Butchering Day with photos

First, Happy birthday to my brother Frank, hopefully we get a chance to hunt together again soon.

Hunting Season is mostly about friends and family, sharing, getting together and doing something we love. I feel blessed to come from a family of hunters, and more blessed I am able to continue sharing that tradition with others in the family. Andrea also comes from a family of hunters, she often carries a pre 1964 Winchester 3030 that she is the third generation of her family to hunt with. Noah watches with a gleam in his eye waiting to be the fourth generation to take a whitetail with the same family heirloom.

Andrea posing with her family heirloom M94

This season has been a new experience for me, when we moved "home" last year one of the first things that happened was we were invited to Andrea's cousin Jeff's birthday party by his wife Brandy. Over the last year and a bit we have had several family get togethers. Jeff is a Winchester fanboy, he knows his lever actions inside out and is putting together a real nice group of hunting rifles. Soon he will be able to outfit all the brood they are raising as the tradition continues. Another change for me is having someone that we text back and forth our daily experiences as we hunt. I think this is pretty neat and it has helped me keep hunting in perspective. Jeff works a 10 in 10 out schedule in Alberta, its a tough life for them as Brandy is home with 5 kids alone for the 10 he is gone, family matters then take priority (mostly lol) when he is home. I know I have more time to hunt then most, but being reminded that others are in different life stages and have other priorities is a good thing.

We planned our butchering day for Sunday November 24th, Jeff, Brandy and four amazing kids came out for the festivities and a bbq of fresh venison, Andrea's Mom was down on one of her visits, she was not going to miss out on her fresh venison lol. Noah and Shelby helped keep the four kids occupied while the rest of the adults carried on.

The day started with coffee of course, I do not do much of anything, including smile at anyone not married to me until I have at least one coffee, sometimes four...I then proceeded to sharpen knives and head to the shop, I knew everything was going well on the hanging side as either Andrea or I would visually check the deer every day. The temp was hovering around +3 and the wind was blowing a wet cold drizzle straight down off the mountain, so there was no worries about flies or things getting to warm.

The first step of course is to skin the deer.

By the time Jeff and Brandy had finished herding cats (or getting 4 kids in a vehicle) and made the hour plus trek to our place I had the hide off and the front quarters in on our stainless steel butchering table where the amazing Andrea was deboning, defatting and removing silverskin from each of the cuts of meat. I had enough time to wrap and mark each package as well as keep her stocked with meat.

Andrea hard at work

(Shelby in the background learning)

The backstraps on this fellow were amazing in size and quality, the plan all along was to smoke over charcoal steaks for everyone from the backstraps, We made steaks about one inch thick from one and ended up having ample for 11 mouths, keeping in mind four of them were younger children. Baked potatoes, caesar salad and smoked backstraps, what a rough life for a family gathering. In an ideal world there would be a lot more family around at these gatherings, having Jeff and Brandy's kids around is bittersweet, they are amazing kids and a couple of them remind me tremendously of our grandchildren in other parts of the country...of course making missing them all the more tangible.

Back to the butchering - once the front quarters were done and packaged we did the backstraps and then I started on the rib meat, the side of the deer visible in this picture was the side with the exit wound, the meat damage was minimal ( I will get to the ballistics shortly) and I cut the rack of ribs off for Jeff to take home and bbq up himself (along with a few other treats of course).

The ribs from the other side were used for jerky meat as Noah had taken it upon himself to promise his class and teachers we would love to make up some jerky for them, no Noah we will teach you how to make up some for them lol.

All in all it was a great day, we had great company, worked hard and shared the rewards with a few of the people we love.

Ballistics, rifles and bullet talk are next....

As I mentioned previously, I shot this deer twice, before getting into the hows and whys a review on what tools I was utilizing that day:
Rifle - Browning XBolt Micro Medallion chambered in 308 Winchester
Scope - Bushnell Elite 3X9X40 with DOA reticle and rainguard
Ammunition - Hornady 165gr SST projectile over 44.0 gr of Varget powder lit by a CCI LR Magnum primer (handloads)

As I mentioned previously, when I shot this deer the first shot was through a screen of light brush and field grass, I thought it was likely 30 yds when I first shot but Andrea and I went back in a few days later and it only looked that far because of the cover, it was half that. The deer acted funny and looped around to my right while coming closer, he appeared to have no idea where I was or what just happened. For the first time in my hunting career, I was forced to put a second shot into a deer., the reason was evident as seen in this picture.

What you are looking at is the right front leg, the upper joint is completely destroyed yet it never touched any other part of the deer, the bullet tumbled in the bush and penetrated the leg on a vertical plane. A devastating wound for his mobility. but not lethal or severe enough to cause significant blood loss. I am not happy with this type of result, I expect everytime I shoot at a deer sized animal to make a near instant kill. The animal deserves better than a cowboy, shoot it full of holes approach. Every deer behaves differently when shot, each is as unpredictable as a three year old at a birthday party. The last buck I shot in MB was shot through the same area in the same leg, destroying the joint, heart and lungs, punching out the other side, he jumped up, ran across the field, turned ran back and dropped almost where I shot him...technically an excellent shot but he still covered close to 100 yds at high speed before crashing, in the heavy forest that would create a hell of a tracking job.

The fatal shot

This is the hide peeled back to view the entrance hole from the fatal shot, taken at less than 10 yds as the deer staggered into the open area in front of me, he staggered a couple of more steps and keeled over literally 6 steps away. The scale of the picture makes it look further, but I counted lol.

So ballistically I wondered what to do differently, hunting these woods is a different proposition than sitting in a box blind in MB overlooking 600 yds or so of clearing. Note the picture of Andrea posing above, that shot is actually taken in the middle of the woods road almost to the top of Spicer Mountain, vs this older picture from our hunting property in MB before we sold it.

We watched a few deer from this position over the years

A view like this makes the high speed, high ballistic coefficient bullets from rifles like my 260 rem, Andrea's 270 Win and so forth make a lot of sense - 400 yd shots were feasible there. The same cartridges work here as well, but pushing high velocity (+2800 fps and reaching well over 3000 fps in some of my rifles) can lead to all  kinds of issues in the bush.

There are as many theories about bush busting hunting cartridges as there are hunters...my thinking leads me to believe that heavy weight for diameter bullets moving at a lower velocity will normally deflect less and not as dramatically as a lighter fast moving projectile. Another factor is ergonomics, we actually spend time on our hands and knees crawling under deadfalls, over deadfalls and through thickets of miserable bush, this is where the deer go hide as soon as hunting season kicks off. This coincides with much increased traffic in the woods as well as being a symptom of the rut.

A long rifle is simply hard to maneuver in these places, where a quickly aimed shot is all you have a chance for normally, that is why I loved carrying the micro medallion this year, it is light, quick and accurate. The downside is that it's gorgeous wooden stock has a real nice scratch as a memento of my successful hunt this year. Nothing I can't easily touch up, but know going in your are going to scratch up that pretty piece of wood if you choose to go that route, and I will, every time. I like synthetic stocks, they make a ton of sense in a lot of places but not in these eastern deer woods where every bit of noise is your enemy - and not much stands out like the scratching of wood / brush over a piece of plastic...

Andrea discovered much of these same thoughts last trip out when she decided to carry her Sako stainless synthetic 270 Win instead of her M94 carbine. Before the afternoon was over she looked at me and said "I have a rifle problem". Another gun nut was born and I smiled with heart felt joyous pride. I was given a task and 12 hours later she purchased a new to her rifle.

The next blog will review our rifles and the next part of the journey...thanks for reading.

That Worked Well - With a Little Tribute to Dad *Graphic Images*

Thursday the 14th of November was not a typical hunting day. Andrea was planning on attending a meeting in CFB Greenwood so I decided to hang around the house and spend the morning with her. Do not think this was a huge sacrifice lol, the wind was a gentle SW breeze, the skies sunny and clear, a light layer of snow coated the ground and it was a wonderful day to be in the woods.

As of that morning I had spent 98.5 hours hunting, not including time setting up treestands and ground blinds, playing with game cameras etc, I am referring strictly to time spent with either a muzzleloader or centerfire in hand actively seeking a whitetail. I had used a variety of techniques, walking up old logging roads, treestand sitting, ground blinds  etc. I had even sat on the top of a ridge calling in the early pre rut in a rain and snow mix. I had chosen to do this as the wind was again out of the south, the layout of the area we are hunting made a south wind our enemy to this point.

While Andrea was getting ready to go to the office I spent some time doing some electronic scouting; there was an area that I could stalk into, hunt using the wind and hopefully find some sign in the snow. I knew I was entering an area that was incredibly thick, full of blown down spruce, overgrown with shrubs, from thorny wild rose to grape vines running everywhere. There would be a fair amount of climbing over, crawling under and attempting to quietly sneak in.

I quickly failed the quiet part, even the best options for sneaking in were littered with dead branches, every tree was covered in dead branches and I am of course not in the classification of "ninja". After inadvertently snapping a few branches I remembered reading an article years ago about using a grunt call to cover those snapping branches and decided to give it a try. As part of my morning preparations I had grabbed the grunt tube Dad had packed away in my gun case after his last hunt. I pulled that out of my back back and figured why not. After catching on a few more branches I gave a couple of basic grunts, slightly articulated by opening and closing my hand a bit as I blew it....A very short time later I heard a loud snap to the west, the wind was coming from the SW and into my face from the left. I quickly checked google maps to ensure I was close to the area I planned to be and sure enough I was about 50 yds from the South tip. Mind you it had taken 45 minutes to get here, a mere 100 yds from the old logging road.

Another step after waiting a minute, a broken clump of branches (intentional this time) and a decisive grunt initiated a response from the west, it had the sound of antlers banging on small trees. Could this actually work, was I able to imitate an invading buck, stirring up the resident bucks rut driven urges to dominate and protect his territory? One thing was abundantly clear, I had learned over many years of hunting these deer will try and get downwind and scent the invader. My task was to keep moving North along the edge of the area forcing him to move with me until I could find an opening that would allow me to put eyes on him.

Knowing the going was going to be thick and tough. I had elected to hunt with the 308 carbine today, it was the best option I had for crawling under, over and through. I had thought after carrying it I should switch the scope from the 3X9X40 DOA to a very good Bushnell Legend 2X7X32. I had originally gotten that scope as part of a larger package on a BLR chambered in 358 Win. This was at the same time I bought Andreas M700 BDL special edition in .243

She still has the rifle and the dress, both are deadly :) 

That scope has impressed me more than almost any other scope I have owned including several Leopolds, except one Vortex. My good friend Doug allowed me to compare high end scopes including Swarovski, Leica, and others head to head and I still love this little bushnell, It gathers light far better at dawn and dusk than any other scope I have experienced and has amazing optical clarity...Nonetheless, it  is on my muzzleloader for now, I have another good scope for that and will be swapping them after I am done hunting mid-December.

As I moved North sometimes accidentally breaking branches or stepping on them I continued to utilize Dad's grunt tube to cover the noise, in my mind I was doing an acceptable job of emulating a rival buck but I had not heard any more from the west indicating he as playing my game. Another 30 minutes had passed and I had only covered 60 - 70 yds, I was standing very still behind a clump of trees watching to the west for anything when I caught a hint of brown moving through a clump of 8 - 10 ft high spruce. He was following my script, but I needed to be careful he didn't get far enough ahead to loop around me and get my scent. Suddenly after a few quick steps I noticed an opening where I could get a look at him as he moved through, it was 30 yds at most and a fair amount of brush would provide him some cover.

It seemed like 10 minutes but was more likely closer to one minute and I picked up his ghostly movement as he curiously emerged from from the spruce thicket seeking to get a scent of the intruder closing in on his bedding area. As he stepped out I could see a short but thick set of antlers, a thick neck and front shoulders, another step and I had a somewhat clear shot at the heart and lung area. My rifle functioned as intended and he gave the little jump deer tend to do when shot. That was when things got curious, he started walking in a clockwise direction like nothing had happened. He was about 10 yds from me at this point, in a clear area and I could see blood on his right shoulder, right where it should be, but no other signs he had been shot. I had already chambered another round (pocketing my Norma brass from the first one - reloaders will get that) and sent another 165 gr hornady SST through his chest broadside, he staggered a few steps and laid down dead about six paces from where I stood.

What a gratifying experience, as a dedicated, long time hunter, I know that most of the time the whitetail will outsmart the hunter at this type of hunting style. They are quieter, have better vision for movement at ground level, incredible hearing and sense of smell. We are intruders in their environment and seldom are we able to trick them, especially on the ground. Usually hunters are either high in a tree, hidden in a blind frequently sitting on a bait pile in order to elude detection. I do both, not usually on  bait pile, I usually look for travel corridors and setup ambush points, hard to do later in the season as deer become less and less predictable.

I learned on recovery that my first shot deflected and entered the right shoulder and exited almost straight down, definitely not a mortal wound, in fact he likely was just in a bit of shock when he wandered around in front of me for the second opportunity. I believe if I had not taken the second shot when I did he likely would have recovered and either attacked me or ran off.

He does not look as large laying there, not so much a "ground shrinkage issue as a lousy photographer issue. He was certainly large enough when I was dragging him off the mountain. It was three hours from the time I took these pictures until he was field dressed, dragged out and sitting on the back of my truck at home.

Our neighbour Mo, who lets us hunt his property has a 4 wheeler that was going to be available for the recovery, except Mo curls Thursday afternoons. Andrea had assured me she would help me recover any deer - except she was at a meeting in Greenwood. So it was up to me - drag this fellow out, over, under and through. We set off on our journey, me excited and thank you, Mr. Whitetail grudgingly uncooperative as the kids doing chores. I finally got him to an area about 100yds from the truck when I sent Jesse, who owns the property we were parking on a text to see if he was around to help me get him on the back of the truck. Sure enough, a very good hunter, he was excited to see the deer I had harvested, he was there in minutes to help finish dragging him out and get him on the truck.

By the time I got home, Andrea was there and Noah was home from college, they helped me unload and get him hung up in the shop...Noah even helpfully took this picture...speaking of lousy photographers. For those that care - he was 4X5 or 9 pointer with a broken off G2. I never scored him yet but might before we butcher him. I do not intend to mount the skull but may mount the horns on a wood plate -- watch for some woodworking blogs over the winter to see if that happens.

We will be butchering Sunday, followed by a smoked venison roast for dinner with family and friends.

Next blog - another rifle or a review of the butchering and weekend fun, maybe Andrea will have hung one up beside mine this weekend.

2019 NS Whitetail

This was the year, every year we set out for the mighty elusive whitetail, full of optimism and pumped the season is upon us.

This year was a little different, I noticed that the muzzleloader season opened while we were off camping in Sept, both whitetail and bear...I was busy, yard work, camping, motorcycling, tons of things kept me distracted and enjoying the warm weather. Then one morning I was sitting in the office with Andrea, there was cool temperatures, duck season was underway and it hit me...time to go!!!

Unfortunately I had been either busy or procrastinating for the last year and had not loaded and tested any ammo for the new rifles I had planned to use, no matter my Hells Canyon Speed (HCS) was ready, we had access to a neighbors property and it was still muzzleloader season. What is a man to do, buy a muzzleloader tag and hunt, load a bunch of test ammo and shoot for groups, well yes, correct on both accounts. Being retired certainly has moments :)

I setup the reloading bench enough to be functional, started developing loads for the 7mm-08 and 280 Rem, as well as verifying the 270 is still zeroed and getting the ML ready. I have had some nice to decent groups from both test rifles, a couple are for sure worth expanding on and testing further.

The ML on the other hand was a complete mess, I have no idea what caused it but it was in dire needs of a complete tear down and deep cleaning. It was not powder residue or anything, I think some of the ML specific cleaning products migrated into the trigger and firing pin assy and completely gummed everything up as it had not been fielded in three years. The HCS was as expected, perfect, it was ready for rifle season even if Andrea and I were not. All the reading I had done pointed at everyone putting out piles of apples and carrots and waiting for the deer to show up, I have nothing against this concept and a few arguments in favour of it if you intend to be a picky hunter and practice management techniques. If not have fun and carry on, legal ethical hunting is about enjoying the sport, get out there and live life.

We had sold our treestands with the hunting property in MB, therefore we decided to head to Bass Pro shops and by a double stand, we set it up for the latter part of ML season, to compound that 2 of our 3 trail cameras for some reason died while they were on vacation. We also picked up another trail camera. Setting up the trail cameras was by guess and happenstance, but we managed to place our setup close to some apple trees. We picked up a few does on camera, a decent black bear and not much else.

Time was wasting, so I started hunting in the tree stand, a few 12 hour days of seeing nothing but squirrels and grouse while watching the leaves fall from the huge maple I was sitting under, peaceful idyllic days, no meat on the hoof but very pleasant....

Rifle Season

I had yet to pick up the 308, but felt pretty good setting out with the HCS, in the stand before 0 dark thirty and determined to sit there until a deer or dark relieved me...let me tell you, it was dark. Shortly after legal light I heard rifle shots going off all around, guess those bait piles must be working. I was sceptical as there are wild apple trees all over in the woods here, the property we hunt has an old foundation and well dating back to the mid 1700's, it is very neat.

We had snow one Friday and Andrea and I went to sit in the stand. although I had wiped off the snow there was enough remnants left in the comfort seats that it quickly demonstrated that her hunting pants had became less than their waterproof rating on their vacation.  Although she did her best, a very wet posterior coupled with below freezing temps spelled doom for that morning hunt after about three hours and initiated a hunt for new waterproof hunting gear. The new coat is a Redhead multi layer jacket, I have had a Redhead Ridge Stalker set for several years and think it is absolutely great gear, waterproof, warm, light and silent. Silent is a big deal to me, especially when multiple people are hunting together, every little bit of quiet you can get is needed. She has new waterproof rated pants as well but I suspect a pair of Redhead pants will follow over the off season.

In the meantime I had acquired the Xbolt in 308, a great little carbine that I began carrying frequently unless I was hunting in the rain, why bother when the HCS is stainless steel and completely cerracoated...made for crappy weather days. I liked to hike up the mountain on days of less than picture perfect beauty, quieter movements and not as sweaty lol.

Speaking of picture perfect beauty:

No you gun nutz, I am not talking about the pre 64 Winchester she is carrying, I am talking about my wife...we are almost to the top of the mountain in this picture, and this is the road lol.

I had put in a fair amount of time hunting, some time setting up stands and the blind and had literally seen two does. In NS we are supposed to report our hours hunted, our deer sightings and impressions on deer numbers. As of November 13th I had spent 98.5 hours hunting with no ethical opportunities. I knew I wanted to do something different, the rut was on according to the hunters on the groups I frequent so a new plan was hatched for the 14th.

Read all about it in my next blog....

Woodturning Fun

NS Whitetails 2019 - Settling in

So let me tell you a story about whitetail hunting here in the Annapolis Valley.

In 2018 when we arrived in NS I set out to locate all the crown land determined to hunt here in NS, we live on the west side of the river and there is virtually no crown land in this zone. I began exploring the South mountains and found abundant land available and for the most part no hunting pressure unlike the public lands east of Winnipeg where we witnessed drivers leaning out of their truck windows blasting away as they drove down the dirt road right in front of where we were parked. There were many other instances of scary unlawful behavior to the point we never hunted the 2nd year we lived in Richer. That drove us to purchase our beloved hunting property once we moved to Reinfeld, there are many blog posts on here relating to the wonderful hunts we shared there as well as the great times being completely off grid.

Back to NS, in early 2018s season the hunting opportunities here looked amazing, I was 20 yds max from a 4X4 (they call them 8 pointers here) that looked about 2.5 years old, nice rack skinny underdeveloped body. I had ample time as he was following a scent and was very preoccupied - but - I had no desire to end my hunting season on day two. Little did I know that was the last look I would get at a shootable buck all season, I vowed that I would not make that mistake again, an easier vow as I also learned that here in NS the general season (rifle) tag and muzzleloader / archery tag are separate tags and I could have simply bought a muzzleloader tag and kept hunting.

Most of you are aware we had a very damaging hurricane strike NS in September, on day 5 of no power we had ran out of propane for showering in the camper, after running around we finally found the Home Hardware in Annapolis Royal was filling tanks - all the exchange locations were out. While in the lineup my lovely wife started talking to the couple next to us, turns out they are our neighbours. They are a very nice couple who have 400 acres and were quite happy to share some hunting space with us. Additionally, the landowner adjacent has a private road for his business and was happy to let me park about 2 kms up where we would be entering our hunting area. This let us get in and out without interfering with the property owner and his brother where they hunt about a km south of us, and no more driving an hour plus each way to hunt. We put up trail cameras and a double tree stand near some apple trees, and rubbed our hands in glee. We put in a ground blind, brushed it in with a small shooting lane 80 meters from another apple tree. Life is good right? As of last night Nov 13th) I had hunted 98.5 hours and all I had seen was set of ears as a doe slipped away deep in the swamp during muzzleloader season (did you catch that, I bought a smokepole tag early this year) We had a small doe (we can shoot does in this zone) and a medium sized black bear on camera. So I also bought a bear tag.

If you know me well you know I love rifles, I ended up selling several and bought myself a Browning XBolt Hells Canyon Speed in the infamous 270 Winchester. It is an amazing rifle - superbly accurate, light, well balanced and a wonderfully slick action and trigger. I loved it so much I bought a XBolt Hunter in 280 Rem. But I learned something hunting here, that mountain rifle may have been the bees knees back out west, and yes lots of hunters sit in treestands and blinds with their 270's and shoot deer here every year. But it is not an optimal caliber for a bush gun so earlier this fall I spotted a XBolt Micro Medallion in 308 used in Halifax for a very economical price, I drove in and picked it up. (See a trend here?)

I had previously owned a semi custom Remington M700 carbine in 308 (one of two rifles I regret selling) that I had load data from, so while in Bass Pro I grabbed a set of dies and some 165gr Hornady SST bullets. I loaded up some of my Norma brass with CCI 250 primers and 44.0 gr of Varget. What are the odds this "hand me down load would be accurate? I took 10 rounds to the range to site in and test for accuracy, well folks it shot under an inch at 100 yds, I felt like I won a small 50/50 draw or something lol. The rifle is awesome for crawling through piles of deadfalls and blowdowns, great short rifle for sitting in the blind and superb to carry at the ready in the forest. I am in love with this rifle, four inches shorter on the barrel does not seem like much but in the woods it is very noticeable. I now have a better understanding of why the 30-30 lever actions are so popular in the Eastern deer woods, I am not a big 30-30 fan, but a second carbine will be in the works. The reason being, where we are hunting, a 100 yd shot is a rarity, most places you can't see 50 yds. Shooting through bush in tight quarters demands a heavier bullet in my mind, I know there are lots of hunters who believe a light fast bullet is just as effective but in my head (where it matters when I am squeezing the trigger) I believe in heavier bullets, in fact I will be looking at something in the 180gr or higher for the 308. I have some reason for this as you will see by reading on in my next blog.