I suppose it was just a dream, but it sure seemed real.  I awoke around 2 a.m. with a desire to jump out of bed and make sure that my leathers and such were packed in the coach for the weekend event about to unfold.  My dream also showed the presence of “Sir Butt” and so I must assure his clothing is in the camp as well.  Who knows what might come to be.

I can tell you this old man is one excited dude.  It’s a feeling like I used to get when Utah had an opening season on fishing.  Can’t hardly sleep the night before in anticipation of dad waking us up at 4 a.m. to head for the hills.

More to be posted in a few days.

Bears Butt

May 4, 2012

You have read on here about the United Wildlife Cooperative organization, www.unitedwildlifecooperative.org, and them pulling all the stops out to give 8 lucky kids a chance at bagging a turkey.  Providing a guided hunt on private property etc.

Last night I was invited to a meeting at the property and was informed of some of the items that needed to be done to make this all happen.  I met a couple of the guides and some of the R&K Outfitters who are also sponsoring this event.

I am impressed!  Impressed is probably not the right word for this.  These guys are really pumped up to give these kids the show of their life and hopefully a chance at bagging a turkey.

We discussed a lot of things and made some decisions that we think will fit into the kids and their parents plans as well.  I can’t tell you everything, but I can tell you there won’t be any time for “lally-gagging” at this event.  They have it planned beyond planned!  Trust me on that.

After the jaw jackin, we went for a ride into the hills on part of the ranch where this event is to be held.  We were looking for turkeys getting ready to roost up.  I was with Mr. Dunkin, a gentleman about my age, who is with the R&K group.  We went to his home and loaded up his Polaris Ranger for our ride.  I don’t have a clue how many miles we covered in that little powerhouse of a side by side, but we covered a lot of ground.  Glassing meadow after meadow.  Looking for turkey sign where ever we thought there might be turkey sign.  That property is over 35,000 acres in size and covers from the valley floor to the top of the peak.  Snow still has the upper third covered and the lower portions are showing the new spring growth of the grasses.  The planted agricultural lands have yet to begin their growth.  The place is absolutely gorgeous.

Wildlife abounds in every direction.  Mr. Dunkin and I saw mostly elk and deer on our side of the mountain.  We arrived back at the meeting place about 9:30.  It was very much dark when we arrived.  In the parking lot were some of the other and they had seen a lot of game themselves, including turkeys!  These kids are in for a real treat!

I wish I could take this story with me for the next few days, but I won’t be able to.  I’ll just have to give you a blow by blow when I get back.  I’m leaving in the morning and won’t be back until sometime Sunday.  I can tell you this however, there are 4 lucky kids out there who are scheduled to come up tomorrow to begin their hunt and they are going to find a very special place, with some very special people pouring their hearts out to help them have a hunt of a dream.

And again, there isn’t scheduled much “dream time” in what I saw last night.

Bears Butt

May 3, 2012

P.S.

This just in.  Wapiti has volunteered to help the UWC with this event and the two of us have our assignments!  YES!

Weasel and I hit the hills today in search of a wild turkey.  We did see one but not able to identify whether it was a hen or tom as it was flying.  Some turkey with a shotgun scared it up ahead of us.

We also saw two moose and one deer.  Hiked for  6.24  miles (according to google earth measurement).  Oh, ya and we discovered a geo-cache, but we didn’t have a pen to write our names as finding it.

So, unless you are very interested in more of the story, you have read the Readers Digest version already.

We got to the parking spot about 7:45, our little secret spot.  See if you can guess where we were from the pictures.

We decided to leave the decoys because we had no idea what we were in for at this place, we had never been there before.  So off we went.  Several different trails could lead us up and away from the vehicle.  We chose a lower trail as it lead us toward the river (hint).

Just out of sight where the river makes a slight turn are the two moose we saw.  As we proceeded up the trail we ran into these things, whatever they are.

They looked like bundles of small bamboo sticks taped and wired to the tree.  There were a total of 10 bundles.

Off we went up the trail.  It was a wonderful hike and it ended when the trail crossed the river and there was no way to continue without getting our feet wet.  It was not worth that and so we turned around and headed back down.  Around a nice little bend overlooking the canyon, we stopped for a welcome Kippersnack break.

Weasels like kippersnacks and crackers.

While there we decided to test out his Grouse Wing Camo.  Can you find the weasel in this picture?

How about this one?This one?

Down the trail about half way back to the truck we stopped for a quick breath and found a geocache.  It was cleverly hidden in a broken off oak tree that had a small hollow place and they had placed a small rock on top of the cache.  An ear plug holder that contained a single piece of paper with a few names of people who had found it.  We didn’t have a pen to write our names on it, so we just took a picture and put it back.

We had a great hike and fortunately we did see the one turkey.  But we know there are others in the area.

We are not sure when the next chance to get out will be but until then, we have high hopes on locating the wiley birds and bringing a couple home.

I hope you have had a wonderful National Fire Day!

Bears Butt

May 2, 2012

About a week ago the hearing in my left ear went way south.  If I plugged my right ear, I could just barely hear anything out of my left ear.  Of course being a guy, I did the guy thing and said to myself…It’ll go away…..Today I went turkey hunting and with only one ear to hear with it was not really that fun.  Constant ringing in the left ear, no sounds on my left side at all, only on the right, and so I favored looking right.  Did birds pass by me on the left and I did not hear them?  I doubt it, but they could have.

Well, we had our hunt.  Did manage to spot a gobbler high on a hill and it was interested in mating real bad.  So we made an attempt on his little butt.  Moved in and set up.  Brandon up high, and me low.  Called a seductive sequence on the slate call and he gobbled.  YES!  Another seductive yelp and a closer gobble!

This is going to be fun!  Yelp!  Gobble.  And on it went until he was somewhere very close to Brandon, at least that is what my right ear was telling me.  But no boom of the shotgun.  And then he would not answer my seductive yelping, not even with the wing bone call.  Silence.

Later, discussing the event with Brandon, he said the bird was so close he could hear it “cluck” as it walked away, but he could not see it.  In order to hear the cluck he had to be within 20 yards.  The oak brush it thick and you can only hope the bird comes out into an opening for a shot.  Otherwise he is the winner and you go home with loaded shot shells.

Not being able to hear is not a fun deal.  And so after arriving home and taking off some of my hunting clothes, I call the docs office and got an appointment.  I hadn’t even had time to get a drink of water before I headed off for my appointment…an immediate opening!  I was a happy guy.

The doc took on look and said “Yep, ear wax”!  Then he proceeded to irrigate the inside of my ear with a high pressure washer and hot water.  You know the kind of high pressure washer you use to clean the gunk off an old rusty engine or the driveway?  Well that was the kind he used and believe me it hurt like heck.  He was all happy and grinny until I finally made a groaning noise from the pain he was inflicting.  Then he stopped.  Looked inside and said “Clean as a new born”!  And when he said that, I could hear STEREO!!!!

Stereo is good!

Bears Butt

April 30, 2012

I’m always looking for good hints and things to help me in the pursuit of whatever it is I’m after.  This time of year it’s turkeys.  I recall a wonderful spring day last year when Dry Dog was on his first ever turkey hunt.  You can read the whole story on this site.  Search Dry Dog and the story will come up.  Any way, I remember at first light a gobbler that was roosted very high up on the mountain, nearly a half a mile away, came sailing down.  An awesome site for me to witness.  Well, the following bit of information I found lends itself very well to what I have learned about turkeys the past few years.

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Usually you won’t find a turkey roosted very far from a water supply and if they can find a tree situated over running water, that is ideal. In any area, look first at the large trees with good horizontal branches near water. In my neck of the woods, that means large oaks and sycamores and further west, cottonwoods. If the terrain is hilly, try and find trees right below the ridge tops that are on the leeward side of the prevailing winds for that time of year. If they can, turkeys like to climb up above the roost on the ridge top and fly down to their roosting tree. They then will usually glide down below when they fly down in the morning. Many times the turkeys in my area will utilize large cedars or occasionally pines when available to further escape cold winter winds.

It is also possible to locate roosts by doing lots of walking through an area and looking for the large wing and tail feathers which often fall out when the turkey is flying up or down from the roost. You can also look for piles of droppings which can be quite large when a turkey uses a roost tree consistently. Droppings usually last until they are rained on which will also help you determine how long ago turkeys were in the area.

Perhaps the easiest and surest way to find roost trees is to get there either first thing in the morning or at sunset and listen for the birds flying up to roost or calling on the roost. Most people have heard of the term “roosting a bird” and this means you have been out that evening and found out, by owl calling or just listening, the tree a gobbler has roosted in.

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How much truth is in what this author has said has yet to be determined, but I for one have got to believe most of it.  We will find ourselves at or very near the same spot Dry Dog was in last year.  Hopefully that well educated bird will come winging down into the same place only this time a “heavy load” of gobbler getter will take him down!

Bears Butt

April 29, 2012

Utah’s open season for turkey hunting starts Monday April 30 at o’light 30 and the Weasel and I are going to be there.  For the occasion I picked up a box of special shells and will share them with the Weasel.  Of course he only gets one.  It only takes one.

These babies come with an unwritten guarantee they will knock the block off a big old gobbler should it get within range.  And so, on this site you will be seeing a couple or three nice big gobblers posted up by the time the season closes.

Take a good close look at these shells.  They look like they mean business!

Agreed?

Bears Butt

April 28, 2012

It’s turkey hunting season here in Utah and right now the only ones allowed to hunt are the lucky ones who drew out what is called the Limited Entry turkey hunt.  There are several hundred folks out in the woods right now and they are enjoying some pretty good success.  The number of hunters allowed have them spread out pretty good and so the turkeys aren’t getting “hammered” like they will when the general season guys like me, hit the woods come April 30th.

One thing most turkey hunter like to do is call.  After all, you have to have something to do out in the woods while you are waiting for a bird to come along right?  And what is more enjoyable than making sounds that just might bring a turkey closer to you than the other guy out there.  You might not see him sitting there all decked out in his full Grouse Wing Camo, but he is there for sure.  Somewhere.

So, I found a really neat video of a guy who shows you how to use a tube call.  Most of us entry level turkey hunters don’t know how to use these calls, but this guy can show you some pretty good tips.

Bears Butt

Good morning all my faithful readers.  If you are new to this site you won’t know what I’m talking about, but if you dig down through the daily trapping events section and catch up, you will know.

I had leaking boots and I bought a very expensive pair and they were shipped to me.  I also bought a pair locally, so I could continue to trap while waiting for the ever so great expensive pair to arrive.

When the expensive pair came, I was one happy guy.  Boots to last several seasons of carefree use in the swamp.  Boots that cost $130 plus another $20 for shipping.  $150!  I have never before purchased hip boots for over $80 in my entire life and then at $80 THAT was a ton of money to lay out.

So, here are my new $150 boots.  Very nice boots.  They fit well.  They are warm in the cold icy waters of the swamp.  They are puncture proof, snake bite proof, made for extreme thorny conditions etc. etc…..it’s all right there on the box they came in.

One day I donned my new pricey boots and headed into deep water.  Water well above the knees, but far lower than the top of the boots.  Suddenly I feel the cold rush of ice water running down the back of my leg, it started just behind my knee.  Oh Crap!  I went in over the top, I thought.  And quickly I returned to shallower water and gave up the idea of setting a trap in a run I could see out there.

Two days later, the boots are good and dry from sitting in the house on top of the heat register and back out into the swamp I trudge.  All is well as I approach the same run I tried to set a couple of days earlier.  This time I will be very careful about going out to set that run.  I inch my way out, one more small step and I’ll be within reach of setting a trap in the run….The icy water once again rushes in and down the back of my leg!  WAHHHHH!

I now realize my new and very pricey boots have a hole in them somewhere behind the knee.  I finish my trapping for the day and head for home.  Not a very happy guy about this.

I brought the boots into the house and examined the right boot, checking closely for holes.  I see no holes, but clearly the dark wet stain of water.  Now will be a good time to see about the warrantee.  I had saved the website address in my favorites and I clicked it to get the phone number.

Calling them, I talk to a man with a very Southern english brog, after all he is in North Carolina.  Ya’ll hea na? (spoken as if one word)

He listens to my story and says the store owner will honor my purchase with a new pair and he has all my info up on his computer.  All he needs is the return of the boots.  When asked, “No sir, you will have to pay for that”.  OOOOOOOO!  Now my expensive boots have just gone up a few more dollars.

A couple of days go by and I finally have some time to take the boots to a local shipping store called “The UPS Store”.  I have the boots wrapped up in the same box they came to me in.  It’s wrapped real good and the lady weighs the package and charges me $21.00!  Ouch!  Now the boots have cost me $170!!!

Well, I have the receipt and the tracking number.  She tells me that anytime after 5 p.m. that day I can track my package and see when it arrives in North Carolina.  Home I go.

After trapping a few days later I find myself sitting at the computer and think about the package.  Wondering where it is in the system I pull up the UPS system and put in the tracking number.  It says a label had been made and the destination is City “whatever” in North Carolina.  That’s all it says.  HMMMM.

So, I put the receipt back in my wallet and go about business.  Two days later I pull up the UPS system again…..it says the same thing it did before.  I look at the time and the local store is closed for the day.  It’s after 7 p.m.  Tomorrow I will call them.

When tomorrow came and my trapping was done for the day, I made the trip to town and went into the store.  The same lady that rang up my shipment looked in the system only to find the same results.  No package recorded in the UPS system.  So she calls her corporate folks and they are tracking the package.

I have called them back once since then and they still had not located the package.  I remember the lady asking me when I shipped the package if I needed more than $100 insurance on the package.  UPS included $100 of free insurance with all packages shipped through them.  I told her no at that time.  If only I could go back to that moment and insure it for about $300.

So, where are my expensive boots?  Why did the UPS driver who picked up the box not scan it into the UPS system?  Why is this “expensive boot” experience happening to me?  If the box is not found UPS will give me $100 for my inconvenience.  And if that happens my expensive boots will have cost me $70, but then I won’t have my expensive boots.  Is there a moral to this story?

I suppose there is.  Perhaps there is more than one moral to this story.

A) Don’t trust the word of houndsmen who espouse the quality of a muck boot.

B) Don’t trust the UPS Store or UPS in general.

C) Don’t buy expensive hip boots, continue to purchase local cheap boots each year.

D) Look in the mirror and repeat after me “Ima dumbshit”!

My fingers are still crossed that the UPS system will find my expensive boots and the company I bought them from will get me a new pair back soon.

Bears Butt

April 2012

Lookie here!  It seems that while most of you were off making a living, Christopher and his cousin Cole were off fishing.  I can’t tell you where they were, but I can tell you that the fishing was pretty good.  They caught a few that they turned back, but this one was impossible to turn loose.

18 inch rainbow that weighed in at just under 3 pounds (my guess and I’m sticking to it).  The 18 inches is for real.

Nice fish Chris (Clutch)!!!!  Congrats!

Bears Butt

Late March 2012

Now that the trapping season has come to a close for this year, I can let you in on my little secret.  If you have visited this site and read all the stories on here, you have read about how I keep track of my traps.  All the maps, the flags etc. without them I would lose a lot of traps each year.  The maps tell me about where the traps are located and how many are at each stop along the way.  The flags actually guide me into where the trap is actually located.

I’m sure I am not alone when it comes to mapping and flagging.  Also, I’m sure I am not alone when it comes to having the wind blow my flags down.  This is a very frustrating thing to experience on the trap line, especially when you set your traps the day before and are not really sure as to where you put it.  You look across the vastness of the swamp toolies and bulrush and your map says there should be say three traps and you cannot see one flag waving out there.  So you go looking and with patience and perseverance you finally find all three and you re-flag them.

You just lost some time and now you go to the next trap set area, more missing flags…it is just plain frustrating.

So, we go to trying to figure out how to tie the flags in order that they won’t go flying off in the wind.  We wind them around the stocks, tie them between stocks and come up and over the top of the stocks and re-tie again.  Sometimes that works, most times it doesn’t.  And sure as shooting, just as you think you have your flags all secured down, here comes one of those wet spring snow and wind storms that wets things down and blows hard and poof…off your flags go!

Now most of us trappers are always thinking of better and better ways to make the job quicker, more successful  and just plain funner and cheaper.  After all if we figure in our time, none of us are making any money at trapping.

The flagging tape I use is fluorescent orange (Hunter Orange), ¾ in wide and comes in rolls of 500 ft.  I usually purchase it at a box store like Home Depot or Lowes and the price is about $4 p/roll.  It isn’t enough to break you, but it adds to the expense of trapping.  And in the end, when you pull your traps you also pull the flags and put them in the garbage.

And so, why not figure out an easy way to set your flags out and be able to re-use them over and over?  There must be a way.  Besides, sometimes you only want to move your trap a few feet and then there goes more flagging tape.

One day in February I happened to be making myself a sandwich to take out on the line with me, when I noticed a jar on the kitchen counter and in it were various sizes of snap type plastic clamps.  We use the larger ones to seal up open bags of chips but never have used any of the smaller ones.

I took the four that were in the jar out and looked at them.  HMMMM, I thought, about 2 inches long.  They have two slots on one side, just right to slip the end of the flagging material in and tie onto the plastic clamp.  I thought, if these things will clamp onto grass, bulrush, toolies etc., maybe they would work for what I’m thinking.

I put some flagging tape on them and rolled them up and put them in my pocket.

Out on the line, I had a lost flag and so, on went one of my new ideas!  About two weeks later, when I pulled that trap, I popped the clamp off the bulrush, rolled it up and put it back into my pocket.  I used it the next day, when I set my next line.

Next came a question about high winds, snow, rain etc.  Would they hold up, or would they be too heavy and cause the plant material they were clamped on to break off?  Questions only time and weather could answer.

I used one of the clamps on another set and also put on a tied flag next to it.  Both hooked to the same type of  grass.  We had a very good test of weather hit soon after I put the “test” up.  We had wind with gusts exceeding 60 mph and sustained winds of 30 mph.  We had snow.  The heavy wet spring type of snow and we had rain mixed with snow.  You could not have had a better test of this flagging idea.

So, what happened with the test?

These pictures show where the tied flag was the day I pulled the traps from this spot.

Look very closely at the center of this picture.  See the hint of red?

And so, guess who is going to be buying a bunch of these clamps for future trapping?  You guessed it!  ME!  And I have found a supplier of these fine little clamps and if you want me to get you some, just let me know.  If you want, I will even put on some flagging tape so when you get them they are ready to deploy into the field.  We can talk price when you tell me how many you want.

Bears Butt

End of the trapping season, March 2012