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| < 16ga. General Discussion ~ I got bored |
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Sat Dec 07, 2024 7:23 am
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Joined: 30 Jul 2012
Posts: 345
Location: Central, ND
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I wasn’t bored yesterday either Mark. What a beautiful day we had to be out chasing late season birds huh?
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Browning 525 Sporting 16ga
Browning BPS Gr III 16ga |
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Sat Dec 07, 2024 8:03 am
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Joined: 04 Mar 2019
Posts: 2009
Location: Central ND
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Show off!!
I tried that earlier this year and I ended up with 2 of the 3 roosters on the ground and the other looking like it got run over by a combine.
I'll master it someday but it doesn't look like any day soon. |
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Mark...You are entitled to your own opinion. You aren't entitled to your own facts. |
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Sun Dec 08, 2024 2:56 pm
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Joined: 22 May 2020
Posts: 310
Location: Ky
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Last day late season with KFC Hibiki 16ga, morning hunt with lots of wind. Fun!
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“Never use an ugly gun to kill a beautiful bird” |
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Thu Dec 12, 2024 6:43 pm
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Member
Joined: 15 Apr 2007
Posts: 9528
Location: Amarillo, Texas
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Posted for Dave In Maine
The operating end of a moose-taking gun: BUHAG drilling 16 x 16 x 8x57R.
The moose on the hook, 455 lbs field dressed cow.
I took the moose with one shot from the rifle barrel. Spine shot, dropped it in its tracks. (Thank heavens - 6 minutes of light left is no time to be finding a wounded moose.)
When we got to the check station and the biologist doing the checking asked "what caliber did you use?" (one of Maine's standard questions) he'd never heard of 8x57R. Then he asked what kind of gun shot that and, when I told him "a drilling", he had no idea what that was.
Then he asked the same about my subpermittee, also part of Maine's standard questions at the check station. My subpermittee had a vintage 1880 cape gun (biologist had no idea what that was) chambered in 11.5x57R in the right barrel (395 grain cast bullets) and 16 ga in the left.
We wound up having a truckside gun show... and the biologist wound up shaking his head in disbelief.
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USAF RET 1971-95 |
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Fri Dec 13, 2024 2:48 am
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Joined: 12 Sep 2010
Posts: 1992
Location: Maine
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| Skeettx - thanks for posting. It was a real pleasure to talk with you last night. Folks, he's a real Texas gentleman in all the best senses of the term. |
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“A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”
Frederick Douglass, November 15, 1867, speech in Williamsport, Pa. |
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Fri Dec 13, 2024 4:24 am
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Joined: 08 Mar 2022
Posts: 114
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Feel better, Mike
Merry Christmas |
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Fri Dec 13, 2024 4:24 am
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Joined: 08 Mar 2022
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Feel better, Mike
Merry Christmas |
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Fri Dec 13, 2024 6:32 am
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Joined: 07 Mar 2010
Posts: 494
Location: South Eastern PA
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Looks like you moose went to a butcher. Good move. I spent about 8 hours with 3 very experienced hunters butchering and wrapping a cow moose about the same size in Alaska many years ago. A pro tip is to make sure it gets frozen solid at the processor.
It was a ton of work and was going to overwhelm my Brother in laws chest freezer. We had to drive around to his friends places and drop off a box here and there to make sure it froze solid. Funny thing up there was that he bartered off a lot of it when he went to pick it up and ended coming home with a lot of halibut, salmon and razor clams too. |
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| Posted:
Fri Dec 13, 2024 3:02 pm
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Joined: 30 Jul 2012
Posts: 345
Location: Central, ND
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The wind was brutal here today but worth it.
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_________________
Browning 525 Sporting 16ga
Browning BPS Gr III 16ga |
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| Posted:
Fri Dec 13, 2024 5:19 pm
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Joined: 12 Sep 2010
Posts: 1992
Location: Maine
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| ROMAC wrote: |
Looks like you moose went to a butcher. Good move. I spent about 8 hours with 3 very experienced hunters butchering and wrapping a cow moose about the same size in Alaska many years ago. A pro tip is to make sure it gets frozen solid at the processor.
It was a ton of work and was going to overwhelm my Brother in laws chest freezer. We had to drive around to his friends places and drop off a box here and there to make sure it froze solid. Funny thing up there was that he bartered off a lot of it when he went to pick it up and ended coming home with a lot of halibut, salmon and razor clams too.
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Yes, the moose went to the butcher. I got a very good result from the butcher, nicely cut to order, vacuum-sealed and labeled and frozen. For $1.25/lb on the hook. The butcher was recommended to me by the guide service I'd hired and it was a good rec. If you're going to hunt big game in northern Maine, send me a PM and I'll give you the butcher's contact info.
More on that - I drew a tag for what Maine calls the "Adaptive hunt". That's a cow hunt in Maine WMD 4. The IFW split WMD 4 along a north-south line, then split the half of WMD 4 abutting the Quebec line in half again with an east-west line. Then they flooded those zones with permit holders.
The idea behind the adaptive hunt was to see whether knocking back the moose population by hunting the dickens out of the cows would cut down the impact of winter ticks. The winter ticks have been playing hell with moose, literally killing some (especially calves) by sucking so much blood the moose die of anemia.
The problem, as many saw it, with the adaptive hunt was that the success percentage among hunters in the adaptive hunt was somewhere under 30%, while the average success rate for moose hunters statewide is somewhere around 80%, more or less, varying a little year to year. Since for many hunters getting drawn for a moose tag is considered a once-in-a-lifetime thing, getting an adaptive tag makes kissing your sister look good by comparison.
So, in the service of wildlife science and management, adaptive hunt tagholders not only had to contend with low chances of success but also had to do some science. To gauge the health of the herd and reproduction rates, we had to retrieve the ovaries of the cow and turn them over to the biologists. Show up at the check station without them and they'd chase you back out to your gut pile to fight off the ravens and get them. And the biologists would have to check the moose for ticks, too.
I shot my moose on the second day of the hunt with 6 minutes of legal light left. (The guide had her phone alarm set at the end of legal light.) It was about 75-80 yards, offhand, open sights. I pulled off possibly the best shot of my life, or at least the tape I'm running in my memory tells me that. I put one shot into the moose's left shoulder, broke its spine and dropped it in its tracks. If you look closely at the picture of the moose, you can see a light colored dot on its left shoulder. That's close to where the entry wound was. The guide was phenomenally good, the guide service and logistics likewise.
Which brings me to my point. I will strongly suggest that hiring a good guide service for a once-in-a-lifetime hunt, like this one, is the way to go. When I drew the tag I sat down and started giving some serious thought to how the hunt would go and what would have to be done to even have a hunt, let alone a successful one. Digging out and dusting off my old logistics-planning skills from Army days. I'd been on 3 moose hunts before this one, so I had an idea what would be required. We were camped about 65 miles down a gravel logging road in an area with no services at all. To get to my zone we had to drive another 10-15 miles then off into the woods. (I could get cell service out of Quebec when on hilltops.... We were far closer to Quebec City than to Caribou....) Everything would have to have been brought in, a camp established, food and all that. Then there would be bringing all that out plus the moose. And all this in an area no one in my party had been to, ever.
Writing a check (or, more precisely, peeling off from a stack of 50s) made a hell of a lot more sense. And it worked. I will be happy to recommend this guide service, if you're going for a moose hunt. That's all the service guides for.
And, yes, a lot of folks will be getting packs of moose meat. It's something of an alternate currency here in Maine. Or a token of goodwill. Or both. |
_________________
“A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”
Frederick Douglass, November 15, 1867, speech in Williamsport, Pa. |
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| Posted:
Fri Dec 13, 2024 6:36 pm
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Joined: 04 Mar 2019
Posts: 2009
Location: Central ND
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win7stw,
Yup, it was a bit breezy today in ND, I didn't get 3, 2 will have to do.
Nice job on the birds and a nice picture as always. I didn't have my phone with me today so no pics. |
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Mark...You are entitled to your own opinion. You aren't entitled to your own facts. |
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| Posted:
Sat Dec 14, 2024 6:17 am
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Joined: 30 Jul 2012
Posts: 345
Location: Central, ND
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| MSM2019 wrote: |
win7stw,
Yup, it was a bit breezy today in ND, I didn't get 3, 2 will have to do.
Nice job on the birds and a nice picture as always. I didn't have my phone with me today so no pics.
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MSM, I was lucky to get three yesterday. They are wild where I hunt. Plus I didn’t hit any of these well and they all hit the ground running. Thank god my dog was on her game yesterday |
_________________
Browning 525 Sporting 16ga
Browning BPS Gr III 16ga |
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| Posted:
Sat Dec 14, 2024 8:07 am
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Joined: 04 Mar 2019
Posts: 2009
Location: Central ND
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win7stw,
I hunted a WPA yesterday, this one is at least 2 sections, so its a lot to cover. The birds fly in from a nearby wheat field a bit later in the afternoon. There are birds there but they haven't behaved since the opener. I got lucky to have gotten the two I did within 30 yards or so. Neither really held very well for Marty's point but 1 1/8 oz. of buffered Bismuth #5's did their job. The rest were up and out before the dog got within 100 yards of them. Just before this cold snap hit, I hunted a private wheat field with a bunch of sloughs (very similar terrain) and every single bird held for the dog......go figure. I'm still learning about these ND pheasants, the ones in IA, KS, NE and SD were much better behaved. LOL
I'm going back to that WPA at the end of the season, but this time I am going to try hunting from the lake side......if the wind blows from the NW.
Not sure where today's adventure is gonna be. But I won't leave my phone at home! |
_________________
Mark...You are entitled to your own opinion. You aren't entitled to your own facts. |
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| Posted:
Sat Dec 14, 2024 6:16 pm
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Joined: 04 Mar 2019
Posts: 2009
Location: Central ND
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Well today I went to another WPA and the pheasants were flying, but before I made it to where they were. Marty ended up with some nice work on the bird I did take. He tried to sneak away, wasn't happening. Marty didn't look all that proud sitting in front of one bird!! I'm not complaining 1 shell, 1 bird.
I read that an older bird (at least one year old) must have spurs at least 10 MM long (a tad over 3/8") this rooster had spurs at 11 MM. The oldest/biggest bird so far this year had spurs right at 1/2". I never kept track of such things but I do now.
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Mark...You are entitled to your own opinion. You aren't entitled to your own facts. |
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| Posted:
Sat Dec 14, 2024 8:49 pm
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Joined: 30 Jul 2012
Posts: 345
Location: Central, ND
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Nice work Mark. I didn’t make it out today, my boys had basketball games and I had to play carpenter for a bit. I have been hunting here for over 30 years and I still don’t have these late season birds figured out. My little guy makes sure I measure every bird’s tail feather and he examines the spurs. I got a good one last week as far as spurs go, haven’t shot a rooster like that in years
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Browning 525 Sporting 16ga
Browning BPS Gr III 16ga |
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