found the one that the fish were going for. Within thirty minutes I caught these three rainbow trout. The largest is a monster that measured 1.5 feet and weighed cleaned out still over 3 pounds.

In between all these activity I continued on my quest to find a nice mule deer buck. Unlike whitetail deer hunting mule deer hunting involves sitting for hours at an elevated point in the landscape and glassing the terrain below for traveling or bedded bucks. If a buck is spotted bedded down the difficult task of stalking within shooting range begins. If the buck travels out of shooting range watch where he is headed and then try to follow him undetected and either anticipate where he is heading and try to get ahead of it and ambush the deer or stalk after it. Any which way you choose mule deer hunting is though.

This will be my last post for this week. On Friday my hunting partner comes up to us and we head together to our annual hunting camp for three days. I will be back here next week and hope to report that I have succeeded in my quest for a big mule deer buck. If the weather keeps as cool as it is right now the bucks should all be on the move and that makes hunting them a bit easier.