Happy Fourth of July from Team HuntingLife.  Please remember to take a few minutes and thank our Service Men and Women and all of our great veterans because without them we would not be here today.  As well please thank (by Joining) the NRA for protecting our ability to remain a free country!

This year I already have several trips planned to get out for Goose and Waterfowl hunts and I thought I would start off the season volunteering for a day of goose banding with the fine folks from the VGDIF and VAWFA .  Audrey(my middle daughter) and I got up on Tuesday and headed out to meet the folks and by 7:45 we had already banded 40 geese just down the road.

Click Through to see the rest of the story and a ton of great pictures!!

The Kruncher is a compact, handheld call that simulates the sound of deer feeding on acorns. This natural sound relaxes deer in the immediate vicinity of your stand. It can also call in other deer that think there is food available. It calms spooked deer, stimulates deer to feed and stops deer in a relaxed manner.

Just like imitating a deer’s grunt or recreating the rattling of antlers, the sound of a whitetail feeding on acorns can cause a positive reaction. While grunting and rattling can generate emotions of anger and aggression, The Kruncher has the opposite effect. It calms spooked deer. The sound of crunching acorns actually stimulates deer to feed and puts them into a relaxed state.

Just as the rut vocalizations (bleat, grunt, snort wheeze) have meaning and are recognized sounds, so does the sound of chewing and grinding. The difference is that it is linked to the most frequent sound a whitetail experiences (feeding sounds) and can be used aggressively the entire season.

Through testing in the woods, hunters were repeatedly amazed that whitetails of all sizes and varieties had the same calm and relaxed reaction to The Kruncher. Even deer that had been spooked by other sights and sounds would relax in just seconds upon hearing The Kruncher. They would return to the source of the sound again and again.

The Kruncher is a vital part of your calling arsenal. This unique call comes with a user-friendly attaching device to keep things simple when deer are in close and hunters can’t afford mistakes. It sells for a suggested retail price of $9.99.

For more information, log onto the Hunter’s Specialties website at www.hunterspec.com, write to 6000 Huntington Court NE, Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402, or call a Consumer Service Specialist at 319-395-0321.

As ethical hunters, we first need to be aware of the images we communicate to the public. Despite all the talk of hunter ethics, I still often times see photos of animals in the back of vehicles, lying in a heap with little thought given to composition, and hanging on meat poles or in garages.

After recently taking a photo 1 class as an elective in college, combined with the ability to practice/take several trophy quality photos a week throughout the fall, I’ve come up with a quick list of suggestions and recommendations on taking a quality shot:

When the day finally comes, my brother and I waited for David to call and every time the phone would ring, we would race to pick it up. We waited, then finally the phone rang and mom was telling us where to go. We quickly got ready and left.

When we arrived we were expecting to be put to work real quick but come to find that the kids had painted the letters and themselves and that they were starting to put down the mulch. We walked over to the ‘work site’ to take a peek at the project and found that the kids did a great job! The letters were perfectly cut to make each letter and the painting was well done! The tree was much bigger than we thought but it was perfect and the mulch setting was beautiful.

We watched people spread mulch and we even helped a little. David ended up assigning me the job of re-painting the letters so they would be extra white. We laughed and took some pictures. We decided to wait for the letters to finish drying then we would come back to finish the mulch work. We walked down to the pond and watched the geese as they flocked around a lady with bread. While looking at the pond, I noticed that people had thrown some trash on the pond side, so I walked down and picked it up so other people could enjoy the beauty but don’t have to see trash blocking it. After doing my good deed for the day, we left

The project was fun and we taught a few kids about the beauty of nature and that it doesn’t hurt to help it sometimes! We strive to teach kids the importance in taking care of nature and the understandings of different wildlife habitats. We love teaching the ‘Next Generation’ about keeping the world a beautiful place!

Once your skulls are bleached and dried take a chance and send them off to Jana.  The work she does is excellent and she can take a simple skull and turn it into an absolutely amazing work of art.

I asked Jana to create a Navaho design on my bear skull and I gave her complete creative license to create a great piece and she absolutely blew me away with this work of art.  This particular skull was from my first bear and it is going to be sitting up along side the mount for the bear.  The painted skull really completes this amazing mount for this bear and I am thrilled with the work that has been done on this bear skull.

If you are thinking about turning one of your skulls into a work of art contact Jana Waller at 920-222-1136 and check out her website at www.paintedskulls.com.

I'd like to announce that as of today, July 1, I will be shooting Hoyt bows exclusively on stage and for all my bowhunting adventures.  After being at Hoyt for almost 19 years, it feels great to have a Hoyt in my hand again.  I look forward to working with my friend Mike Luper, aka "Super Luper" again.  I have twin GMX recurve bows for my stage show and a Montega compound that I shoot instinctively for my hunts.  

Here's something on the move to Hoyt:


Addington to use/endorse Hoyt bows
by Lynn Chhabra

      Effective July 1, 2009 Frank Addington, Jr. will exclusively use Hoyt bows on stage for his instinctive archery exhibitions across the country and for all bowhunting activities.  For his stage bows, Addington selected two identical GMX recurve bows with 990 TX limbs.  In a long standing tradition, both bows are blue.  For his bowhunting activities, Addington will use the Hoyt Montega compound bow, which he has set&nb sp;up to shoot instinctively as well.  He said, "I'll have a little higher profile in the bowhunting end of the sport.  I've always kept my bowhunting private, but will do a little more high profile stuff to further promote the sport and brand."

"This recognition was accomplished during a time that will be marked as economically challenging on many levels," said Dave Haggard, DU Iowa state chairman. "Iowa persevered because we have a passion for our mission. We don't let challenges become excuses, and we have a commitment to our team and emphasize that by the way we identify ourselves - "TEAM Iowa DU."

The Des Moines legal and public affairs firm Brown Winnick, along with DU volunteers and staff, won one of only four Wings of Innovation awards for government relations work in support of Iowa's initiative for sustainable natural resources funding. Brown Winnick's Nancy Boyd, Michael Treinen and Marc Beltrame provided tactical recommendations and lobbying support on the measure, all pro-bono.