SOTV Pro-staffer, Brent Overton, recently killed his first May bird.  The rain didn’t even stop Brent from sticking it out and making this old gobbler take a good ‘ole dirt nap.

Congrats, Brent!

Barry’s Bird

Yesterday, SOTV Pro-staffer, Barry Cooper, killed this bird at a meer 10 yards.  The hunt was captured on film, and you can be sure you’ll see it in an upcoming episode of SOTV.

This bird also featured a split beard – or a double beard – or whatever you want to call it.  I’ll let the picture tell the story, and you can all call it what you want.

Turkey Season Success Continues

In case you missed it, we’ve had a pretty successful turkey season so far here at SimplyOutdoors.

And then, last weekend, Jeff’s son, Tyler Daniel, kept our streak up by putting down a nice gobbler as well.  I’ve been busy with a bunch of things, so I apologize to Tyler for not posting it here until now – but I figured better late then never, right?

This bird came in with two other gobblers, and Tyler was able to turn completely around and add another to the scoreboard for SOTV.

Congrats again, Ty!

Turkey Season Preparation

My turkey season starts up tomorrow, so in preparation I was shooting the bow yesterday.  I managed to get my oldest into the action as well, as she joined me shooting her little Bear youth bow for awhile.

It was a perfect day outside, and my arrows were flying true.  Hopefully, that means I’ll be able to put the first longbeard with a bow down for SOTV this season.  If I managed to get one opening day, like I did last year, I’d be estatic – but if it has to wait until the last weekend of the season, I’m ready for the long haul as well.

I know it’s going to be tough with a bow, but I’m going to do my best to stick it out with the archery equipment, and not switch.

Let’s hope I have the willpower.

If you ever wanted to redeem yourself from the dove debacle a few years back, and send a clear message to out-of-state anti-hunting organizations, such as the Humane Society of the United States, now is the time!

Recently introduced Senate Bills 288 & 289, and House Bills 4552 & 4553, if passed, will ensure that wildlife management decisions in Michigan are made using sound science, and eliminate the possibility of these decisions being made at the ballot box.  And as an added bonus, these bills will also:

• Authorize the Natural Resources Commission to designate game species and issue fisheries orders under its Proposal G mandate to use sound science.
• Provide free licenses to active-duty members of the military.
• Provide conservation funding to conduct the research and data necessary for the DNR to make sound scientific recommendations to the Natural Resources Commission, and for outdoor education and outreach, such as youth outdoor education.
• This appropriation will also help ensure that Michigan receives its full share of Pittman-Robertson funding due to federal match requirements and high firearm and ammunition sales this year.
• Protect the rights to hunt and fish in Michigan’s Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act.

These bill packages couldn’t have come at a better time.

 I recently wrote about my disappointment that Michigan’s wolf hunt is facing the possibility of being decided by a public vote.  And while Bruce’s words from that post – “If I understand you correctly, you do not believe the public should have the right to vote on wildlife issues” did garner my attention, I still believe that allowing the public to make these types of decisions – who are very likely to be swayed by misinformation distributed by known anti-hunting groups promoting an agenda – is a bad idea.  

Though tax dollars do fund the research and organization in charge of the decision making, I believe the public made their voices heard in 1996 when Proposal G was made law – these bills will simply help to enforce parts of Proposal G that have already been passed by the public, but are being ignored. And though NRC members, who are not necessarily wildlife experts, do help to decide these types of decisions, at least they are receiving information first-hand from state wildlife experts before making that decision (not to mention that NRC members are also appointed by the governor who is voted in by the public).

I think Tony Hansen, MUCC spokesman put it best:

“It’s not about taking votes away from anyone,” he said. “But I don’t know if I’ve ever gone into a doctor’s office and said, ‘I need my appendix out. Let’s take a vote on how we should do it.’ That’s what we do with wildlife management. It’s not an opinion poll. It’s a science.”

We need to tell our Senators and State Representatives that we support scientific wildlife management, while sending a clear message to anti-hunting organizations.  And we need to tell them that we support our right to hunt, fish, and trap.

Honestly, it’s a no-brainer.

Author’s Note:  Click here for more information about the bills, and for info on how to contact your representatives!

They began the morning with turkeys gobbling like crazy, but ended up with no takers.  In the late morning/early afternoon they moved to a different property and located a nice looking Tom, which Tyler whiffed on at 50 yds.  He was humbled and frustrated and ready to move on with life.

But, as with all the times when Tyler G. wants to give up on hunting (anyone remember the buck he shot last September), things took a turn for the better.  They located a couple gobblers in a swamp, set up on the edge of it – with nothing between all three of them and the toms but a makeshift turkey fan on a stick – and watched the birds close to about 20yds.  Jeff dropped the fan (so to speak), Tyler dropped the first bird in his tracks, and Jeff dropped the second bird as it tried to escape.

A double……….all caught on film!

Needless to say, it was a pretty good turkey opener.

The weather has been crazy here in Michigan – lots of rain and flooding; seventy degree weather one day, and snow the next – but we’ve stayed strong.  Thankfully none of the flooding has affected any of us, and the snow didn’t stick around long enough to hurt much of anything.

While all of this was happening, Jeff, Justin and Barry were chasing after walleye down on the Detroit River.  They managed to boat a few, on several different days, and I was able to enjoy the fruits of their labor without having to do any of the work, since Jeff invited us over for a walleye lunch on Saturday.

Turkey Season

Our turkey season starts up tomorrow morning – April 22nd – and Jeff will have his stepson out trying to put his second longbeard on the ground.

We’re hopeful that our season is as successful as last year, and Ross, one of SOTV’s Prostaffers in Arkansas, already put down a nice Missouri gobbler (and missed on another opportunity as well….that he’s still sick about).

My season doesn’t start until May 6th, but I’m hopeful to accomplish two things during this year’s turkey season:  take my 5 yr. old daughter out turkey hunting with me, and kill a longbeard with my bow.  We’ll see how things goes once my season gets underway, though.

Boston Aftermath/Gun Control

And lastly, I’d be remiss to not mention anything about the events of the last week.

The whole SOTV crew join the entire country in thanking all of the individuals who took part in helping those in need during the bombing at the Boston Marathon, as well as all of those in law enforcement who were quick in bringing the necessary individuals to justice.  We’re thankful that the ordeal is over, but we remember those who, unfortunately, lost their lives during this entire situation.

On a different note:  I wonder how many of those – who were on lockdown, knowing that those suspects were at large and could be anywhere in their neighbor – maybe changed their tune on gun control, and had the thought cross their mind that an AR-15 with a 30 round clip might not be enough to fend off these pyschopaths with homemade bombs, etc.

Keep Michigan Wolves Protected’s Director is a woman by the name of Jill Fritz, who also happens to be Michigan’s Director of the Humane Society of the United States.  I found it as no surprise that the HSUS would be involved in this particular issue, considering the success they had when they put Michigan’s now extinct dove hunt up for a vote.  I’m sure they were overjoyed then to know that Michigan hunters would sit idly by, while they promoted their agenda and allowed the uninformed public to decide the issue, rather than letting wildlife biologists and sound scientific evidence make the call.  With that previous experience in their pocket, I have no doubt that they felt very confident before starting this recent wolf petition process.

If these petitions are deemed valid, and if this issue is brought before the voters in November of 2014, the question remains, though, as to whether Michigan’s hunters will stand idly by and watch another hunting opportunity become extinct based on emotion and a “I don’t hunt wolves, so why do I care” mentality; or will they step up, make the facts known, vote this issue down, and allow scientists to make the call as to whether a wolf hunt takes place, not a group of anti-hunting whackos who purposely name their organization to creatively confuse and manipulate the public into thinking they’re about saving puppies and kittens in a shelter?

Michigan United Conversation Club’s Executive Director, Erin McDonough, “believes that HSUS has vastly underestimated the intelligence level of Michigan’s residents and has grossly overestimated this state’s tolerance for out-of-state extremists attempting to buy election results.”

I hope she’s right.

But based on what I witnessed of hunters during the dove hunt fiasco, I’m afraid we’re about to see another hunting opportunity decided by the uninformed public, and not by sound scientific management.

I can only hope that I’m wrong.

In this episode you’ll be able to watch as some of the SOTV crew try to catch some crappie though the ice; and you’ll join Jeff and his son on a spring turkey hunt from last year.

I’m not a celebrity.  I’m just an average, everyday father, husband, and red-blooded American.

And if there is one thing about this whole emotionally-motivated gun control debate that makes me extremely angry, it’s the fact that many celebrities and news correspondents believe that, because I’m just a normal guy, I shouldn’t be allowed to protect myself with a gun.  They can understand how a celebrity, or an athlete, or a “person of status” needs to protect themselves, but they don’t believe that my life, and the lives of my family, are worthy of protection.

Shame on them!

If I have to listen to one more person say that “they can understand that so and so has a gun, because their an athlete, celebrity, politician, so they’re more likely to be attacked, etc.”, I may vomit right on my shoes.  How can they decide, just because of a person’s perceived stature, that that person’s life is more important than mine?

In the eyes of my daughters, I’m pretty important.  In their eyes, I certainly deserve to live; and because of that, I certainly deserve the right to defend myself against anyone who believes they need to inflict harm against me and my family.

How is it right for a politician – or anyone for that matter – to decide that my life isn’t worth protecting?  How dare they say that certain individuals have the right to defend themselves because of their stature, while others can’t?  How dare they decide who’s life is more precious or more important than others?

How dare they decide that my life – the life as a father of two beautiful daughters and the life of a pretty good guy and husband – isn’t worth protecting?

For a number of years, I continued to read everything I could related to the Civil War.  I would study the different battle locations on maps, trying to get an idea of how the battles evolved, as well as how the individuals felt when they were fighting those battles.  I was ultimately trying to get a grasp of what the land involved with the battle was like, as well as how it felt to be immersed in such horrors and beauty all at the same time.

But nothing – and I mean nothing – made me understand the battles more than actually walking the ground where the battles were fought.

I needed to walk the ground.  I needed to actually stand in the middle of the Sunken Road at Shiloh to truly have any kind of understanding of what it felt like to fight and die there.  I needed to stand on Little Round Top, and look down upon the immense boulders of Devil’s Den, to have any kind of firm grasp on how it felt to fight and hold that hill on that hot July morning.  I needed to step on the rocks, walk the path, and stare down the ridge to have a true feel for what it must have felt like on the day the battle was fought.

And, I believe, to truly appreciate your food – to appreciate where it comes from, how it’s processed and brought to table, the work that is involved in that process, as well as the reward that comes from it – requires the same type of hands-on experience.

We can read book upon book filled with food recipes.  We can study how food should be prepared, the temperature it needs to be in order to be seared to perfection; and we can even take a bite and actually taste and appreciate the flavor that comes with a perfectly cooked steak or chicken breast.  But we’ve still missed a key part in the food experience – actually killing the animal and immersing oneself in the blood after a hard-fought hunt.

While I admit to eating many different things, which didn’t require any effort on my part – I merely had to sit down, dig in, and enjoy the flavor of the food placed before me – when I sit down to eat a piece of venison, goose, or wild turkey breast, it brings the entire food experience to a new level.  With every bite that is placed in my mouth, the flavor is much more intense, and I appreciate the bounty before me that much more.  The meals that are associated with the wild game I have killed myself are not taken lightly; they are an entire experience, and each bite is an immediate reminder of the work and joy that comes from providing food for the table.

Eating the meal, and appreciating the flavor and taste, are like reading the book and studying the maps; but hunting, and ultimately killing and processing the food that is placed in front of us and our family, is like actually walking the ground.