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.
hunting humor, turkey and turkey hunting

Counting Down to the Opener, 9 Minutes at a Time

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In the last few months I’ve noticed that, given the time of year, I now seem to be able to get through most nights without dreaming about turkey hunting.  This is a marked improvement from my first few turkey seasons when my dreams were guaranteed to be some bizarre, nightly hodgepodge of clips I’d seen in turkey hunting videos superimposed upon areas I was familiar with, all the while starring yours truly in various throes of success.
Yes, the lunatic mind of this particular hunter is a complex and frightening thing.  But perhaps I’m mellowing since in the last couple of months most nights drift blissfully past with my subconscious engaged in dreams about other things. 
No I won’t tell you what those things are.  Quit asking.
Still, the more common and possibly even more torturous experience lately takes place during those brief moments of drowsy, semi-lucidity that start when my alarm goes off every morning.  Invariably my mornings for the last month have each gone something like this:
6:55am: Alarm goes off blaring Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song”.  Drowsily hit snooze button.
6:55am to 7:03am: Think about how I’d rather be turkey hunting.  Consider several locations and set ups for stands in areas of the Bruce Peninsula.
7:04am: Alarm resumes, this time with an ad for some local window repair shop.  Hit snooze button again.
7:04am to 7:12am: Back to thinking about turkey hunting.  Relive horrifying failures from past turkey seasons, resolve not to be a failure in 2011.  Cat jumps on groin.  Convulse instinctively and then kick the cat.
7:13am: Alarm once again goes off.  Mindless announcer banter.  Smash snooze button backhanded this time.  Momentarily fear that I may have broken the alarm clock; will find out in 9 minutes.
7:13am to 7:21am:  Have mini-dream about scenarios that will never happen.  Decide what to do if my cousin and I set up on a double.  Picture topo maps of local county forests and start figuring out where I should be set up.  Think about how you score a triple-bearded turkey.  Do budget quickly in head to see if new decoys are an option this year.  Realize that based on my hasty calculations they aren’t and double check my math.  Still a no go.
7:22am: Alarm re-engages.  Experience momentary relief that I haven’t broken it, which is replaced by rage that the alarm continues to disrespect me by continuing to go off again and again.  Guns & Rose’s “Patience” is playing.  Enjoy the irony briefly before tapping the snooze button in a jaunty fashion.
7:22am to 7:30am:  Realize that one more use of the snooze button will negate time usually required for basic hygiene.  Experience brief mental conflict before doing turkey vest inventory in my mind.  Cat licks my eyebrows.  Make mental note to sharpen knives (not for use on the cat…yet) and to also check the mail to see if turkey license has arrived.  Plan to buy conditioning pad for my slate call and strikers…silently berate self for absent-mindedly losing same item last year.
7:31am:  Alarm goes off with last part of 7:30am news and sports report.  Decide that since I have cologne, I only need to brush my teeth.  Massage snooze button into submission one last time.
7:31am to 7:35am: Have crisis of conscience before ultimately deciding that the cologne route is a poor decision and drag my ass out of bed.  Various joints click, pop, and creak.
7:35am to 7:55am: Have hurried shower while cursing the slow approach of turkey season.  While brushing my teeth, also engage in brief tirade related to the realities of capitalism and their conspiracy to prevent me from hunting everyday as I was obviously meant to.  Wife yells at me for not turning the alarm off…appears that she likes The Band’s cover of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” much less than I do.  Apologize while getting dressed.  Eat quick bowl of cereal, pack lunch and hit the road.  Realize ten minutes later than I only hit the snooze button and in fact forgot to turn off the alarm.  Decide that wife ought to be getting up by now anyways.
I’m trying to find a way to break this cycle, with the ultimate goal being a more efficient morning routine i.e. one that does not take an hour to get me ready and on the way to work.
To date I have made little progress, but then again, I’m not really trying that hard.
hunting, landowner permission, turkey and turkey hunting

When “Please” Just Isn’t Enough

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The atrociously cold (but disconcertingly sunny) weather here in Cambridge has kind of laid siege to my scouting and general turkey-hunting related plans so I’ve been in a bit of a funk.  It has also put the brakes on almost all the burgeoning turkey movement I had recently observed.  And then to top it off, so far in 2011 I have had 100% of all private landowners in this area that I’ve asked permission of reject my requests to hunt on their properties.  That aligns with last year’s 100% in the Tri-City area.

Counting 2010, four have told me they don’t approve of hunting (I’m not quoting directly since none of those four were polite about it), three have already granted permission to others or are hunting themselves, two did not respond to my phone call and/or friendly letter, and five just said no and either hung-up or closed the door.  And in all, out of the fourteen different landowners I’ve asked over the last two years, only two said it would be okay if I asked again at a later date.  Mind you, some didn’t even give me the opportunity to get to that question.

Somewhat frustrating, but not overly surprising.  Landowner permission (especially near a suburban area) has always seemed to me to be a ‘several lines, few bites’ kind of endeavour and I’ll just let everyone know right now that rampant telemarketing has basically ruined the phone call angle for everyone (one more thing we can blame telemarketers for…when interrupting dinner or waking your kids up just isn’t enough!). 

I guess I’ll just continue to be exceedingly polite and periodically check in with those two who left me a lifeline.  I’ve offered to carry out several chores which I have no idea of how to perform in exchange for permission, but the landowners must be savvy…I guess I don’t look like the kind of guy who can mend an electric fence or hang drywall in a workshop…damn my white-collar aptitudes!  But I can run a turkey call pretty well and I don’t make much noise otherwise so if anyone needs a partner for a hunt, and you live between Burlington in the south, Mount Forest in the North, Strathroy in the west, and Georgetown in the east….I’m your huckleberry.

In the meantime there is a lot of county forest in the area that is now open to hunting (thank you Wellington County and Halton Region Forests!) that I’ll start scouting.

As soon as it gets back above freezing.

random thoughts

Gettin’ To Be That Time, or, Reflections on a Super-Moon

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I went for a 5km run this morning (still training for April 9th!) and was treated to a turkey hunter’s favourite sight: a strutting tom.
As I jogged up a moderate hill but a kilometre from my house as the crow flies (or more accurately, as the moderately overweight hunter jogs) I looked to my right and a mere hundred yards away I saw a gobbler strutting for four hens near the corner of a pasture field.  He looked like a good bird.
Not wanting to alarm them (and because I have a training pace to maintain) I just kept right on motoring past them.  I wondered as I continued on my way if they would still be there when I passed by again on the return loop.  They were.
They seemed completely nonplussed by my presence; the gobbler spun around and tilted his fan this way and that, never breaking strut.  The hens just fed away along the edge of the field.  Aside from a couple of glances my way, they acted as though I didn’t even exist.  I imagine that if I had stopped or made a sudden movement towards them things may have been different.
I finished the loop, ran inside to grab a drink and then hopped in my car to scoot back to the spot.  Through my binoculars I could see that he was a really good bird.  He was strutting less by then, but when he stooped to peck at the field I could see two beards.  His spurs were a bit less clear, but they are certainly present.  Again the birds ignored me, and after about five minutes I went home…I was becoming well aware that I really needed a shower.
But that’s my first strutter of the season in the books, and to me that signals springtime more than any robin or first crocus possibly could.
Yep, spring is coming, just like I suspected it would.
More signs of impending spring came to me over the past weekend.  Last Friday night I went up to spend a few days doing some work and maintenance on the hunt camp in Spence Township.  A few trees had been marked for cutting and scaling, and some cabin maintenance was on the agenda as well.  So was the promise of some laughs, some good food, and some rollickingly high-spirited conversation.
The road in to the camp was in pretty rough shape, a symptom of the daily thawing and nightly re-freezing of early spring; I blame the road (and not operator error) on my car becoming hopelessly mired and requiring one of my friends to tow me out.
Likewise, despite there being thigh-deep snow in the bush in some places, we were working in bright sunshine and that, coupled with some semi-strenuous labour, resulted in myself and a couple of others doffing our coats while working in the woods that day.  Can’t do that in mid-January, so spring must be coming.  There was even sign that a moose had been poking around and nibbling on some low browse that was likely snow-covered until a week or so ago.  Still, the last sign that spring was on its way was to come that evening in the form of a huge, glowing full moon.
I’m not going to get involved in the wild conspiracies about the super-moon (as it has been dubbed) since like most people that are spouting off their claimed expertise, I know nothing about astronomy.  But I will say this:  the moon was big, it was bright, and it was real pretty.  According to my calendar it was also the last official full moon of winter.
Standing outside on a Saturday night in the late March wilderness, looking out at the silvery light reflected and amplified by the remaining snow I thought about that moon, the final one of this seemingly interminable winter, and I couldn’t help but smile.  Sure the moon is a cold, distant, inanimate celestial body that really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about spring, or turkey hunting, or the fact that we’re all sick of winter, but as it beamed down… the closest and brightest it has been in years…well, it kind of felt to me like the winter moon was saying goodbye for another year.  I had a full belly, friends around me, and a good weekend of work under my belt.  The next day was to be the equinox and the day after that the first official day of spring, bringing with it portents of growth, verdure, and the promise of life reborn for another year.  It all left me feeling pretty good.
Seeing that gobbler today buoyed my already high spirits.  Then I heard on the radio that my area is calling for another 10 centimetres of snow tonight and into tomorrow.
Dammit.
Still that moon sure was something, wasn’t it?
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A Quick Word About Advertising Terms and Conditions

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Hello friends,

I have received a few emails from readers notifying me today that part of my blog was down.  Specifically, my sidebar GoogleAds.  First off, thanks to you readers that emailed me for your concern.  It shows me that you seem to like the content and care when part of this blog appears to not be working.

So I got in touch with Google and they have (at least for now) disabled my GoogleAds account, ostensibly for what they deem “invalid clicks”.  Which brings me to my second point, which is a brief tutorial.

For those of you not savvy on this here Internet thing, when you click on my GoogleAds I get a small amount of money called cost-per-click (CPC).  This money of course is not free, it comes to Google from the companies that are being advertised.  If you are clicking on ads daily for no reason other than curiousity, Google considers this a violation of my GoogleAds account terms and conditions and disables the account (which is why it looks like a portion of my sidebar is not working…because it isn’t).

For those of you who are savvy and are clicking these ads knowingly in the effort to make me money or again just out of curiousity, thanks and I appreciate the spirit but again Google’s Ad Analytics team consider this evidence of invalid clicks, and they will disable my account, causing me a bit of a headache.  It is not like I was getting rich off this blog (as that was never the intent), but it’s pretty likely that the meager amount of revenue I had to date accumulated in this program from all clicks, valid or what Google defines as “invalid” (think in the neighbourhood of $35), will be forfeited back to the advertisers.  Do not pass “GO”, do not collect ~$35.00

Confused?  Want to click an ad, but now reluctant to?

I’m a bit confused as well and I’m awaiting Google’s response on my appeal to have the account reinstated, but as a proactive measure I’m sending this note out and I’ll be adding basically the same verbiage to a Terms & Conditions section.

Google only deems a click “valid” if it stems from, and I’m quoting now, “genuine user interest“.  Yes it is a nebulous term, and you guessed it, there is no recourse if Google still feels the clicks are invalid as, again quoting, “Google will use its sole discretion when determining instances of invalid click activity“.

So, I am not allowed to encourage you to click an ad (which I am not), but I am in no way able to challenge Google’s discretion in determining validity of any earnings I may make.  So what to do?

I’m not going to scrap the whole GoogleAds thing, but likewise I really do not have the wherewithal or resources to battle Google either over $35.  So I will close with this:

Please do not click the GoogleAds on Get Out & Go Hunting unless you are genuinely interested in hearing more about the service being advertised.

I’ll flip an update or two to those who emailed me when I have some closure on this whole GoogleAds thing…if they just drop off the site completely then it is a safe assumption that my appeal was denied and I’m not participating in the program anymore.

The blogging will go on though and just ignore my left sidebar for now….after all, I hope everyone pops by for the stories, and not for the ads anyhow.