Ben's 2021 Semi-live hunt log

[TheBenHoyle]

Well its is that time of year for me to start my annual hunt log. I could have started it earlier, but the past several weeks have been very un-hunty.

But anticipation is high for me because I am going out this Saturday to attempt a coyote hunt with my good buddy. He and I have been trying to get a coyote hunt organized for a couple of years now and it always seems to get scrambled at the last second. Finger crossed it works out this year.

I have never truly hunted coyotes. I have had numerous encounters where I could have possibly killed one if things had worked out just a little differently. This will be the first time I will set up specifically for Coyotes. hopefully we'll get at least one on the ground.

Either way, I'll have a post about how that goes.

Beyond that, my 2021 hunting plans are similar to my 2020 plans. I hope to get one some turkeys this spring, there might be a Canada fishing trip in the summer if the border ever opens up. In the fall I will be after waterfowl, deer and turkey. Last year I took a trip to South Dakota to hunt ducks and geese on some family farmland. I would love to repeat that trip, but at this point I am not too hopeful that will work out.

I hope you enjoy following along on my adventures. I sure enjoy having them.

 

[Pucky Freak]

Following!

 

[JT88]

I wanna go on a hog hunt so bad. #bacon

 

[Gellar]

Good luck!

 

[TheBenHoyle]

I wanna go on a hog hunt so bad. #bacon

I'd like to do that oo, but I don't think that is going to happen for me this year.

 

[npaden]

I wanna go on a hog hunt so bad. #bacon

I somehow read the title as a semi-live hog hunt as well. LOL.

 

[TheBenHoyle]

I somehow read the title as a semi-live hog hunt as well. LOL.

HA! I will most likely hunt some logs... I seem to bring wood back from the woods with me. B ut there are no areas near me that has hogs.

 

[TheBenHoyle]

Well the coyote hunt happened but it wasn't worth writing about. I had a great day with my buddy and it was nice to get out of the house. But apparently the coyotes decided to stay home. We found some old tracks but no amount of calling or sitting and waiting made them come out.

I'm thinking about trying to go out in March sometime, but we are actually going to have weather in the 50s the next week or so. I'll probably just work on projects around the house.

 

[duckhunt]

Looking forward to following along.

 

[TheBenHoyle]

OK. It is finally time to pick up this thread. T-minus 4 days til it's Turkey Time! I'll be heading out Friday afternoon to do as much scouting as I can get done. I'm hoping that I will hear turkeys at fly-up time, but I realistically may not be that lucky. I am hunting a VERY LARGE piece of public and I may only figure out the area that turkeys are not in...

This year my 11 year old daughter wants to go hunting with me. So she is going scouting with me on Friday and we will pick a spot to be on Saturday morning. I am excited that she wants to come along and I am hoping that even if we don't see any turkeys maybe we will see some sort of wildlife to pique her interest. If nothing else maybe we can find some bones or neat looking trees.

I plan on hunting alone on Sunday unless she REALLY wants to go with me. And I will drive back down to do some fly-up time scouting Saturday evening.

I won't get anything done this weekend, but hopefully I will get after a turkey. I have been waiting a long time to get back out there.

Sadly this is probably my best chance at a turkey this season. I have two other tags that are good for the next weekend, but due to it being Mother's Day I might only get to go out on that Saturday. Hard to believe I wait all year for turkey hunting and it all boils down to about 3 days of hunting.

Wish me luck. I'll keep you posted.

 

[Corn king 60]

OK. It is finally time to pick up this thread. T-minus 4 days til it's Turkey Time! I'll be heading out Friday afternoon to do as much scouting as I can get done. I'm hoping that I will hear turkeys at fly-up time, but I realistically may not be that lucky. I am hunting a VERY LARGE piece of public and I may only figure out the area that turkeys are not in...

This year my 11 year old daughter wants to go hunting with me. So she is going scouting with me on Friday and we will pick a spot to be on Saturday morning. I am excited that she wants to come along and I am hoping that even if we don't see any turkeys maybe we will see some sort of wildlife to pique her interest. If nothing else maybe we can find some bones or neat looking trees.

I plan on hunting alone on Sunday unless she REALLY wants to go with me. And I will drive back down to do some fly-up time scouting Saturday evening.

I won't get anything done this weekend, but hopefully I will get after a turkey. I have been waiting a long time to get back out there.

Sadly this is probably my best chance at a turkey this season. I have two other tags that are good for the next weekend, but due to it being Mother's Day I might only get to go out on that Saturday. Hard to believe I wait all year for turkey hunting and it all boils down to about 3 days of hunting.

Wish me luck. I'll keep you posted.

Good luck over the weekend
pa season opens Saturday also. No sundays here for spring

 

[Pucky Freak]

Good luck! I hope to get after tom #2 on Thursday.

 

[TheBenHoyle]

Good luck! I hope to get after tom #2 on Thursday.

More power to you. I hope it goes well.

 

[TheBenHoyle]

Well my weekend of turkey hunting was nice but didn't turn into much.

My 11 year old daughter wanted to go hunting and so we went to the site on Friday night to scout hoping to put a turkey in the roost. That didn't work out, but we found some feathers near a stand of trees. So I decided we would try to set up right near there.

Saturday morning was uneventful. No gobbles. No turkeys, but we had a nice little adventure together, which was more important to me than getting a turkey. I wish we would have seen some turkeys and/or a deer or something but my daughter didn't seem to think it was boring or a terrible way to spend the morning.

Sunday morning I managed to get myself into a spot where I had about 6-7 gobblers to the south and east of me. A couple seemed really close. I had a hen decoy out in front of me and I was getting some response from the nearest gobblers to my calling.

But at 5:50 all of the gobbling stopped. Dead silence. I could see a very large area in front of me and down the treelike and nothing flew down into the field or walked out...

At 7:20, I needed to relieve myself and while I usually try to be very stealthy, I just stood up walked to a tree, did my business and came back and flopped into my spot. I looked up and saw a tom about 80-100 yards outstaring at my decoy.

He wouldn't have been looking directly at me, but all of that movement would have been in his field of vision. He hung up. He didn't go putting off or running into the woods though. He just changed course and spent the next hour and a half slowly feeding away...

I have one more day that I can hunt. Next Saturday. It will be back at the place I have taken all of my deer and have had a lot of close encounters with turkeys. Hopefully I will manage to get one in shotgun range. It has been 4 years since I shot a turkey and I would love to not make it 5...

 

[TheBenHoyle]

Last update for the 2021 Spring turkey season. Not a good one. As I was headed in to the woods, I noticed that the fence line I walk east to west up to the woods had been "cleaned up" with heavy equipment. Leading to a still-smoldering pile of trees and brush about 80 yards north of the corner of the woods I enter from...

Unsurprisingly, I heard no turkeys. My thought is that the heavy equipment was probably working all day Friday and possibly even Thursday. That kind of activity would have sent the turkey activity to the west, out of the areas that I can hunt...



This picture of an old cowpie and some leftover wing feathers from a long gone turkey really sums up my spring turkey season. Fortunately I'm not very upset about the way it all went. I had a great time with my daughter and I heard some turkeys and saw a gobbler.

I think I should have had a better application strategy and I definitely need to get some better access to private ground before next spring.

I am looking forward to next fall and getting some more chances at turkeys. I think that is better for me to have encounters in the fall than the spring the last few years.

On the upside of all this I have a fishing trip planned in early June. Looking forward to having some excitement on the water. And I'll be sure to post an update.

 

[Crossbowguy]

Following along as usual

 

[TheBenHoyle]

Quick update: bad news is that my mom had a fall and was hospitalized for a week and that caused dad and I to cancel our fishing trip. Good news is she is out of the hospital and doing much better.

Also I have been hard at work building my new shed. I need to get the window in and the door and then some shingles and siding. Eventually I will insulate and drywall the inside and get electric to it so I can make it my official woodshop instead of having to move cars out of the garage.

I'll get some pictures of that up later this week.

And in a couple weeks I'll be in Northern Wisconsin with the wife and kids on a lake. I'll try to pull some fish out up there.

 

[TheBenHoyle]

So I had a shed, but the bottom plate was rotten in about 80% of the perimeter and it was too close to the property line for the village to allow electric service. So I tore it down, had a new foundation poured and rebuilt it.



I had originally wanted the pad to have a 1 foot concrete knee wall so I could build an 8 foot wall and have 9 feet of head space inside. But my concrete contractor didn't quite understand those directions. So I decided to just build a 10 foot wall. Plus I have scissor trusses so in the center I have almost 11 feet of clearance. Going to be able to hang a couple of kayaks in there and still have lots of room to store things.

I still have to install the door and window, the roofing and siding. Plus I need to insulate and drywall the inside. Once all of that is done I'll get an electrician out to get service installed to the shed. I am planning on running all the circuits in conduit exterior to the drywall so I can move, add to or change it without having to open up the walls.

It is going to be a lot of work, but I am super excited to have this space when it is done. I already added reinforcement/blocking in the trusses so I can mount a block and tackle for a gambrel and hoist a buck in there.

 

[Crossbowguy]

Looks well built!

 

[TheBenHoyle]

We went to Eagle River WI for a week in a cabin with the family. I was looking forward to some fun in the sun and catching some fish.

We ended up getting a couple days of rain and the temps were cooler than we had expected so there was a little less fun in the sun than we had planned on. Also the fish were NOT biting all week. I tired everything. lures, baits, dock fishing, boat fishing, etc...

Luckily, on the last day I was able to catch a whole bunch of perch and bluegill.



I was able to clean up enough fish to make a nice family fish fry. It wasn't quite the summer of fishing I had planned on, but all in all it was a fun adventure.

I don't have much else planned as far as hunting or fishing until October when the archery deer/turkey season opens. I am working on about a dozen different projects around the house and hopefully I will have them taken care of mostly by the time hunting season starts up again.