Hunting swamp ghosts

This beagle just retrieved a snowshoe hare for the hunter.

Hunting snowshoe hares is a hoot. What's not to like about it?

Well, we get to stand in thick cedars, Christmas tree plantations, juniper thickets or pines, and try to guess when and where the satchel-footed ghost hare will appear next.

All we need is some snow, We got another seven or eight inches of snow between yesterday afternoon and last night. We have more than enough snow for hunting the white hares. Sometimes, as has been true for several years, hares are conspicuous by their absense. They can be hard to find.

We can have snow fall off tree boughs and find its way down our neck, and when the snow gets deep, we get to wander around in this heavy cover and hope we don't fall down. Going down is easy, but climbing back to a vertical position can be difficult in deep powdery snow.

Hares are no longer plentiful in the northern Lower Peninsula.

There is the added bonus of listening to a some deep-throated beagles in full cry as they weave their way through heavy cover. Sometimes the hounds are sight trailing the swamp ghost, but most often the dogs are 100 yards or farther behind the hare.

Mind you, I've stalked snowshoe hared and run them with hounds, and there is one major requirement. I've even hunted them with a bow. All one needs a fresh hare track to follow.

Those tracks seem to be getting far less common in many areas. Twenty to 25 years ago, all we had to do was look for the thickest cover in northern counties and there would be tracks everywhere.

That's not so anymore. Some of my buddies have gone looking for hare tracks in all the right places, and if they find tracks, most of them are cottontails. It's a proven fact that cottontails are moving farther north every year.

We can blame the hare scarcity on new housing developments. We can blame it on clearing some land and planting bushes and shrubs around our house. There is predation by bobcats, coyotes, fox, hawks, and owls. People and our inroads into what once was ideal hare habitat must assume some blame, and the other cause is snowies are cyclic by nature.

Folks, if snowshoe hares are cyclic, then their cycle is close to hitting rock bottom, especially in the northern Lower Peninsula. There are still more hares in the U.P., but their numbers are slowly dropping as well.

Hares are cyclic, and heavily preyed upon by avian and land predators.

Yeah, I know,air and land predators take some of the the white animals but there is nothing sportsmen can do about that. The Fish & Wildlife Service has protected birds of prey for many years, and those who kill one of these birds and get caught, are severely punished.

So, what's a hare hunter to do? Well, they can easily find cottontail rabbits in most Lower Peninsula areas. Or ... they can do as some guys I know do.

They go hunting snowshoe hares. They scout for habitat that still holds some hares and go hunting. Unlike conventional wisdom dictates, they either go for the enjoyment of listening to hound music and leave the firearms home or they forget to load the shotgun.

They give the running hares a free pass. They give the dogs a good workout as the hare runs an egg-shaped oval before returning to the area where he was initially jumped. The hunters may let the white hare make two or three circles, catch up the hounds, and head for another location.

This way they have the thrill of listening to bawls, bellers, chattering, chops, howls, yelps and other words used to describe the voice of each individual hound.

Hunt the hares but limit the kill to keep hound interest high.

You see, hunting snowshoe hares is a good bit like hunting spring wild turkeys. The kill of a gobbler or a hare is anticlimactic. It's the sounds of the hunt, the dogs trailing the scent in full cry or the gobbler roaring back at the hen-talking hunter. Seeing the hare or a turkey is a major part of the hunt, and since hares are getting to the point of low numbers, taking the pooch out for a run may have to be enough fun.

Sure, the hound owner wants to kill the occasional hare to keep his dogs interest at a high level, but it doesn't have to happen on every hunt. If turkey hunters killed every turkey they saw, there soon wouldn't be any gobblers left to hunt or the birds would stop coming to the call.

It's much the same way with snowshoe hares. Maybe we'll just have to be content to listen to hound music. On many days, standing knee-deep in snow in a cedar swamp and drinking in the sounds of hounds on a hot track, has to be good enough.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

A lazy Christmas for me

Some very nice bucks like this one are taken in late December.

There were thoughts of bow hunting this evening. They were very brief thoughts, and then the notion quickly passed.

I have hunted a good many Christmas days over the years, and there have been a few bucks taken. Not many though, and frankly, it's become more difficult of late to muster up much energy after chowing down on a big dinner.

Too much food makes me act a bit like an old bird dog curling up before the fire. I turn around in a circle two or three times, slump into an easy chair, and if the chatter isn't too loud and the mood suits me, I might study the insides of my eyelids for an hour or two.

Life is good when such luxuries exist in the afternoon.

Old dogs, especially those lean and long-legged pointers, hit the floor like a sack of old bones, and are about as noisy on a hardwood floor as anything could be. The dogs curl up, make little puppy-like sounds as they follow the heady scent of a grouse, pheasant or woodcock through their dreamy coverts.

The older I get, the more sense it makes to sleep off at least an hour after a big meal. It allows the grub to settle into all the nooks and crannies of my digestive system, but sadly, I didn't get a chance to doze today. Good chats about deer hunting got in the way.

Some basketball game was on, and two or three of the players acted as if they had eaten far too much before the game, but perhaps that was just my lazy attitude this afternoon. It would have been a decent bow-hunting day.

There was just enough people around to keep me indoors. A soft breeze may be fun to listen to but the deer do not move well in deep snow, and in my area, many deer have found the yarding areas already. Hunting such areas is not a wise decision this late in the season.

There is a lot of snow still on the ground, and somehow, heading out for an afternoon of bow hunting in too much deep  snow seemed pointless. It's not that I might not have seen a deer or two, perhaps even taken a shot, but it seemed a far wiser decision to spend time with my family.

Hunting in or near deer yarding areas puts too much pressure and stress on them.

I did kick back, put my feet up on a foot stool in the late afternoon, and remembered two or three past Christmases when I hunted. As I recall, all had snow on the ground and much colder temperatures. Our snow this year is deep, and where I live about 60 inches have fallen since it first arrived six weeks ago.

Years ago, the cold and snow made the deer move, and on one such day, a nice 8-point came walking by and offered an easy shot at 12 yards. The buck ran 45 yards, and fell with a two-bladed hole through his heart. It was an easy shot, and a wonderful Christmas gift.

Now, as a rule, hunting on holidays (especially Christmas) is something I seldom do. It doesn't bother me to hunt Thanksgiving Day or New Years Day, but I usually stay inside on Christmas.

My son-in-law was up early this morning, and as the sky began to lighten in the east, he spotted a 140-class buck bed down with a doe in an open field about 75 yards behind the house. He watched the buck for a half-hour, and as the light grew stronger, both deer got up and moved off into the pines. He felt that was his Christmas present from the deer in his hunting area

And, guess what for me? Missing out on hunting today didn't bother me one bit. I can still hunt through Jan. 1, and expect to do so. Some cold weather would certainly help, and then I'll hang up the bow for a month before starting to practice for next year's bow season and start dreaming about next year's spring turkey hunt.

Merry Christmas from my house and family to yours. May the best of the Christmas season bless and keep you, and while you're at it, say a prayer for the men and women in our Armed Forces, who make such Christmas events possible for us. God bless one and all.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors