The Quail Shed Messenger

With so many hunting seasons either open now, or about to open, people all over the Internet are reporting that they are seeing poisonous snakes out and about! And, since The Quail Shed is headquartered on East SnakeTrail Road, I can see where that might be of some concern to our clients. But, I have some good news!

Poisonous snakes are extremely rare in our area, and I have never seen one, or heard reports of any since I have been working here.  And, that sure makes my job a lot easier!

I don’t worry about Cottonmouths when I get around sloughs, or the river. Piles of rocks don’t scare me, because we don’t have Copperheads. And, I walk through CRP, and crawl through brushpiles with absolutely no fear that I will hear a “buzzworm”! No Rattlesnakes… And, in all of my life I have never seen a Coral Snake. So, I guess we are good to go!

On rare occasions I stumble into Garter snakes, Rat snakes, and a few other varieties that mostly just try to get out of my way! And, that suits me just fine.

You would think that Don would constantly be battling with snakes around the bird barns and flight pens, but NOPE! So, leave your snake boots at home when you come up here…  And, ain’t that a beautiful thing!

Yesterday, I got a call from a good client who had just hunted with another outfitter on an early season hunt. He was more than a little upset, because he had shot a nice buck, but was unable to recover it, and the outfitter would not let him try to fill his tag on another deer. I think the real problem was that the outfitter never really stated his policy up front, leaving a grey area, and a big uh-oh when the client didn’t get to complete his hunt! Our conversation made me think about how we handle “problems” at The Quail Shed.

For years, we have had a very lenient policy about fines for deer smaller than our 130 inch minimum, and also covering this type of situation, based on our belief that we want to be fair with everyone.  Fines are a very negative thing, and I question how effective they really are when used to force compliance with a minimum antler size restriction. Last year, we attempted to cover all of the bases, and offered a special price for anyone who felt they would be satisfied with shooting a deer under our minimum. Surprisingly, no one took us up on that offer, but we had several bucks shot that were, without question, well below our minimum.  In all but one case, the hunter told me he thought the deer was bigger, until he saw it on the ground. I have decided that we need to spend more time in orientation this year, explaining what a shooter looks like, so that we do not go down that road again.

A wounded deer that is not recovered right after it is shot, presents us with another bad situation. We cannot let a hunter go out and shoot another buck, until we have completed a thorough search for the deer he has wounded, and determined that the deer is either still alive, or has escaped with a fatal wound, which  he will succumb to later. That information  is not always obvious right away. We have tracking dogs that will find most fatally wounded deer fairly quickly, and I am confident that our recovery rate will be very good.  But, it still takes hours of hunting time away from the hunter. The decision to shoot, or wait, belongs to the hunter, and we have always looked at these situations on a case by case basis. Every hunter can be assured that we will do everything we can to recover any deer that has been shot, and in exchange for that, I will hold you to a high ethical standard if you hunt in my camp. It’s a two way street, right?

As I wrote earlier, it is important that there are no grey areas when you are on an outfitted hunt. If you have questions, please feel free to ask them. And, I will continue to try to cover all of the bases, before your hunt begins…

As of a  few days ago, there were still over 8500 NR Combination bow tags available.  And, there are a few gun tags left in some counties as well. We still have a few openings in the third week of November, which is a prime time to be bow hunting.

We started hearing that gun tags were showing up in the mail last week. So, keep an eye out for them if you are gun hunting with us this year. If you haven’t received yours by Oct 1st, you will need to contact the IDNR to see what happened.

We also have spots available in the second firearms season, and the muzzleloader season. And, don’t forget that any unused tags can be used in the late antlerless season. We have special rates for that time, and always have lots of action on those hunts. This year the state has added extra hunting days. so there will be plenty of chances to fill your freezer, and help us with our management plan at the same time.

The bucks are coming out of velvet now, and have almost entirely disappeared into the standing corn. That’s no surprise, but it sure makes riding around in the evenings a lot less fun. And, my jinx with trail cameras continues.  There is no end to the things that go wrong every time I put them out,  trying to get pics of velvet bucks, just a different set of circumstances.

For instance,  how many squirrels do you think can live in one tree? I didn’t notice the den when I set one camera out, leading to literally hundreds of pictures of squirrels. Batteries that go dead, memory cards that suddenly fail, etc. have all lead me to just about give up on getting images. And,  now we have the ginseng diggers entering the woods, so I pulled the cameras to keep them from getting “borrowed”!

The crops are coming along, so the farmers are starting to smile a little more. We should have a late harvest, but that’s no big deal. The second gun tag lottery was completed, and there are quite a few tags left ofver. So, if you have decided you  want to come gun hunt with us, there is still some hope!

I have been busy working on the bunkhouses, putting out stands, and all of the other stuff we do during the off season. It’s been nice all week, with no rain, and moderate temps. And, over the next few weeks we will complete everything , and kick off the 09-10 season.

A few hunters have already hit the fields bird hunting. They have been shooting pheasants and quail, mostly in the mornings. Don has jumped two different shooter bucks out of the bird fields, and he told me one has very tall brow tines. This happens every year, and some of our stands are set up to cover the escape routes that these deer use when they rush out of the fields. Its an exciting way to spend a morning, especially when you see them come running across the open ground right at you, from a half mile away!

We are experiencing an unusual early acorn drop, so we will be monitoring some of the white oaks to see if they are going to last until the last week of October. Persimmons will be watched too. We know what these additional food sources mean, and will set up on them if we find deer using them in prime time.

I want to remind all of our bowhunterss to keep practicing. And, wear some heavy clothing when you’re at it. You need to be ready when your opportunity comes!

That’s it for now… The clock is running down, and I still have some things to do to get ready!