Over the last decade, hunters banded together with other shooters of all stripes to get rid of the reviled long-gun registry. This was a giant step forward for law-abiding firearms owners, but unless we address the major problems with the current licensing laws, the elimination of the registry isn’t really enough to help anyone who owns and uses guns.

The key issue that needs to be understood is the difference between licensing and certification. In the days before Possession and Acquisition Licences, or PALs, we had a card known as the Firearms Acquisition Certificate, which allowed people to purchase firearms. Known as an FAC, it was proof you’d undergone a criminal background check, had an interview with a police officer and there was no reason you shouldn’t own a firearm. This was a form of certification, and the only people who had to worry were criminals and those otherwise prohibited from owning firearms.

With the implementation of Bill C-68 and the PAL system starting in 1995, however, all that changed. What was sold to gun owners as simply “a new card” was actually a major shift in how firearms laws worked. With Bill C-68, every gun owner in the country effectively became a criminal under the Criminal Code—unless, that is, the gun owner completed the Canadian Firearms Safety Course, was vetted by police and obtained a PAL, which essentially gave the holder temporary permission to break the law.

The problem here is that every gun owner in the country is now one paperwork error away from a criminal charge of unauthorized possession of a firearm. If you forget to renew your licence, you now stand to face the same charges—and penalties—as the gangbanger caught with an illegal handgun in his waistband. Mere ownership of a firearm by an otherwise law-abiding Canadian should not constitute a criminal act, but under our current licensing laws, it very much does.

Also contrary to all common sense, PALs expire every five years. You only have to pass the safety course once in your life to maintain your PAL, so what’s the purpose of renewing every five years? I’ve never received a good answer to that question. It seems to me it’s a way to catch people out and revoke their right to own firearms.

Even more disturbing is the potential for abuse. What if a future anti-gun government decided to implement a prohibitively expensive fee to renew a PAL? What if it just decided not to renew them at all? That would be a great way to eliminate gun ownership in this country, and based on what I’ve heard some politicians say about firearms, neither scenario is far-fetched.

That said, not all parts of the PAL system are bad. The licensing regime brought in mandatory safety training and testing for everyone, an element that didn’t exist with the FAC. I believe effective safety testing is a good thing, and that the majority of the firearms community would agree that, at the very least, it doesn’t hurt.

Contrary to what some may warn, the shooting community is not out to remove all gun control to allow anyone to buy a firearm as easily as buying a pack of gum. No, what we’re looking for is a common-sense approach to gun control that incorporates the positive aspects of both certification and safety while removing the threat of criminal prosecution simply because you choose to own a firearm.

In a perfect world, we’d see a return to an FAC-type system, with the added mandatory requirement for safety certification. Firearms ownership would be decriminalized, certification would be valid for life unless there was a reason to have it revoked, and the government would only track those who are prohibited from owning firearms, not legitimate gun owners. That’s what I mean when I say firearms licensing must go.

As with any other endeavour, the more you pursue bowhunting, the more you grow. Yet we don’t all follow the same path. And that’s a good thing, because if we all ended up at the same destination, we’d be a boring bunch. Here’s how I’ve matured as a hunter since I first started chasing whitetails with a bow 40 years ago—and why ending last season without a deer was still rewarding.

Open road

In the beginning, I just wanted to get a deer. It didn’t matter if it was a buck, doe or fawn. In those days, there was no such thing as multiple tags or antlerless tags, so my motto was “If it’s brown, it’s down.” Opportunities were rare, so when you got the chance you took it. We in the bowhunting fraternity were just as proud of shooting a yearling doe as we were a buck.
For many years, I followed that same path and enjoyed it immensely. It took me many places, including the southeastern states where deer numbers were incredibly high and opportunities were plentiful. In fact, that’s where I really learned how to shoot deer with a bow. As with any other journey, however, the path eventually came to a fork.

Trophy turn

In my case, the fork I chose took me in search of antlers. Fortunately, this coincided with the availability of additional tags in southern Ontario, which allowed me to shoot a doe or two for the freezer early on in the season, then have the rest of the time to concentrate on mature bucks.

Back then, bowhunting was a solo affair for me. In order to kill big deer, I truly believed I had to do it on my own. This is when I really began bowhunting for the love of hunting itself—spending countless days observing deer going through the rituals of the rut has a way of doing that to a person. I couldn’t get enough of it, and I soon found myself passing up some really nice bucks. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to shoot them—I did. But I also knew my season would be over if I did.

Sure, I arrowed a number of mature deer during this stage of my growth as a hunter, but there were also a few seasons I didn’t shoot a buck. And I was okay with that. Then I came to another fork in the path.

At home

The latest stage in my bowhunting life has brought me back to my roots and the big woods of central Ontario. I’m still immersed in hunting mature bucks, but there’s a difference—I now share the woods with a crew of young bowhunters, some of my best friends on the planet. And I’ve never had so much fun bowhunting in my life. I now get as much satisfaction watching them grow as bowhunters as I’ve ever gotten from shooting the biggest buck in the woods. To hear their stories at the end of a long hunting day, and to see their enthusiasm and the joy on their faces when they shoot a buck is all the reward I need—that and some help hauling my next monster out of the woods. Hey, they are a lot younger than me.

Yes, I feel I’ve reached my ultimate destination as a bowhunter. And that’s why last year was one of my best seasons ever, even though I didn’t shoot a deer. All that matters now when I’m afield is that I’m hunting—and sharing my love of the sport with others.

The booming gobbling from the hilltop was only 100 metres away, so I quickly flipped down my seat pad, sat down on the wet leaves and pegged out three clucks on my pot call. The tom answered right back with a gobble. It’s showtime, I thought, getting my gun ready.

Twenty minutes later, however, the show was only still in the first act. The tom was continuing to gobble to my calls, but he’d only strutted to the crest of the hill, still some 80 metres away. Then things got worse when a nearby hen yelped. Normally, I scare off interfering hens by waving my hat and drowning out their alarm putts with excited cutting on my mouth call. But since the tom could see me from the crest of the hill, I couldn’t move.

Then the hen walked right to my set-up, cussed me out and sashayed up the hill to the tom, which happily followed her away. I sat there feeling sorry for myself for being the loser in a love triangle when I realized my mistake: I should have gotten closer to the tom before I started calling. That said, getting close to a hyper-wary prey species with such keen survival instincts as a wild turkey isn’t easy, but with planning and stealth, it can be done.

1. Pick your battles

Of course, sometimes planning must take a back seat to thinking on your feet when opportunity knocks. Consider my situation with the hilltop tom. The rain had taken the crunch out of the leaves and he was strutting out of sight over the crest of the hill, so I could have snuck to within 40 metres of him before I set up, even if it took me 10 minutes or more to cover the 60 metres. Then, when he strutted to the crest of the hill to check out my call, he would have been in range—and mine before that thieving hen showed up.

For the most part, though, your chances of putting a big ol’ tom in the freezer vastly improve if you can figure out a way—well ahead of time—to get within shotgun range of his comfort zone before calling. And by comfort zone, I mean how far the gobbler is willing to walk to investigate a call.

Sure, there are careless jakes and eager two-year-old toms that will hotfoot it long distances to your set-up, but as a rule, the farther a long beard has to travel, the less he likes it. Also, the longer the distance, the more things can go wrong, such as the tom getting intercepted by real hens, spooked by other hunters or blocked by an obstacle. To close the gap, though, you first need to know where he is.

2. Find the roost

Many spring toms give away their location by gobbling at their roost site, both in the morning and the evening. So to find a roost, you must be in the woods during the last hour of daylight, listening (leave your bow or gun behind). If you don’t hear gobbles, use owl or coyote locater calls to trigger nearby toms to respond.

When you do get a gobble, switch into stealth mode and make your way toward the direction it came from. Always use the lay of the land or thick cover to stay hidden. Keep in mind that a tom can see a lot farther when he’s roosting up on a tree limb. The goal here is to get close enough to identify the tree or clump of trees the tom sleeps in without spooking him.
Once you’ve identified the roost, pick out a set-up tree within 50 metres of it. Find a spot that’s open enough for the tom to fly down to or walk to in the morning, yet lets you remain concealed. A tom wakes up eager for hens, so setting up close to his roost makes your yelps the easiest ones for him to get to.

Also make sure it’s a spot you can easily get to the next morning in the dark. To help find it again, mark the spot on your GPS, count steps between landmarks you can see at night or put reflective markers on trees.

When you return before sunrise, shine a small-beam flashlight at the ground in front of your feet to help you navigate the woods; you don’t want to blindly step on twigs or scrape through brush, which could wake up your quarry. If it’s completely dark out, the tom will still be asleep and therefore not see the light. Once you’re within 100 metres of the set-up tree, douse the light and continue slowly, feeling for twigs underfoot to avoid snapping them. Plan to arrive at your set-up tree and quietly settle in about an hour before first light.

Keep in mind there could also be hens or jakes roosting in the same area, and you may accidentally bust them off their roosts as you sneak in under cover of darkness. If this happens, it’s not necessarily game over, as the birds won’t know what spooked them. In fact, it can sometimes help by separating the tom from the hens, making him easier to call in at first light. In short, the risk of bumping birds does not outweigh the advantage of getting in tight to a roosted tom.

3. Make him roost

If you find a tom that roosts in an area where you can’t hunt or get to in the dark, or if you simply can’t find his roost, you can still get close and hunt him in the morning. The trick is to force the bird onto a roost of your own choosing.

To do this, leave your bow or gun at home and set up in the evening near a likely looking roosting area. The aim is to call in the bird just before dark, after legal light, when he’ll be forced to find a nearby roost. If he comes right to you, don’t do a thing—just let him wander around looking for the source of the call until he gives up and flies up to roost. Then you’ll know where he’ll be in the morning.

In order not to spook the tom, wait until it’s completely dark before you get up and sneak away. When you return to your set-up before first light, the bird should still be in his roost. He’ll also still believe there’s a hen in the area, and he’ll come looking for her when he hears your first soft yelps at legal light. Be sure to use the same call that enticed him the night before.

]]> http://outdoorcanada.ca/19389/hunting/birds/top-4-ways-to-get-close-to-turkeys/feed 0 http://outdoorcanada.ca/19385/hunting/tips/how-trail-cameras-can-help-your-hunt http://outdoorcanada.ca/19385/hunting/tips/how-trail-cameras-can-help-your-hunt#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:45:17 +0000 Ken Bailey http://outdoorcanada.ca/?p=19385 Trail cameras have been around for decades in one form or another, but it wasn’t until digital photography became the norm in the 1990s that their widespread use in hunting circles began. Today, in fact, many hunters consider trail cams as much a part of their everyday hunting gear as rifles or knives.

As with most electronics, the past 10 years have seen costs go down while functionality and reliability have improved, further fuelling the trail cam’s popularity. If you haven’t used these devices for scouting or planning your hunts, it’s time to give them a serious look. Here are some things to consider.

What you’ll see

Trail cams can provide intelligence on the numbers, sex ratios and sizes of animals frequenting an area, as well as the time of day they’re most active around the camera site. This can help give you a broader understanding of the presence, activity and movement of animals locally.

Don’t expect your trail cam to provide a complete inventory of game in the area, however. Big-game animals come and go, especially during the rut, and any given animal that’s in one location today might never return. Simply put, trail cams can’t tell you where an animal has come from, where it’s going or why it was there. A buck caught on camera is by no means a buck in the freezer. And then there are those animals the camera simply misses and you never learn about.

Where to look

Finding just the right spot to set up a trail cam is key to maximizing its usefulness. As with selecting a site for a stand, look for locations that promise the most animal movement, such as funnels, game trails and utility corridors. Entrance and exit routes into feeding locations, particularly agricultural crops, are also ideal.

Setting up cameras along active scrapes or rubs can reveal the presence of individual bucks, but these are not necessarily good spots to place a stand or still-hunt. You’ll likely find that bucks don’t visit scrapes on a regular basis; in fact, they may only visit any given scrape or rub just once, especially if it’s isolated. As well, trail cams regularly show that bucks often visit these locations during the night, after legal hunting hours.

Since motion can trigger your trail cam, hang it on a fairly stout tree that won’t sway in the wind—you don’t want an SD card full of thin air. Similarly, clear the camera area of branches or tall grass that could blow in front of the lens, causing the shutter to trigger. Position the camera roughly one metre above the ground, quartered toward the direction from which you expect animals to approach. And where practical, have the camera facing north so you’ll have fewer washed out pictures from direct sunlight.

When to look

How often you check your camera for images depends on the time of year and how easy it is to access. In the off-season, many hunters check their cams every two to four weeks. During hunting season, however, they’ll check far more frequently.

Certainly trail cam technology is evolving, so much so that one day you’ll no doubt be able to have your cam send real-time images to your cellphone. As such, the ethics of using trail cams for hunting is receiving more scrutiny.

But is knowing what game’s around contravening the fair chase ethic? I don’t believe so, as long as you’re not receiving real-time images and heading out immediately to find the animal. No, when I check my trail cams and learn what game has passed through during the previous few days, it doesn’t help anything but my enthusiasm—and my focus on the day’s hunt.

Top trail cam

Trail cam technology is evolving rapidly, and every year improved models hit the market. The hot new unit this year is Bushnell’s Trophy Cam HD Max. Able to record HD video, it features no-glow black LEDs, making it near-invisible to animals at night. It also records the temperature, barometric pressure and moon phase with each colour image, helping you better understand what influences animal movement.

The main factor is the presence of deer sign—or more specifically, buck sign—left from the previous fall. It’s there to find, just as it was before the first snows of winter arrived: scrapes, rubs, travel routes, and feeding and bedding areas, all laid out like a road map before spring green-up. To pinpoint the ultimate stand site for your next bowhunt, find the sign and follow these guidelines.

Plan your mission

As with any scouting mission, you’ll need a GPS unit, compass and topographic map. A good map reveals terrain features that can lead you to potential stand sites, so study it closely and note locations to investigate. If you can also get an aerial photo of the area you’re hunting, even better.

When you’re in the field and come across some deer sign, create a waypoint on your GPS unit. You can also use your GPS to map routes to and from your stands, creating a great overview of your hunting area. If you don’t have a GPS, maps or aerial photos will suffice. Mark everything on the map as you would on a GPS.

As for the compass, it’s an absolute must for figuring out and recording wind directions. Of course, it’s always a good idea to carry a compass into the woods in case your GPS runs out of juice.

Proceed with caution

Being able to access a stand site without disturbing or spooking deer is one of the toughest challenges to overcome. If you walk through areas that deer regularly use, they’ll pick up on your presence in a hurry, regardless of how careful you are with scent control. Many times I’ve observed how deer react to fresh human tracks in the snow, and it’s not good. For a stand site to be classified as “ultimate,” you have to be able to get in and out without disturbing the deer.

Watch the wind

Likewise, a stand location is only ideal if there’s no way for deer to get downwind of you. That means you need a natural barrier on the downwind side of the stand. In the big woods environment I hunt, this is usually water, such as a lake or beaver pond. It can also be terrain that’s too steep for deer to climb up or down, most often a ridge.

Both of these barriers can also allow you to access the stand without disturbing the deer. In the case of water, you can reach your stand by boat or by walking the shoreline. As for steep terrain, just be prepared for a challenging climb. But use common sense—it doesn’t have to be a cliff.

Create a funnel

It doesn’t matter how much deer sign you find, how great the access is or how difficult it is for the deer to get downwind of you—if there isn’t a terrain feature that forces deer into the stand’s bow range, all is for naught. Believe me, nothing is more frustrating in bowhunting than constantly seeing animals that are just out of range. Several of our best stands are on beaver dams between ponds or on narrow ridge tops. In either scenario, deer are forced to walk within 25 yards of the stands—the ultimate set-up.

Many years ago, the first long beard I ever shot had serious hang-ups. He started by gobbling his innards out on the way to my set-up, but at 60 metres he stopped in the open hardwoods to strut and display. An hour later he was still there. Being a novice at the time, I quit calling because I thought I might have stopped him with a sour note on my mouth call. Eventually, he walked away in search of another potential mate.

But I persisted. As I scrambled in a wide circle to get in front of the bird, I tracked his position by using my crow call to make him shock gobble. This time, my plan was to lure him in using my push-pin yelper, and once I was ahead of him I kept a little ridge between us to shield my set-up. He gobbled once after my first yelps, but dallied getting to me. Finally, I could hear his footsteps below the crest of the ridge. But there he stayed, out of sight—my best clucks, purrs and yelps on the push-pin caller wouldn’t budge him, or even make him gobble. Hung up again.

I thought he might come in for two hens, so I clucked on my mouth call. Instantly he gobbled and I saw his tail fan coming up over the rise. I shot when he broke strut, and my first-ever tom was flopping on the ground, free at last from all his hang-ups. But why the delays? I’ve since discovered five main reasons why toms hang up and what can be done to get them moving again—or better yet, avoid such problems in the first place.

1. 
He’s waiting for his hen

When a tom approaches the place he thinks he heard a hen call from, he fully expects to see her there, and looks for signs of responsiveness. If he doesn’t see the hen, he hangs up waiting for her to show herself. (Keep in mind, toms can be pokier than a snail with a limp—I don’t consider it a hang-up until he’s stayed in one spot for at least a half-hour.)
In the case of my first tom, he could see my location, but there was no hen. He clearly wasn’t spooked by me or my calling, or he wouldn’t have strutted for an hour just out of gun range. He simply wanted to see the hen make the next move. When that didn’t happen, he walked.

The cure: Move your set-up

By total beginner’s luck, I did the right thing the day I shot my first tom—I set up on him again from a spot where he couldn’t see me until he stepped into range. The ridge blocked his line of sight to me so he had to crest it to see the hen (me) he heard calling. By then, he was in range and mine.

Keep your tom coming by choosing your set-up carefully. Use wrinkles in the terrain to find a spot he can’t see until he’s within your shooting range. If you set up poorly and he hangs up in sight, quit calling, let him walk and try again from a better location.

Decoys, when visible from a distance, may entice a jake or a hot two-year-old to come into range. An experienced long beard, however, will often hang up when he sees a decoy, expecting the hen to come the rest of the way to him. To keep your tom walking and talking, place the decoys in a spot he can’t see until he’s close enough for a shot. An added bonus of this tactic is that he will be focused on the dekes, not you, when it’s time to shoot.

In field situations or on level ground where you can’t use the terrain to hide, use a pop-up blind. And to help overcome a tom’s natural caution, use a jake or strutting tom decoy, along with hen decoys, to make him jealous and play on his need for dominance.

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