Wisconsin Deer Hunters Increase Gun Harvest

  During their nine day gun season in November, Wisconsin deer hunters register 218,144 deer. This total is preliminary and will probably change once the final numbers are tallied later this winter. But as it stands this represents an increase of 11% over the 2009 gun season. The preliminary nine day gun harvest count in 2009 was 196,688.

  Over the nine day gun season hunters bagged 102,006 bucks (a 17 percent increase over 2009) and 116,138 antlerless deer (nearly 7 percent increase over 2009). All told, gun deer license sales totaled 621,094 at the close of the hunt.

  The Wisconsin DNR will issue the total number of deer taken during the 2010-2011 season once all of the seasons are finished and once all of the data is collected and totaled. The total will include deer taken during the archery, October antlerless gun deer hunt, muzzleloader, December antlerless deer gun hunt, and late archery seasons.

  Source: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Visit their web site at http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/.

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Ohio Deer Gun Harvest Down

  Ohio hunters saw their harvest numbers lower during their recent week long gun season which ran from November 29 through December 5, 2010. Hunters took a preliminary total of 104,442 white-tailed deer during the seven day hunt. In 2009, hunters killed 10,191 more deer during the same time frame with 114,633 taken.

  The top five counties in harvest were: Tuscarawas - 5,513, Harrison - 3,721, Guernsey - 3,455, Licking - 3,351, and Coshocton - 3,320.

  Counting the adult and youth gun seasons, early muzzleloader season, and the first six weeks of bow season, there have been 163,362 harvested so far. Last year during the same time period there had been 178,397 deer killed. Hunters set a record during the 2009 season with 261,314 deer taken in all of last year’s hunting seasons.

  Source: Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Visit their site at http://www.dnr.state.oh.us

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Missouri Deer Harvest Likely To be Low

  When the antlerless portion of Missouri’s deer season ended on December 5, the yearly total of deer killed was standing at 217,281. That’s a decrease of 12,595 deer or 5.5% checked during the same period in 2009.

  Hunters bagged 15,226 deer during the antlerless season and 12,940 deer during the 11 day muzzleloader season. This was the third largest harvest for the muzzleloader season since it began 23 years ago. All told, Missouri’s deer harvest stands at over 230,000 statewide with only the late youth hunt left to tally.

  "Even with strong harvests in the muzzleloader and late youth portions, this year’s firearms deer harvest is likely to be smaller than last year’s," said Resource Scientist Jason Sumners, a deer expert with the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC).

  One of the reasons for the low harvest may be the abundance of acorns in some parts of the state. When acorn numbers are up, the deer have a great food source at their disposable and don’t have to move around as much or congregate around other food sources exposing themselves to hunters.

  The final portion of Missouri’s firearms deer season wrapped up with the late youth hunt on January 1 and 2. Last year there were 1,706 taken during this portion.

  Source: Missouri Department of Conservation. Visit their web site at http://mdc.mo.gov/.

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Illinois Gun Season Down Slightly

  Illinois deer hunters took a preliminary total of 98,700 deer during the seven-day firearm deer season on November, 19-21 and December 2-5, 2010. That’s 719 less than the 99,419 tagged during the 2009 season.

  The second season portion saw a decrease from 33,293 deer taken in 2009 to the 30,663 deer this season. While the first portion of the season saw an increase of 1,911 deer checked from 68,037 this season from 66,126 last year.

  "Harvest results for this year’s firearm deer seasons were remarkably similar to last year," said IDNR Forest Wildlife Program Manager Paul Shelton. "Fifty-one counties saw increases in harvest, while 49 counties declined. Management efforts aimed at controlling deer herds while maintaining recreational opportunities are paying off."

  The top five counties according to the preliminary reports are: Pike – 3,130, Fulton - 2,495, Adams - 2,468, Jo Daviess - 2,285, and Randolph - 2,192.

  Source: Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Visit their new web site at: http://www.dnr.illinois.gov.

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Arkansas Elk Hunters Successful

  A total of 30 elk were taken during the five day December elk hunt in Arkansas. Most of the elk were taken on private land instead of public land for the first time.

  Of the 30 elk tagged by hunters, 19 were taken on private land with only 11 from public land. This is the first time in 13 years of Arkansas elk hunting this has happened. In the past public hunting ground has yielded the most kills.

  Of the 19 killed on private land, 13 were antlerless or cow elk and 6 were bulls. Searcy County yielded the most with 16 elk and the other 3 from Newton County.

  Of the 23 hunters who won permits in a random drawing in late June only 11 of them scored elk, 6 cows, and 5 bulls.

  The biggest bull taken on public land was a 7x7 followed by a 5x7, a 5x6, a 3x3, and a spike.

  The application period for the 2011 elk hunts on public land will begin May 1, 2011.

  Arkansas began restoration of their elk herd in 1981. Hunting began 1998. The state’s elk herd is estimated to be around 500 elk. They live in the Buffalo River country, most on Buffalo National River land, including easements, and on the Gene Rush Wildlife Management Area.

  Source: Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Visit their site at: http://www.agfc.com.

   Several months ago our buddy "Army Ranger Rick" F. Tscherne sent us one of his SOS Survival Kits he offers for sale on his web site, www.SurvivalOutdoorSkills.com, for us to look over and try out some of the gizmos included in the kit.

  Since we had run a couple of Army Ranger Rick’s articles in past issues of The Bullet (www.backwoodsbound.com/zznewv11i03.html) we were very excited about getting our hands on this kit. But since it was the middle of the summer we had to wait awhile before our outdoor activities, i.e. hunting season, increased.

  When the kit arrived I was surprised at how the package was stuffed full of all sorts of things. There was a wire saw, compass, folding knife, mini LED flashlight, signal mirror, flint and steel fire starter and a whistle that opened up to reveal a waterproof compartment where you can store a slip of paper with your name and other vital information about yourself, i.e. medical info, etc, that someone may need in the event you are unconscious. All of this was attached to a slip ring to keep it all in one handy package. (Rick was kind enough to assemble the kit. You’ll have to assemble your own.)

  Also in the package were numerous other items that can be ordered separately to accompany the "basic" kit depending upon your wilderness/survival situation you will be entering. They include a water purification kit, a fishing and snare kit, a folding signal mirror with a glow-in-the-dark whistle and survival paracord braided into a convenient seven inch long "rope".

  The areas I hunt aren’t too remote for me to try everything but I did put several of the items through their paces. For starters I filled in the "information slip" that came with the whistle and secured it in its water proof compartment. The mini flashlight came in real handy helping me get settled in my tree stand. The light was strong enough for me to see into my pack, help me secure my safety harness and load my muzzleloader but yet not to bright that I thought it would scare away any game.

  I tried out the wire saw while in my stand. It made quick work of a couple of limbs I wanted to get out of the way.

  I was pretty sure of myself but the compass reaffirmed which way was north and therefore helped me curse the cold north wind.

  The need never arose to build a fire but I decided to give the steel and flint a try. As I had never used one before, it took me a few tries to get a spark. I didn’t actually make a fire but I’m pretty confident I could with the fire making tools supplied by Army Ranger Rick. If I were planning a trip out to the "real" wilderness I would practice with the steel and flint until I was proficient in fire making before I headed out. You don’t want to "practice" when you’re in a life or death situation.

  About the only thing I didn’t care too much about was the small folding knife. It would work fine for small tasks but don’t count on it as your only knife. If you’re like me you usually have a knife in every pocket and one in you pack when you head out so I wouldn’t sweat this one.

  In conclusion we give the SOS Survival Kit our seal of approval. You may not use or need all of the items in the kit but they are there if or when the need arises. After all, we don’t purposely go out of our way to get lost but you will feel a sense of comfort knowing you have the "necessary" tools in your pocket if you ever find yourself in a survival situation.

  "Army Ranger Rick" F. Tscherne is a retired U.S. Army Ranger who lives in Italy and markets his SOS Survival Kits among others. Contact Army Ranger Rick at sossurvivalkits@live.com and check out his web site at www.survivaloutdoorsskills.com to see all of his survival kits and to learn survival tips, tricks and training.

  When it comes to great duck hunting don't overlook the prairie ponds you pass by on the way to the lake and your blind. In Eastern Oklahoma just like in other parts of the country, many native grassland pastures have large old ponds somewhere within that thick stand of Native Bluestems and Indian grass that are like beacons of safe haven to the ducks looking for a quiet place to spend the day.

  My grandpa took me duck hunting for the first time when I was 9 years old. We didn't have decoys or even a dog to retrieve ducks. After we bought our duck stamps we headed to my great-uncle's place where we knew there had been a creek full of wood ducks only a couple weeks before. Back then you could kill two wood ducks each and Grandpa felt like that was more than we would want to eat anyway.

  I had recently figured out the necessary leads and lead pictures to successfully bring down a quail more often than not, but I quickly found out that knowledge did little to help with shooting ducks. Needless to say I didn't manage to bring down a single duck that day, but the duck hunting fever had taken hold.

  As the years past and my hunting experience increased I had became a very successful duck hunter. I had a 12 gauge by then and I kept the trail to the various ponds around my grandpa's farm well worn as I checked them all at least once a day during duck season.

  I like to hunt by myself and I still do quite often, but I also like to hunt with my friends. When I was 15 I had decided to bring my best friend Lance Perdue into the world of duck hunting.

  I called him one evening with the sky overcast and spitting sleet and snow. The wind was around ten to fifteen miles an hour and we looked like small steam engines as we walked out of the back yard toward the old coal mining strip pits behind grandpa's house.

  My brother Royce is 3 years younger than me and even at 12 he was a heck of a good shot. He carried a double 20 gauge and Lance and I both had pump 12 gauges, all of us with #4 shot in the guns. This was before the mandatory steel shot law.

  As we approached the end of the pit a single mallard launched out of the corner where he had been sheltered from the wind. Royce and Lance both shot at it before I got my gun to my shoulder and with a single roar from gun the plump mallard hit the water. The wind was blowing toward us so I told them we would pick up the duck on the way back.

  There was a long open pool of water in the creek with huge hundred year old water oaks drooping over it. I knew the ducks would be there. I directed Lance and Royce to my left as we moved through the woods, slowing as I saw the top break of the opposite bank of the creek. Like ghostly spirits we eased forward.

  You couldn't see the water for the ducks!!

  We took another step forward and the world exploded with ducks. My gun hit my shoulder and as fast I could shoot I knocked down two ducks with three shots. They were still coming up and I slammed another shell in the barrel of my gun and hit a cripple one of the other boys had hit. He went down, but another just like him sailed by.

  Royce was yelling, "Shoot!! Shoot!!" I saw it was his duck getting away.

  I watched it and I could tell it had gone down in the pasture across the fence. That was around 150 yards away. We had 8 ducks in the water and all of them were greenheads. There was not a hen in the bunch!!

  Royce being the youngest, we sent him back to get a fishing rod and top water lure to retrieve our ducks. I loaded my gun and headed for the pasture.

  That old mallard was standing in the middle of the pasture like a lone sentinel and he didn't wait for me to get close to take off running. I sprinted across that pasture until I closed within 25 yards and I shot him as he was about to go under another fence.

  When I got back to the creek Royce was back and Lance was hip deep in the water with his arm under the bank. I knew right then he REALLY loved duck hunting!!

  We retrieved all our ducks and were standing on the bank catching our breath when the whirr of wings caught our attention and a big flock of ducks landing right in front of us. They were there for maybe 5 seconds when they saw us and we knocked down 4 more ducks before they got away. One of them was a hen.

  From that time on Lance and I were hunting ducks together all over Haskell County. One of our traditions since, even though we would go to college and I would move to Texas, is we hunt at least one time a year together. That time is normally around Christmas.

  Lance called me on the 25th and asked if we were still going on the 26th. I told him yes. He said to be at his house at 6:15 AM. We were going to hunt over decoys.

  I had only hunted over decoys a few times. Even now he and I mostly pond jump our ducks, but the prospect of shooting over decoys sounded fun. I set my alarm to 5 AM.

  The problem with setting my alarm to 5 AM is that same alarm wakes my wife. Gripey and unpleasant that time of the morning, I would rather let sleeping beasts lie. She asked me why I had to get up so early and I told her if Lance had told me to be there at 3 AM I would have set my alarm to 2 AM. She mumbled something unintelligible and rolled over, cover over her head.

  Lance was up and ready and we waited a bit for his brother Ryan, our sometime hunting partner, but he didn't show. We headed over to an old prairie pond I had first taken Lance to some 20 something years ago.

  This pond has a peninsula of dirt arcing toward the middle of the pond and it is covered in cattail reeds and some kind of heavy grass. We were there before good light and we could hear the ducks whistling and landing all around us.

  As shooting light appeared, we shot a big flock coming in and shot the ones that jumped startled from the pond. For 30 minutes the sky was full of darting and diving ducks. My gun messed up on me and I was shooting it as a single shot, cussing myself for not pulling it apart and cleaning it after dove season.

  When we finally counted 11 ducks on the water we stopped shooting.

  In those 30 minutes we had 10 greenheads and one hen on the water. Lance pulled out the collapsible fishing rod and big top water lure and began casting, bringing in the ducks to where we could reach them. We had ducks buzzing us the entire time. Once we were sure we only had 11 ducks we loaded our guns to kill one more to complete the limit.

  I walked down the pond along the base of it going back to the peninsula when a hen mallard squawked and took off from the grass, wing dragging. I let her get far enough away not to ruin her for eating and killed her.

  We had our limit.

  Lance knew he had shot one that morning that fell behind the pond dam, but we had both seen one fly from there later and we decided it had to have been the duck he had shot. We were wrong, but we did recover the duck.

  As we walked back to the truck, hands full of ducks Lance asked me if I would have thought this old pond would be the hottest decoy hunt we had ever done. I told him no. We actually drove around and identified two more old ponds that always produced ducks and they all had over 50 mallards on them at the time.

  Those ponds would have let us limit out too.

  So if you don't live next to a big lake, don't let that discourage your duck hunting. A little pond scouting and a good call can put you in business right in the middle of a nearby pasture.

  We received the following last month in an e-mail from Al Kish and knew we had to pass it along to our readers. Enjoy this informative article.

  Venison vs. Beef: The Controversy Ends from the U.S. Venison Council

  Controversy has long raged about the relative quality and taste of venison and beef as gourmet foods. Some people say venison is tough, with a strong "wild" taste. Others insist venison's flavor is delicate. An independent food research group was retained by the Venison Council to conduct a taste test to determine the truth of these conflicting assertions once and for all.

  First, a Grade A Choice Holstein steer was chased into a swamp a mile and a half from a road and shot several times. After some of the entrails were removed, the carcass was dragged over rocks and logs, through mud and dust back to the road. It was then thrown into the back of a pickup truck and driven through rain and snow for 100 miles before being hung from a tree branch in the sun for a day.

  Secondly, it was then lugged into a garage where it was skinned and rolled around on the floor for awhile. Strict sanitary precautions were observed throughout the test, within the limitations of the butchering environment. For instance, dogs and cats were allowed to sniff and lick the steer carcass, but most of the time they were chased away when they attempted to bite chunks out of it.

  Next, a sheet of plywood left from last year's butchering was set up in the basement on two saw horses. The pieces of dried blood, hair, and fat left from last year were scraped off with a wire brush last used to clean out the grass stuck under the lawn mower.

  The skinned carcass was then dragged down the steps into the basement where a half dozen inexperienced but enthusiastic and intoxicated men worked on it with meat saws, cleavers, hammers and dull knives. The result was 375 pounds of soup bones, four bushel baskets of meat scraps, and a couple of steaks that were an eighth of an inch thick on one edge and an inch and a half thick on the other edge.

  The steaks were seared on a glowing red hot cast iron skillet to lock in the flavor. When the smoke cleared, rancid bacon grease was added along with three pounds of onions, and the whole conglomeration was fried for two hours.

  In the final step, the meat was gently teased from the frying pan and served to three taste-test panel volunteers who were intoxicated and blindfolded. Every member of the panel thought it was venison. One volunteer even said it tasted exactly like the venison he has eaten in hunting camps for the past 27 years.

  The results of this scientific test conclusively show that there is no difference between the taste of beef and venison.