Hunting in the Snow

This past week it snowed all across the state of Indiana. In my area we got about four inches. Although it is cold, the snow is very beneficial to hunters. First of all, most animals have fur that is designed to blend in with trees, grass, and leaves. The white snow makes wild animals stand out like a sore thumb.

Not only can you see the animals better but you can see their tracks. Being able to see the tracks is most helpful for deer hunting. The snow allows you to see exactly where the deer are traveling and how long ago they were in the area based on how fresh the tracks are. For squirrel you can determine how much they are moving based on the number of tracks in the snow. If the snow has been on the ground for awhile and there aren’t many tracks then you are probably wasting your time.

The snow is also helpful for tracking an animal after you shoot it. Deer can run up to 200 yards after being shot and the snow allows the blood trail to easily be seen, leading you right to your kill. Also rabbit will sometimes jump into a bush after being shot and the blood will clearly give them away.

Even though the snow means it is going to be a cold hunt, it greatly has its benefits to making your hunt more successful. I haven’t had a chance to go hunting in the snow, but hopefully there will still be some snow around next weekend for me to hunt in.

Hopefull Holidays

Well as I'm sure you are all aware the holiday season is nearing soon and I'm sure you all have a few paintball related things on your Christmas lists.
We'll I am no different then any of you guys so I thought I would share my list with all of you. It consists of a new marker and all the goodies that go with it. To start things off I need a gun. A DM8 would do nicely with its host of new features encluding the Eye Pipe and Hyper3 Reg. To keep balls feeding into this paintball hose I will need a new loader. I'm thinking the new Nxe JRNY, I know it doesn't come out until February, but it is supose to be the best loader to date with revolusionary designs on all aspects of loader-dom. Yeah thats right, I said loader-dom. Well now that I have a gun and a loader I need something to actually push the balls out of the gun. I would get a Smart Parts Inline Micro Max Flow with a 68ci 4500psi tank. That should give me good amount of air and a way to get it flowing into my gun the way I need it to. I would also replace the already good Ultralite Barrel with the ever impressive Titanium Boomstick, because nothing says performance like titanium. Well, there you have it people, that's is my list. The next step, getting mom and dad to go with it. ;)

Shooting in the Cold

It snowed for the first time this semester at Purdue and unfortunately we did not have a chance to go out shooting because we are all getting ready for finals, but if we didn’t have finals I would like to think that the range would be open and we would be shooting. I don’t think that you should stop shooting when it gets cold.

There is little difference between shooting in warm weather and cold weather. The main difference is the clothing you wear. The extra layers of clothing will make your length of pull longer but for some people that might be helpful. Another problem is that if it is cold enough for you to see your breath then that is slightly distracting when trying to shoot. You have to either hold your breath or breathe out your nose when shooting.

If you do shoot in the cold, on top of dressing warm you can also warm your hands on the barrel after you shoot. To stay warm you can also just take a break around station four if you are close to the club house. This break can be nice but if you get too warm you might not want to go back out and finish the round.

You of course probably do not want to base your shooting ability on your performance during the winter but it is still just as fun. A good thing about shooting in the winter is that it is good practice in case the weather does change while you are at a shoot and you still have more rounds to shoot. I know that last year at the National Collegiate shoot in Texas it went from 70 degrees to 40 degrees in the matter of a day.

I would recommend to everyone to at least shoot half as many rounds in the winter as they would shoot in warm weather. Shooting in the winter will not only keep you sharp and will improve your shooting in cold weather.

Who Knew?

Not too many people know that the actress Geena Davis is a competitive archer. Furthermore most people don’t realize that she was ranked one of the top 32 of women in the United States. Geena Davis a shot at many archery tournament however while she is there she likes to keep a relatively low profile. Since she did place in the top 32 she was able to compete in the semifinals for a spot on the United States Olympic Team. Unfortunately Davis did not advance past the semifinals. However while competing at a national tournament in Georgia I had the chance to see Geena Davis shooting her bow. Most people believe that all you have to do in archery is just “shoot a bow”. However this is wrong because like any other sport archery takes a lot of dedication. Many archers in the United States will practice up to five hours a day with international archers practicing up to eight hours a day. Since this practice is so rigorous many elite archers who are trying to compete for a spot on the Olympic Team will move to the Olympic Training Center. This training center allows the archers to devote their time strictly to the sport of archery allowing them to become the best that they can be. So remember archery isn’t just for people who live in rural areas people in urban areas have tremendous success in the sport to.

One Hunt, No Traps

This weekend I was able to go out goose hunting once and I didn’t set any traps. The weather was pretty nasty this weekend so I decided just to wait until break in a week and a half to set traps. Although it was cold, Saturday morning was good for waterfowl hunting.

Being the first time waterfowl hunting this year, we weren’t sure whether duck or goose would be better. We decided to set up the goose decoys to see if we could get some geese to land. About thirty minutes after setting up, a coyote came running out into the field to attack our decoys. Not wanting to loss a decoy, we stuck our heads up out of our blinds to scare it away. After that we had three herons land just twenty feet from us. Being worried that they would keep the geese from landing, I stood up out of my blind to scare them away.

After two hours of sitting in our blinds, we hear a group of geese honking as they fly in behind us. We grabbed our goose calls and started honking back to encourage them to land. The geese circled around us to prepare to land, but then suddenly they just flew off right before they came in for the landing. We have no idea what went wrong besides they might have seen something they didn’t like and scared them off. We didn’t see anymore geese the rest of the morning.

Besides that group of geese we saw many groups of duck. The truth is that we should have set up the duck decoys, but no hunter can exactly predict a hunt. We decided that the next time we go waterfowl hunting we are going to set up the duck decoys. I hope we will have better luck next time.

Don't Always Trust the Refs

One of my favorite stories about proving refs wrong occurred at my team's first visit to Wildcat Paintball Park. The reason I find it so humorous is because it was our first time ever playing there and we came in strong. It was a 3 man tournament so we had two teams of 3. We split up based on familiarity with each other to optimize teamwork (as I have discussed before). The finals were determined by the top two teams from each division, and wouldn't you know it, they put us in the same division. Some fields do this in order to prevent one team from stealing a whole tournament and to optimize the number of home field teams in the finals.

The funny thing was that our A team finished 6-0 and my team, the B team, finished 5-1. We only lost to our other team so it was mathematically impossible that our teams did not finish first and second in our division. Well, the break came and we were especially relieved. We had played better than we ever had before and we had math on our side. When the scores came out, our B team was in third behind some home field team. It was laughable. I'm not saying they were trying to screw us because we were the new guys but they probably were. So my team went in and reviewed the score sheets with the refs and it turned out they counted one of our games that we earned 90 points as 10. They even had a calculator right next to them. Needless to say, when they changed the posted scores, a groan went through the crowd. So, anyway, Clocktapus says the moral of the story is "Don't argue, but don't always trust the refs".

Time to Trap

Last night I called the fur buyer that is in my area. Rob, the fur buyer, told me that he will buy the whole animal instead of just the pelt. This is really good news for me because I didn’t want to trap if I had to mess with skinning and tanning the hides. He said that the price of a raccoon varies based on their size. He gives $8 for an average sized raccoon, which is 10-15 pounds.

I got online and purchased my trapping license on the Department of Natural Recourses website. The license was $17, so two nice sized coons will almost pay off my license. I have four traps and I plan to get at least four more out of my grandpas barn. I have seen many raccoons in one of my woods while deer hunting. I also have seen a couple fox so I might even try to trap some fox. I plan to set my traps in the areas where I have seen these coons and foxes.

Rob told me that the best thing to do with the animals after the catch is to put them in the freezer so the animals do not rot and them when I get several I can just take them to him. He also said that I could just hang them outside if the weather is below freezing so the carcasses will freeze. I am going to set some traps this weekend to try it out. If all goes well and I catch some furs, then I will be all ready to trap like crazy over Christmas break.