All posts by Shawn West

I've been tagging along hunting with my family and friends since I was eight years old. Over twenty years later I still hunt waterfowl, wild turkeys, deer, and small game whenever I get a chance. "Get Out & Go Hunting" combines my two passions, hunting and writing about hunting. Hope you enjoy it, and if you like what you read, please subscribe to have posts delivered to you via e-mail or feed reader.
deer hunting

A Deer Season Digested

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So, through a crippling work schedule, a two-year old son that won’t go to bed in the evening and general laziness on my part I have had plenty of time to mull over the early November period known around these parts as “deer season” and have come to the following conclusion: I can’t catch a break when it comes to hunting deer.  But it is not all doom and gloom in the deer woods, and I thought I’d share with all of you some of the triumphs, comical failures, and general wackiness of what my deer season was in 2011.

Now I know I’ve used the word “digested” in the title so before anyone makes a poop joke and sends it to my inbox, I thought I’d just get it out of the way here.  I’m aware that excretion follows digestion.  So by definition this post may be considered crap.  No apologies.
For the second time in five years, I very nearly hit a deer with my car while driving home after my last afternoon of deer hunting in the Parry Sound district.  Apparently in my car I’m irresistible to deer in that area.  Meanwhile, when I’m in the field in the same geography the deer go full-on incognito.  Despite many, many hours of hunting up there 2011 marked the first time I’d ever even seen a deer in the woods there, much less raised my gun with deadly intent.  This particular deer was a very nice looking buck that just happened to be standing broadside on the trail at 5pm.  There was still just enough shooting light but the buck in question had two key factors playing his favour.  The first was that I could not (and thus, did not) see him until I turned a corner in the trail and our eyes momentarily met.  The second was that I had my gun in a cradle carry and by the time I brought the scope halfway to my eye he had made for another part of the province disguised as a flash of brownish-grey fur and impressive antlers.  His track was as big as my fist, and his first jump (from a stand-still no less) was about 11 feet long.  I never had a chance.
So instead I berated myself for not being ready, tipped my hat to the cagey old buck, and went back to camp so that I could eat some pork chops in mushroom sauce, have a beer, and listen to the camp elders sermonize to me about how to walk while holding a rifle so that if such an opportunity ever again presents itself I won’t be caught flat-footed again.  All things that, coincidentally, happened just as I predicted them.
On the Bruce Peninsula where I spend my first week of my deer hunting, for the first time ever in this tragic odyssey that has comprised my deer hunting career I managed to rattle up a deer.  I was sitting at the Four Ashes stand which is at the base (not surprisingly) of four ash trees that all grow out of the same stump…so I guess technically it is just one big mutant ash tree, but why mess with a cool name for a deer stand?  Anyhow, I had my gun leaning against a convenient but sturdy sapling and was doing a pretty aggressive grunting and rattling routine, because frankly I was bored and my hands were cold.  At the end of the sequence I took a drink of water from the Nalgene bottle I pack in, and was just reaching for my gun when I heard something coming at a dead run through the crisp leaves that blanketed the forest floor in a tapestry of orange, red, yellow, and brown.  I turned slowly towards the sound and saw the unmistakable shape of a deer running towards me through a maze of thick gads and small trees.  No shot presented itself but the deer was hard onto my setup, so I assumed the ready position instinctively.  I heard the deer splash through a small swampy spot in a cedar thicket and with rifle shouldered, heart pounding and fingers poised on the safety, I was swaying ever so slightly looking for an opening.  When I at last found the shape of the deer, I could very clearly see all of its hindquarters and none of its vitals.  This I saw for approximately one steamboat.  Did I mention that the sprinted approach of the deer brought it directly downwind of me at a distance inside of twenty-five yards?  Well it did.  The deer  disliked my odour (as most things do) and with a haughty snort crashed through the thicket, all the while giving me occasional glimpses of its tail flagging, but not presenting even a hint of an ethical or achievable shot.  I cursed that deer’s survival instinct as I listened to it bound away and then sat pensively under those four ashes for another few hours before the call of a hot bowl of soup and a stacked meat sandwich summoned me to abandon the stand.
During the entirety of the season we eat like overstuffed sixteenth-century French kings, but it is one night in particular during that languid week of hunting that holds a special place in my venatorial and culinary heart of hearts: Wednesday night on the Bruce Peninsula hunt.  We get a pile of fresh Georgian Bay whitefish, some Nova Scotia sea scallops, some slaw, some potato salad, some crusty rolls and then deep fry all the fish, butter up the rolls, and chow down.  Literally dozens of other hunters show up as well and bring with them more seafood and drink for the general gluttony.  We tell stories, eat, laugh, play shuffleboard, laugh some more, eat again, and go to sleep happy and full of good food and good cheer.  This year my cousin Lukas and I manned the fryer, which is a first in camp and a sign that the stranglehold of paternal control in our camp is slackening.  I did the breading, Lukas did the turning.  Not surprisingly he got all the kudos and credit…I ended up with raw fish and sticky batter on my hands.  But I’m not complaining because we did all the quality control before anyone else got a dig at the food, which is the sad duty of any camp chef.
But it wasn’t all eating and failure this deer season.  My cousin Lukas shot two deer a little over 24 hours apart, the first a nice basket-racked yearling buck and the second a brute of a nine-pointer that my Dad repeatedly referred to as a “bragging buck” that night.  It was a dandy looking deer, in full rut as evidenced by the grossly swollen neck and the reek of buck urine that wafted from the carcass for the remainder of the week even after the tarsal glands had been removed and disposed of during field-dressing.  His brother Dane shot one early on opening morning as well, just twenty minutes before Lukas shot his first buck.  In fact, with the rest of the camp attending a funeral on the Monday morning, as a group we were (for a brief while anyhow) completely tagged out by noon on Monday morning.  Nothing for those two brothers to do but have a cigar and feel all self-important for a couple of hours; neither really hunted that hard the rest of the week and frankly I can’t blame them.  My dad shot a decent eight-pointer to boot in the snow on the Friday morning of the Spence Township hunt, which was about par for the course; he seems to shoot a nice buck every other year or so, some of which have been real bruisers.  This one was an average 8-pointer which showed up not five minutes into the morning hunt, kicked up towards Dad by my uncle Kim.  I was not far away overlooking a meadow that everyone affectionately refers to as “the swale” and had been sitting for less than fifteen minutes when Dad’s .280 started barking.  In a bizarre twist of deer hunting luck, Dad shot a nice buck at the swale a few years back while I was sitting at the same spot where he shot his buck this year.  Bucks just seem to follow Dad around, at their peril it would seem.  Far away, in the wilds of southeastern British Columbia, my good friend Chris shot his first white-tail, a healthy spike buck, anointing him into the ranks of successful deer hunters.  He shot it on my birthday no less, which is of course an absolute coincidence…or so it would seem.  When we talked the following week I was pretty excited to hear the story; a first deer (or any other game animal, for that matter) is a memory to be cherished but also to be shared, and I was downright happy for Chris.  He’s got me very nearly convinced to book a hunt out West in the foreseeable future as well; he’s just that good of a storyteller.
For my own part I did get some shooting in.  During the Saturday morning stand up on the Bruce Peninsula, I missed two running shots at a coyote, and on the Friday morning up in Spence Township I managed to take a handsome ruffed grouse, which is always a treat because they are so darn delicious.  But for another year the wily deer of Ontario eluded me.  Not a huge problem for me though, because some of my buddies put in a lot more shifts during bow season, rifle season, and blackpowder and they didn’t get one either, which I’m sure is the lot of many other Ontario deer hunters.  But my rifle, all the blaze orange, and the long underwear have been put away for now.  I suppose next year holds more opportunities to scratch down a white-tail, and of course I’ll be looking forward to it.  But for now I’ll turn my attention to working on some landowners for turkey season, maybe one last late season waterfowl hunt, and getting out after a few coyotes through the winter months.
Coincidentally if any landowners between London and Milton need some coyote control done, feel free to drop me an email, I’d be more than happy to help out.
corrections

Corrections

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So I’ve been deer hunting for a couple of weeks off and on, and in conjunction with a hectic work schedule (at a real job) I’ve been absent from this forum.

Well, I’m back.
I’d like to take this opportunity to make two corrections that loyal readers brought to my attention.
First, in my Gearhead article related to deer hunting, I had indicated that my first deer was a “yearling doe”.  A keen-eyed reader (okay…my cousin, Luke) made it abundantly clear as soon as I got to camp that I had in fact shot a doe fawn.  My use of the word ‘yearling’ was inappropriate as I believed I was using it in referring to something in its first year (which technically a doe fawn would be) but upon research, when the word ‘yearling’ is applied to an animal it usually refers an animal between one and two years old, which this particular doe was not when I shot it (I believe it weighed about 65lbs field dressed and I could have carried it out across my back.  And I was fifteen years old, so not a big deer at all).  No self-aggrandizement was meant on my part: simply a misuse of a word.
Secondly, and perhaps more ridiculously, I feel required to make a clarification about my post regarding my observations in Squamish, British Columbia.  Although I was simply trying to make a self-effacing fat joke along the lines that the air was thin in Squamish, but I wasn’t, one reader rather impolitely (I won’t quote their language or misspellings) pointed out to me that Squamish is only about 15 feet above sea level, which I thought was obvious because as I said earlier in the same post, Squamish sits on an inlet at the foot of Mount Garibaldi.  Anyways…to clarify, Squamish is not at elevation, but I am still kind of meaty.
I’ve been working for the past few days since my return from the wilderness on consolidating all the hilarious, exciting, and moving moments from deer season 2011 into one cogent post, which should appear sometime later this week.
But hopefully this piece keeps the blog-police satisfied for now.
deer hunting, hunting, hunting gear

A November Gearhead-Gear to Take on a Deer

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So just shy of one week out from the start of the open gun season here in many areas of Ontario, and my inbox is loaded (okay five messages…) with requests from across North America for a Gearhead post.  So here it is.  Same standard Gearhead disclaimer applies, but even more vigorously in this sense, since of all the types of hunter I profess to be, ‘deer hunter’ is the area in which I have had the least (statistical) success.  That is, I guess, if you are one of those people who measures success in body count.

Firearms & Ammunition
On the Thanksgiving weekend when I was fifteen my Dad took me back up to a hollow behind the farm in Lion’s Head.  In the early fall woods we walked to the forest’s edge with a piece of split firewood about twelve inches long and six inches wide; we sat the would-be target on its narrow end up against the base of a tree.  Then we walked sixty yards or so up the shallow grade of a hill and I sat down on an old tire.  With my legs crooked up and my elbows on my knees  I used my gangly , teenaged arms to line up the peepsight on Dad’s Model 14 .30 Remington pump-action rifle with a knot just right of center on the target.  Dad had put one shell in the gun; I clicked the safety off and tightened my finger around the trigger.  With a POW! the round-nosed bullet split the still fall afternoon and I watched the piece of wood all at once jump, shudder, and slowly fall forward.  With silky smoothness the recoil had already worked the pump action a quarter of the way back and I completed the motion, savouring the smell of burnt powder and the metallic “sna-chink!” of the gun’s action.  We went up and looked at the wood (which was almost split in two) and Dad remarked something pleasant like “If you can hit that from where you were, you ought to be able to hit a deer in the front shoulder.”  Then I got off the tire and Dad put a broken down cardboard box inside it.  He told me to go halfway down the hill, which I did, while Dad carried the tire to the top of the hill.  He arrived at a spot perpendicular to me and well out of my line of fire, at which point he called down for me to put three shells in the gun and that he was going to roll the tire down the hill.  I was to shoot for the piece of cardboard and keep shooting until the gun was empty.  Dad started it rolling with his hands and gave it a kick as it got away from him and at about thirty or forty yards I opened up, working the action smoothly and evenly…but again that action is so worked in that I think it leverages a lot of the recoil to do the lion’s share of the pumping for me.  I think I hit the tire once and the cardboard twice as the target hopped and bounded along unevenly down the hill.  With that Dad and I were satisfied that I could handle the power and kick of the gun.  A few weeks later, on the second hour of my first ever deer hunt, the .30 Remington swatted down a yearling doe and I was officially a deer hunter.
That Model 14 is all mine now, and it has come with me on every deer hunt I’ve made over the last seventeen years.  I have an unhealthy affection for that gun.  Its early 20th century vintage, smooth, glowing lines, and ease of maneuverability in the heavy brush I sometimes find myself in have never failed me.  I may be tempting fate to boast that it has always shot straight (even when I haven’t) and that it has never jammed or acted up on me.  Simply put, I love that gun, and the fact that ammunition for it has been off the market for many a year only means that the hand-loaded, 180-grain rounds I sift through it once in a while are all the more meaningful.  It is a brush-gun and it wields that title proudly and performs-as-billed with some aplomb.
I also have a synthetic camo-stocked, scoped, bolt action Stevens in .243WIN that I won at the Barrie District Anglers & Hunters annual wild game dinner and fundraiser in 2009, and this gun (alongside the .30REM) makes its way up to my second week of hunting in the Spence Township area, where there are a few more open hardwoods and moose meadows to hunt and the luxury of a scope is a welcome advantage.  95-grain Hornady SST Superformance fly out of the muzzle on this lean little number at some pretty high velocity (and it is a nice little crossover varmint rifle) but to date I’ve never had the safety off during deer season, let alone let slide with a shot bearing any kind of deadly intent at a white-tailed deer.  But maybe this year is the year I break that run.
Clothes and Outerwear
My outer layer is a Remington 4-in-1 coat (actually the same type of coat that I take waterfowling, just in the requisite blaze orange) that I picked up in 2008.  It does the trick nicely as it is plenty warm (even when only wearing the outer shell) and has plenty of deep, easy to access pockets.  For the last three deer seasons it has been reasonably dry and surprisingly burr-resistant (which where our group hunts is a nice luxury).
Under that I’ll usually have a hooded sweatshirt or long sleeve shirt, slung over a synthetic sports shirt (either from Under Armour, or a recycled soccer jersey) that wicks moisture nicely.  Unless it is unseasonably mild (as it was in 2008) I’ll also have on some long underwear; I prefer Stanfield’s two piece top & bottom ensemble, although my sister got me one of those thermal unitards (in fire engine red, no less!) with a rear flap for ‘evacuation’ for Christmas in 2008 and I used them the following year after my Stanfields got a bit damp in a rain…I was literally soaked the nuts!…but I digress.  I think she got that unitard for me as a ‘joke gift’…I’m okay with that because they were nicely comfortable, and I liked them so much I’ve continued to include them in the annual packing list.
I usually wear the same camo pants that I multi-purpose with all year long, although I also pack some ratty jeans that I don’t mind getting mud and blood on, and a pair of lined pants in case it gets extra-frosty some morning (and since 2011 boasts the absolute latest date that deer season can start in Ontario, it may actually happen when I’m hunting not far from Orrville on November 19th).
I double up on socks (since I don’t want my toes to freeze while I sit on stand…I do a lot of sitting) with a synthetic thermal sock underneath a wool sock.  I have two pairs of gloves, both in blaze orange; one pair is just light cotton for days when the temperature is nice, the other pair is Thinsulate lined for rain, snow or just a bitter November wind.  I likewise have a blaze orange baseball cap and a blaze orange Thinsulate toque, so that I can wear one or the other (or if the weather is changeable…both!)
The key to all these clothes is flexibility and layering.  But I’m sure your grandmother already told to dress in layers so I won’t belabor that point further.
Footwear
Rubber boots.  (If you’ve been following these ‘gearhead’ posts this should come as little surprise.).  What can I say?  They’re comfortable, cost-effective, insulated, lightweight and they don’t carry much in the way bells and whistles.  My cousins and my brother have adopted the modified hiking boot style of hunting footwear (what with scent control on a molecular level, cutting edge waterproofing, and similar upgrades) and they all rave about it, so one is just as good as the other in my eyes.  I just like spending around $50 on my boots, while some more ‘advanced’ footwear can run to four times that much.
Accessories
Just like it is for my wife when she goes shopping, deer hunting for me is all about accessories (again, no surprise to any loyal follower of this blog).
We party hunt in our camp so it is vital that we all keep in touch.  For that, we carry some short-wave handheld radios to keep in touch.  Mine are from Motorola, and although they came in a pair (I got them in 2001) one of them gave up the ghost last year and is completely non-functional.  Its mate is still going strong though!
I have a bag of sticks and plastic rods from Quaker Boy that I can use if I want to try to rattle up a buck, and I use a Knight and Hale doe bleat can.  This year I received the Quaker Boy Brawler buck grunt call in the mail for re-joining a conservation organization here in Ontario but before that I used the Knight & Hale E-Z Grunter Plus.  My cousin, and other hunting acquaintances have had success with calling deer.  Me, not so much.  But I keep trying though, maybe this will be year that an old bruiser buck comes galloping to the call.  I’m not brand loyal and accumulated these calls in a piecemeal fashion; I can’t pretend to be one of those highfalutin, corporate-sponsored types of writers…although I secretly long to be one.
I use the same combination of Buck 110 Folding lockback (with a clip point) and Gerber Magnum LST folding lockback (avec drop point) knives that I use year round.  Both are wicked sharp, but the classic look, feel, and weight of the Buck has made it my favourite go-to blade.  I almost cut the tip of my left thumb off with it a few seasons back, but that has more to do with operator stupidity than with any flaw in the knife.  The moral…don’t let me sharpen a knife unsupervised.
I have various and sundry other toys on my person during deer season including a compass, toilet paper, matches, a rope, a plastic bag to keep items dry (and to pack out a tasty deer heart if I’m so lucky), a little folding packet for my licenses and tags, another folding pack for extra rifle shells, a water bottle, a candy bar, a Heat-a-Seat, maybe and apple or two…
This year I bought a Rocky backpack for all this, as before I was always forgetting which pocket held certain items, and I tended to rattle a bit when I walked…which is never good for a deer hunter, whose primary aim should be a stealthy silence.
So there you have it…another Gearhead post in the books.  I recommend you try out any of these items that you feel like and if you want to adopt some of the same gear as me, go for it.  If not, that’s fine too.  As long as what you use is comfortable and leads to success (no matter how you define success in the deer woods) than that ought to be good enough.
a few observations...

A Few Observations About Squamish

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As the alarm buzzed in my room at 4am last Tuesday morning, I had a brief flashback to turkey season.  That was, after all, the last time I’d been up at such an hour.  But this was not turkey season, and this was not hunting related.  I was preparing to catch a flight to Vancouver, and a few hours later I was chasing the dawn westward at 800 kilometers per hour and 11,000 meters in the sky.  Later I’d hop in a rental car and climb Highway 99 into the mountains as I made my way to the town of Squamish BC.

After the soul-crippling experience of driving through metropolitan Vancouver, I broke out of the concrete and glass jungle and began ascending the winding road to Squamish.  Here’s what I learned while I was there.

Squamish is Beautiful
Yep, no bones about it.  It’s a lovely little town.  Situated in just a very nice little spot on an inlet and surrounded by peaks on three sides (including the looming Mount Garibaldi) and the ocean on the other Squamish is as picturesque as can be.  On my first day there it was beautiful, the second it rained, the third it was beautiful, and on the last it rained.  Apparently that’s how Squamish works.
Squamish is Full of Nice People
I did not meet a single negative or unpleasant person in my whole tenure there.  The server at the Timberwolf Restaurant where I ate most meals, Vicki I believe, was as ebullient a person as I’ve ever met, but without a hint of insincerity.  The staff of the office that I was working out of had nothing but positive energy and advice for me: where I ought to eat, where I ought to go running, and where I should buy a home when I inevitably decided that I was going to move to Squamish.
People in Squamish Didn’t Seem to Care for Hunting
Squamish is billed as the “outdoor recreation capital of Canada” however in that definition I believe they are speaking of skiing, mountain biking, hiking, and fly-fishing.  I got some clucked tongues and that “you’re so misguided” look of disapproval from the locals when I had the temerity to group myself (as a hunter) in with the rest of the outdoor recreationalists.  No arguments or debates, just a benignly assured stance (at least from those I spoke with, which I understand is far from the majority) that hiking was fine, hiking with a gun, not so fine.  Fair enough, because it is still a very pretty town and I don’t mind that people don’t always like hunting.
I Really Shouldn’t be Driving in Squamish (or anywhere else in BC for that matter)
As I said, it was raining on my last day there. A day coincidentally that I was required (if I was to catch my flight) to drive down the sea-side lane of the winding Sea to Sky highway (or in this case Sky to Sea?) in a west-coast downpour accompanied by gale force winds.  The speed limit down the mountainside was in the areas of 80 km/h but really only locals should be doing that; I’m far too incompetent and fearful of careening off the side of a mountain.   My apologies to the line of traffic that this reluctant (but legitimately impressed) tourist was responsible for.
While writing this on the return flight to Toronto (chasing nightfall this time) I realized that there were other observations I had made about Squamish…for example, while on a leisurely jog I noted that even though I was at elevation and the air was thinner, I was unfortunately not.  Or that the bear track I saw on the trail was connected to a bear paw somewhere that was much different than the deliciously addictive treat that I give on occasion to my two-year old son.  And so on with labored and not very funny observations.  I also noticed that the man next to me was my exact double, just fifteen years older.  Weird things sometimes happen on flights and I’m pretty sure he noticed it too.
As for Squamish, well…the client may even have me back, so if they do I promise that I’ll be right back on this laptop during the flight home noting all the other ways this charming little town surrounded by wilderness has beguiled me.  And if I win a lottery between now and then, I may even make it my permanent home (if Squamish would have me, that is.)