Trophy Room - Hunting and Fishing Pics

We do weird stuff like 'you don't eat until you go catch something' sometimes, so when they came out of the pan we were hungry and they were REALLY good :D :D
 
What is y'all' recommended method for dispatching a live-trapped (cage) woodchuck?
I know drowning is an option, just seems harsh. My only firearm is a shotgun - a bit much that. I usually wrench rabbits and exsanguinate chickens, but those are easy to handle, I've not read of folks doing that for woodchucks. ..
Any advice? Need it quick
 
Give em a sporting chance with the shotgun. Open the cgae and let him run and see if you can blast him on the move.
 
Riz! said:
It is a woodchuck so battoning may work!
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Believe it or not, this was what I chose ;)

I was able to get him out of the cage by the tail, neck was too strong for a simple cervical dislocation, so I whacked the back of his noggin with my trail hawk, then slit the jugular and carotid. Easy down, as painless as I could manage
 
Hello all. I hope everyone is having a good season. I wanted to post about a hunt that I was able to share with my mother this fall.

My mother (76) drew a bull elk tag in a good unit this year and I've been busy spending as many days as possible out with her. We had been seeing good numbers of elk, but just couldn't find much with horns on its head.

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Then over the weekend we located and made a try for a herd that we could see had some branch antler bulls in it. It was tough on my mom on the way in, so I told her to just set her own pace and stop as she needed, no sense to push it too hard.

We came to the point where she needed a rest, so I got her sat on a good crossing and told her that since the elk had fed over the ridge I was going to move ahead and glass the next draw to see if they were bedded in it. I'd be back to gather her up after she had caught her wind. The elk were there alright and there were several more bulls we hadn't seen originally, a couple of them pretty good, so I slipped out real easy and headed back.

I didn't know that a few head had fed back over the ridge and I walked right under them and blew them out. They gathered up the whole herd, at least 30 head, and over the mountain they went. If you've ever hunted elk you know that deer change hills, but elk can and will change zipcodes. I was just sick. A whole morning's stalk blown and it was my fault after getting her to walk in.

:eek: :( :mad: :oops:

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A couple days later we get our legs back under us and decide to give it another try, a different spot that I'd got a lead on a few bulls and would hopefully be more glassing and less walking. Just after daylight we found a bachelor group of three bulls, a small five, a huge five, and a big six with a broke left. We wanted that big five and got set up for a shot.

The bulls were feeding up the ridge. Before we could get set up, the big five had fed into the timber with the other two following behind but still in the open. As quick as she could mom switched over to the broke-horned bull and sent one. This was long range shooting, and my mom is not nearly so familiar with the longer, open-ground hunting as she is with close range whitetails. Even so, we had done our job with the ranging and the dialing, and she put one through him at 514 yards. A little moment of hunching up and then off hard down the ridge he goes. Wow.....

No way was my mother going to be able to negotiate the slope, so down over the hill I went with a buddy that was good enough to volunteer this day.

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Then started the work. We took him apart and started over the hill to the road in the bottom of the canyon with the heaviest pack I've ever shouldered. I hung my half on the scales today. The two of us each had this, and I had the horns and the skinned skull for a euro mount in my hands. Then I still had to make one more trip alone for a smaller load after this.

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With the head. I snapped a shot with the scales in it :grin:

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My eberlestock X2 day pack is built for hauling a one-quarter load. Needless to say my shoulders are hurting (not the pack's fault, that thing is tougher than heck by the way) and my feet are bad sore and some blistered from the perspiration, side-hilling and ridiculous weight. BUT, we are home and my mother is all smiles now :)

The steel....

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Cheers!
 
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Awesome story!

Thought I'd share this random event - grilled venison from WI! Tuesday afternoon, this doe (good size too) must have been hit by a car on the highway that runs past our little property. She made it across the easement but not over my field fence. My girls found her when walking the path I mowed, ran to get their mother who came out to feel her - body was still warm at the time. By the time I got there to dress her (4 hours later) she had cooled in the sub-40F weather, so I dressed her out and slung her up in the garage, skinned and butchered her. Free venison for Thanksgiving! :D

Her abdomen was full of blood but the guts were all good, she had a major hematoma on the one side, but I didn't do a thorough check to see whether it was a ruptured spleen or kidneys or just a major blood vessel that resulted from the crash and ended her. *shrug* My eight-year-old was keen to watch - held the latern during the field-dress and labelled the packages as i butchered and wrapped them. Her mother wouldn't let her use a sharp knife to help me butcher ;) Maybe next time.
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