How to shed hunt for deer ? Jordan Hanks gives us a few tips in this informational video from February 2018. Jordan shows us where we should be walking, stomping and looking for big buck sheds. He lists a couple tips that would help any whitetail shed hunter.

This relates well with me, as I too recently purchased a much smaller parcel here in Michigan.  Planning out my habitat work with my hunting strategy has kept me up for hours, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  This has been a dream of mine for many years.  Stick around for future posts, videos and podcasts on my habitat journey for my improving my OWN Michigan ground.

-Jared

It was the evening of Friday the 13th, and I contemplated even going hunting because it was so warm out, but like I’ve heard a million times… “you can’t shoot them on the couch!”

So I grabbed my Mathews bow and went and sat in an elevated blind out behind my home, where I have good bucks on trail camera mostly at night. I got out a little late but knew they would come by close to dark. As the night went on I heard some squirrels and saw a cat go by. Then when I heard the twig snap, I knew something was up. I couldn’t see anything or hear any more movement, but I sat dead still and calmly waited.

Trail cam pics from earlier that day

All of a sudden some leaves rustled right in front of me and wouldn’t you know it, a big buck was standing there at 20yds. I was so shocked that this thing was able to get there without me knowing! I grabbed my bow and was able to draw back slowly, then sneak up the the blind window. I found my spot, and sent a New Archery Products Spitfire DoubleCross through both lungs. I watched my Nockturnal run off through the woods about 60yds and then silence. I was hoping that’s where he crashed. I then ran into the house and told the wife that I had shot a big one. After firing off the BBD text to the boys, we had a whole tracking crew ready to go.

The deer had gone onto the neighbors property so I drove down to his house to get permission to track my buck. He gladly let me. So we took off into the woods where I shot and quickly found 3/4 of my arrow next to a great blood trail. As we pushed through the woods a reflection of an eye caught our attention and we froze. One of the fellas slowly walked towards it and said white belly!

As we approached him I saw it was the big 8 from my trail cam pictures that I’ve had since early spring. As I walked up to check him out my wife came up to me and gave me a big hug and said “You got him!” with tears of joy running down her face. We drug him to the pickup and went home to take pictures and celebrate.

As I held his tall rack I said “I finally got my big buck with my bow.”

Brian Sitka – Outdoor Devotion

Trail cam pics from earlier this Summer

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Let’s just say March was good to us!  Grabbed the camera and jumped in the boat with my friends Mike and Chad.  We ended up going 6 for 11 that day….which is a great day in terms of Steelhead fishing.  We ended up fishing trout beads all day long, which worked perfect.  Even caught a couple trout.  Ended up taking 1 fish home for dinner.  Thank you again Mike for having me along!

Well 2017 on the ice was going to be different!  And it was.  Jesse Burnham and I decided to dust off the fishing gear last month, and go out to a panfish honey hole for some bluegill fillets.  We started that Saturday afternoon at about 2:00 pm on the ice.  We set 4 tip-ups with shiners for Northern Pike, and the proceeded to fish for the gills.

After about 2 hours, we had a handful of nice pannies on the ice, and 3 missed tip ups.

We weren’t having the luck on the Pike we wanted….so I said “Well we can always spear?”.  As soon as I said that, a flag went up!  We ran over, fought the fish to the hole, and lost him.  Another miss.  We were not looking like very proficient ice fishermen at that exact moment….

We decided right then we were going to spear, and right there is where we were going to do it.  In 5 FOW (feet of water/depth).  We put away the jigging rods, left a couple tip ups out, and started cutting a large hole in the ice.

Since I do not own an ice saw, we use my drill auger setup and drilled some holes.  A lot of holes to be exact.  It actually works very good.

Once we had our spearing hole cleared out, we flipped over my two man Clam Nanook shanty, and dropped the red and white 12″ Pike decoy my Dad had given me, into our hole.  To spear a Pike is similar to hunting a deer.  You need to bring the fish into your effective range by jigging a decoy or bait.  Once the target is within range, you can jab the spear downward.

As soon as that decoy drifted down a couple feet, the decoy was nose to nose with a nice sized legal Pike(24″ long).  The problem was, the guard on the spear was still tied on!  I rushed to untie the point guard, get the retrieval rope ready and try to launch at this fish….but it was too late and he casually swam off.  Jesse and I were excited.

After 5 more minutes of screwing around, we were setup.  We ended up seeing 2-3 more fish in that hour, which is a pretty good rate.  I actually ended up missing my first throw ever, as the spear went low while Mr. Pike was turning to leave the decoy.

Now it was Jesse’s turn to throw.  After about another 30 minutes, in came yet another legal sized Pike.  He came in from behind us, right under our feet.  All I saw was his nose, and started quietly making Jesse aware.  As I slowly raised the decoy up towards the surface, Jesse slipped the tips of the spear into the icy water.  2 seconds later, he threw!  Down went the pike and spear into the bottom with the weeds.  As Jesse horsed the spear upward, the Pike actually came off the barbs.  We quickly threw the spear once more and hit him again.  As you can imagine, it was a madhouse inside the shanty at this point.  We flipped over the shanty and tossed the fish onto the ice.  It was time to celebrate!!

Jesse speared our first Pike ever, and it ended up being a great 28″ Northern.

After some celebratory high fives and hoots, we quickly got back into our seats, flipped over the shanty, and were setup again.  We were in the zone now, and the spear was back in my hands again.  It was time for redemption.

15 minutes later, I see another Pike nose to my 9:00.  An even larger fish was sneaking in slowly to our decoy setup.  I slipped the spear through the surface of the lake, while Jesse raised the decoy.  This hog didn’t like our strategy at all, and turned to swim under our feet.  I immediately thrust the heavy iron weapon downward and felt contact.

He was hit good, right behind the head….but was fighting us on the rope.  I slowly retrieved the rope while Jesse flipped the shanty open.  We eased him up this time, careful not to lose him off the spear.  This intense moment ended when I tossed the fish up onto the ice!  We celebrated once again, as we were officially Pike Spearers!

This nice Northern Pike ended up being 31″ in length. ( Bigger than Jesse’s )

Over the last hour of daylight, we didn’t see any more fish.  That didn’t  matter; today was already a success.

We drank a few cold ones, as we spent our dusk reminiscing of what  had just happened and the delicious meals we had ahead of us.

Thank you for reading!  I have included below some of the Pike Spearing videos I have watched in the past, that helped get the bug in me.  If you haven’t tried it yet, please do so!  It is a lot like bow hunting.

A great place to learn more is the Michigan Darkhouse Angling Association.  https://www.facebook.com/MichiganDarkhouseAnglingAssociation/?fref=ts

– Jared Van Hees

Videos

They caught them on tip-ups using shiners in 30 FOW.  Jigging was also a technique they tried, but it did not work at all compared to the tip-ups.