Prep For Hunting Season

Hunting season is just around the corner!  While summer is a great time to fish and swim in pools, it's also a great time to get outdoors in the woods and prepare.  Here's a list of things that you can do to prep for the final weeks till the season:

• Backyard bow practice!  Start drilling on your form, aim, release, and follow-through.  Backyard bowhunts are another fun thing.  You put out a target (a 3D makes it a WHOLE lot funner!) and you start from one side of your yard, and creep up on the target, and make a shot.  You practice your skills for a stalk or still hunt.  You can also do this on a treestand.  Go up, sit like normal, then act like the target you set up, say, a deer, walks into view.  Slowly stand up and draw, aim, release, and follow-through.
• Scout!  Look for tracks, trails, browsed plants.  Food sources, bedding areas, you name it!  If you can locate a trail that is close to bedding and food sources for around the year, your set!  For example, one place that I'm looking at putting a stand is close to a trail that passes oaks, a greenbriar patch (which deer like to eat), and bedding.  And when it rains, a small ditch actually makes a temporary pond.  Perfect spot for a stand! Which leads me to my next point...
• Hang Stands!  Looks for spots like what I mentioned above.  Not only that, but bedding near creeks, trails, food sources, near corn fields, and so on.  
• Sight in your gun!  If you don't sight in your rifle, you won't hit anything.  Not only that, but practice with it, let it become almost a part of you since your so good at handling it.
• Put out trail cams!  (I'm repeating myself) Near trails, bedding, food sources, mineral licks, so on.

Other things that I'll leave out of the "big" list is establishing mineral licks and food plots.  Now, food plots are meant to complement natural food sources, not replace them.  You might could just seed a place with naturally occurring seeds, or let the plants come up by themselves.  Sometime food plots can be a pear tree, or an oak stand.  They don't have to be a lawn of clover.  And they are not necessarily necessary to have a great hunt!  I just do a little bit of it because I enjoy doing it.

Stay safe, get your licence, and get ready to hunt!  Until next time!

Fishing on the Watauga River

The Watauga River in western NC is only 60 miles long, but it offers good fishing, depending on where you fish.  Watauga is a Cherokee name and it means "the land beyond 1."
  Last week I was in the mountains with family and we wanted to throw in a line.  A man pointed us to a road that runs parallel to the river.  We went and fished, and caught nothing for a while.  Then, I had almost given up, and BAM!  A smallmouth hit my lure with a fierce blow.  I fought him a little too quick, because he had a lot of fight in him.  I was just about to grab him (he was around a foot long and weighed maybe 2lbs, at least 1 1/2lbs) for a picture and the jerked and flipped and snapped the line!!
  Even so, I had fun. I'll try to get some pictures if I can, then I'll add it to this article.  But here are a few things I have learned about river/creek fishing in general:

1. Fish what the fish will bite.  If they don't want surface lure, try a diver (where legal) or a spoon or worm.  Jigs will also trigger a bite.  If the river is shallow, get a diver that, of course, dives but floats. If it sinks, then it will drag along the bottom like a rock when you reel it in.
2. Artifical bait is good for using a small bobber and a little line below it.  Don't go any deeper than about 8 inches, but that will depend.  A shallow creek will need less line below the bobber than one would in the Mississippi River.
3. Bass strike hard and fast.  They (at least smallmouths) also like to jump out of the water.  Keep you line tight and try to tire the fish out a little by giving him a little line.  But keep it tight.
4. Trout seem to know if someone is fishing for them.  You have to be somewhat stealthy and don't let them know you are there.  

As anyone should, check your state fishing laws to make sure the way you fish is legal.  And always have fun.  Till next time!!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watauga_River  

Recent Camera Pictures

Well, I had a camera out last week, and pulled it out to see what I got.  It took fewer pictures than I thought, but I did get some valuable ones.

Note: The deer like to play hide and seek in these pictures.  If I made them bigger, they would take up half of the page.

The deer is toward the center of the picture, behind the big tree.

Look where the big fallen tree and thick tree meet.  It's a fawn (the head at least).

It's a nice finding game right?  But anyway, sorry I can't make them bigger, but I hope you guys enjoy them!

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is one of the most celebrated holidays in America.  And rightly so.  But, amidst of all the fireworks, some might lose sight of the importance of this day.

The year is 1776, and the 13 American Colonies have started to fight against Britain.  The Continental Congress, with Thomas Jefferson doing the most of the writing, wrote the Declaration of Independence, stating our, well, declaration of independence from England.  They explained the reasons why they wanted independence and addressed certain grievances that the colonists had against the king.  The Congressmen signed the document on July 4th, 1776.  On July 8th, as the Declaration was being read, bells sounded in joyous harmony marking the birth of a nation!  But, the new country still had a war to wage, and trials fought through, and independence won.  In 1783, it finally came to pass after the surrender at Yorktown.

That is why we celebrate, to mark another year our nation has stood.  But it can only stand as long as we help it to.

Budget Hunter

I wanted to say a few words on my being a hunter.  I am just a teen (a polite one :) , and saved by Jesus).  I don't have a dozen stands or trail cameras.  I don't have a TV show on the Sportsman Channel to give me funds for food plot and habitat management.  In other words, in how much I can do for the property I hunt on is probably just as much as any teen.  I will be honest, a lot of my gear was given to me.  I either asked for it or was given it as a gift (even if I didn't ask).  Most of that stuff I would have bought myself if it had not been given.

I have a $70 Wildgame Innovations Axe 2 gamecamera.
   My bow is a Parker Side Kick.  It performs well for a youth bow, pretty quiet and accurate.  It has the "grow-up-with-Parker" program, which means I can trade in the limbs that came with the bow for thicker limbs for $50.  I get to keep the old limbs for when I go to a new bow and I put the slimmer limbs on for my siblings.
   This I write for the memory of my great-grandfather (dad's side).  A few months ago I posted a picture of my first deer. The gun in the picture is a Winchester Model 94AE, given by my great-grandpa.  He died just a few weeks ago.  I was happy he saw the rifle put to good use before then.  And he was proud of it too.
   All of the land I hunt on is of course, not mine.  I get permission from my grandfather (my mom's dad). You could say that I get a "free lease."  This year my family plans to hunt with me on it, so I have to get a few food plots in to get ready.

I could write more, but, that's all I want to write for now.