Bass Pro Shops is helping the Quality Deer Management Association celebrate their 20th birthday by making September QDMA month. In addition to donating a sizeable amount of money, BassPro is allowing QDMA members and branches to promote the group by volunteering to tell their customers about QDM and the QDMA.

The email I received says the following about what they need:

While at Bass Pro Shops, all you have to do is tell folks you’re a QDMA member, and that they have a chance to support the organization and possibly win a fantastic deer hunt on

Texas‘ famed King Ranch or another super prize. Bass Pro will provide you flyers about the exciting drawing. Everyone who visits a Bass Pro store will have a chance to make a $2 donation to the QDMA and enter a drawing for one of four fabulous prizes. 100% of the proceeds will go to support QDMA’s mission.  Prizes include a whitetail hunt on The King Ranch in south

Texas; a 2007 QDMA Gun of the Year Package, which features a Weatherby Vanguard in 7mm Magnum equipped with a Leupold VX-II scope; a $1,000 Bass Pro shopping spree; and a $500 Bass Pro shopping spree.

All you have to do to volunteer is call (800) 209-3337. I have already signed up!

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I just received an email from QDMA about a Hemorrhagic outbreak in the South’s deer herd. They are asking that if you locate a dead or dying deer where you hunt and you suspect disease of any kind, contact your state wildlife agency as soon as possible.

Follow these links to read more about the problem from the QDMA and about the study by the Southeastern cooperative wildlife disease study

http://www.qdma.com/articles/details.asp?id=111

http://www.uga.edu/scwds/

 

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I am truly excited to have joined the blogging network, Skinny Moose. They specialize in covering the great outdoors, but also have writers that tackle topics that include sports, religion, health and fitness and entertainment. You can find all of their blogs listed on the side of this site, and I encourage everyone to check them all out. I guarantee that you will find some great writing on sites that you will want to visit everyday!

And by joining this team of outdoor bloggers, I hope to not only get a great deal more exposure for my blog, but to also contribute to the growth of this new media and the preservation of our hunting heritage. I encourage everyone to please send me ideas, comments and critiques so that I can do the best job possible.

Thanks Skinny Moose for allowing me to become part of the team!

Jeff

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I finally got out to check the cameras on Cubbedge Hill this afternoon as well as trim a few shooting lanes. The place was soaked after a couple of days of good rain, and the grain sorghum is now almost all headed out. Of course, there was not a grain of corn left anywhere! However I will get everything loaded up tomorrow for the weekend’s hunt. And while I am corning, I will also be checking my camera on the pond road on the Blount Place, the camera right behind the clubhouse and Derek’s over in Scotia - so check back tomorrow night for new shots.

As for the cameras I checked today, C.J.’s is near the back line at 12, and Richard’s is on the new road near the Big Oak. Neither one had much on them as far as big bucks go, but they did have a few interesting pictures including a doe with tattered ears and a curly horned yearling.

I also checked Derek’s camera over on Aunt Mary’s tract in Scotia last week, and they had set it to video. I have the same camera, but generally don’t use the video capture because it only works during the day, and most big buck pictures are taken at night.

However I think I will have to try it sometime. I loved the short clips it made. I have attached two for you to watch. One is of two sows and their piglets eating corn in the back of a cotton field while the other is of three nice longbeards cleaning corn off of the logging road.

Cotton Field HogsTriple Longbeards

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I have been visiting lots of other hunting blogs lately trying to get an idea of what all is out there as well as gathering ideas for my own. There are many great ones out there, and I have been very impressed by the amount of information they all contain. So for my readers, I am going to highlight several of them every week!

www.deerPHD.com is a great blog by Bryan Karazsia that concentrates on the mind/body relationship to hunt sucessfully. Right now he is doing a series on Tackling Buck Fever. He also covers his big buck hunting in the great state of Ohio.

From the Stand www.skinnymoose.com/fromthestand.com is run by an outdoor videographer who films for Bass Pro and Advantage Adventures with Tom Miranda. He was at Black River Plantation www.blackriverplantationsc.com  in SC for opening week of deer season filming Bass Pro’s Next Generation TV Show. His young hunter managed to tag a nice hog. Check out his story here  http://skinnymoose.com/fromthestand/2007/08/17/south-carolina-hog/

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The last few days, the deer actually moved a bit. Shane saw several nice bucks heading in to the corn at the big oak and killed a nice 162 pound 8 point Saturday afternoon. However C.J. shot first, taking out a young turkey killer going for a drink in the sink holes between the Clover field and CH6 (Apple Oarchard). He also saw plenty of deer, including a 2 year old buck. Those guys always come to HUNT!

It rained all afternoon here today, so I slipped out this afternoon for a sit at the back of the pasture on Cubbedge Hill after it stopped. It was very dark and dreary out, with a little breeze, so I thought that it would be perfect.

It was, except for the lightning! It cracked, then rumbled far off, as it moved in with black, ominous clouds leading the way on an already gray, afternoon sky. Then it started hitting closer and closer. I swore I was getting down several times, only to find deer in the field when I finally did decide to! What to do now?

Of course, hang tight in the metal tower standing prominantly on the edge of the field! So, while I counted the seconds between the crack and the thunder (27 seconds, which is close to 30. The safe zone, I think?) the deer poured out in to the field. Unfortunately it was nothing but does and fawns. But they truly put on a show while enjoying the cool, rainy afternoon. The yearlings and the fawns took turns running from one end of the pasture to the middle in one big circle, but with tight turns like in horse barrel racing. while the others bucked and messed about.

While this was going on, more does and fawns came out behind the stand and fed around on the corn. However the lightnings periods were getting shorter and getting more intense. The rain also really picked up along with the wind, and it caused all of the deer to get uneasy. The ones behind me just kind of melted back in to the pines while the group in the field trotted back towards Webb. I then gave it a few more minutes before finally getting totally spooked by the now, super close strikes, and got down.

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I know that the Toledo Blade (Ohio) is not one of our Lowcountry newspapers, but I still thought that a post about them was warrented since it effects all gun owners. The Blade’s Dan Simpson, a retired diplomat and member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote the most anti-American editorial I have ever seen about how to disarm our law-abiding citizens.

Unfortunately I can not remember which blog I found the original story on, but they had it when the story was first printed on April 27th. I include the link for you guys to decide for yourself if Dan’s America is where you want to live… If NOT, email the Blade, your Senators and Congressmen, etc and let them know that law-abiding citizens should NEVER have to give up our rights while the criminals go unpunished.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007704250310

In case you don’t have time to read the whole article, here are a few of Dan’s best quotes:

“The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building.”

“I don’t have any problem with hunting, although blowing away animals with high-powered weapons seems a pointless, no-contest affair to me”

There are a lot more of these stupid ideas and comments in his article, so please read it when you have a chance. Because unfortunately, Mr. Simpson is not the only one in America that has these ideas.

Jeff

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C.J. and Shane came up yesterday, and we hunted Cubbedge Hill last night… just a few does and fawns unfortunately, and a couple of unidentified ones. The deer just have not been moving very good, but they said the deer were definately out last night by the number of fresh tracts this morning. C.J. sat at BP7 and saw a few in the clearcut behind the stand while Shane sat on CH 20, the new road, and saw a three does and one small buck.

It rained pretty good yesterday at CH, so the grain sorghum should really start to head out now. And it rained 1.5 inches at the Blount Place the night before, so that helped out over there. The weather man is now saying that we should be in the low 90’s for the week, down from the 100’s, so maybe the deer movement will pick up…

C.J.’s camera was out this week at CH5, the clover field, and had a few bucks on it. Unfortunately it shut itself off at some point, so it did not get as many new shots as it should have. However it did have a few good ones on it. One of which you can see is a good 8 point! There was also a few upcoming bucks such as the 7 point in the other picture.

We just put new batteries in several of the cameras as well as moved them, so we should have a bunch of new pics here in a day or two. So check back!!!

Jeff

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So says Kenny Kearse of The South Carolina Bowhunters Association in last week’s Hampton County Guardian. Kearse is the vice president of the SCBA, and he was quoted extensively in the special hunting pullout that comes out every year on opening week.

In the article entitlted “The Real Deal.”, Kearse advocates bow hunting  while putting down gun hunters. His statement, “They get tired of killing with a gun and they want to be true hunters” pretty  much says it all. Fortunately the other bow hunters quoted in the story, while still saying bow hunters are special breed, do NOT go so far.

While I am always greatful for any positive hunting coverage, this kind of publicity does a disservice to ALL hunters. Our sport is under constant attack from those who would restrict or outlaw hunting, so every type of lawful hunter needs to stick together to preserve our great pastime.

Kearse needs to remember that anti-hunting activist would just as soon outlaw bow hunting as they would gun hunting. And that long before the SCBA, groups like the NRA  were working hard to preserve our hunting rights by reaching out to the hunters who hold the most votes to stop the loss of hunting privileges - GUN Hunters!

So hunters, regardless of your legal weapon choice, remember to not tear down other hunters when trying to promote your style of hunting!

Also, please note that I could not find a link to the story anywhere on the websites of the 3 newspapers that carried the special pullout - the Hampton County Guardian, the People Sentinel and the Citizen News - or I would have included it.

Jeff

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Fox News reports : Researchers in Norway claim a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year, equivalent to the amount of CO2 caused by an 8,077-mile car trip, der Spiegel reported.

Norway’s national animal releases methane through burping and flatulence, as do cows, considered more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.

There are estimated to be more than 100,000 moose in Norway.

I guess we are going to have to plan a trip over to Norway to help thin the herd!!! And as for the hunting, the high winds killed it the last two nights… not one deer out during daylight. Of course the couple of tons of corn I put out somehow disappeared. Hopefully this weekend will be better.

Jeff

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