Category Archives: Hunting

FIRST POSITIVE CASE OF CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CONFIRMED IN GEORGIA



What Does It Mean For Hunting with FIRST POSITIVE CASE OF CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CONFIRMED IN GEORGIA

SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. (January 23, 2025) – The Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) Wildlife Resources Division (WRD) has confirmed through the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories that a hunter-harvested deer sampled for routine surveillance in Lanier County has tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). This is the first case of CWD detected in Georgia. 

The sample was taken from a two-and-a-half-year-old male white-tailed deer harvested on private property. Immediately following the positive confirmation, WRD staff implemented the CWD Response Plan and are taking additional samples from the area. 

“I want to assure our hunters that deer hunting will continue to thrive in Georgia, despite this current discovery,” said Walter Rabon, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. “Working together with our hunters and all Georgians, we will manage CWD and maintain healthy deer herds.”  

What is Being Done? 

The DNR CWD Response Plan is in effect and a CWD Management Area is established. The CWD Management Area includes the county where the positive sample was found and any county that touches a 5-mile radius around the location of the positive sample. The current CWD Management Area includes Lanier and Berrien counties.    

The critical next step is to determine the geographic extent and prevalence rate in that Management Area (i.e., how far it has spread and what percent of deer have CWD). The Department will do that with landowner cooperation through “cluster sampling” in the immediate area.   

What is CWD?

CWD was first discovered in 1967 in Fort Collins, Colorado. CWD is a fatal neurological disease of deer, elk, and moose caused by infectious, misfolded proteins called prions. There are no current treatments or preventative vaccines. 

CWD in deer, elk ,and/or moose has been reported in 36 states and 3 Canadian provinces: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming as well as Canadian provinces Alberta, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. 

There is no known transmission of CWD to humans. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that hunters harvesting a deer, elk, or moose from an area where CWD is known to be present have their animal tested for CWD prior to consuming the meat and do not consume the meat if the animal tests positive. 

How You Can Help Prevent Spread 

  • Don’t move live deer. Moving live deer is the greatest risk for introducing CWD to new areas. 
  • Dispose of carcasses properly and don’t bring whole carcasses into Georgia from out of state or move whole carcasses outside the CWD Management Area. Any carcass parts you don’t intend to consume should be left on the property the deer was killed, sent to a landfill, or buried. 
  • Report sick or abnormal deer to your nearest WRD Game Management Office.  

The Georgia DNR with its partners – Georgia Department of Agriculture and the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study – will continue to update the public as more information becomes available.

For more information on Chronic Wasting Disease, visit https://georgiawildlife.com/CWD.   

Then And Now Why Some Wildlife Is Increasing and Some Decreasing

  • Fishing Tips

Then And Now

  • By The Fishing Wire

By Bob Jensen

I looked out my office window today and saw a flock of swans flying by.  For me, that was a pretty big deal.  I’ve seen more swans in my home area in recent years.  Certainly more than we saw just a few years ago, but I still consider it a new experience.  Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, we’re seeing more and more of some types of wildlife and fish life.  And also not so oddly, we’re seeing fewer and fewer of some types of wildlife and fish life.  What we see and what we do in the outdoors has certainly changed from then to now.

Fishing has changed in a lot of ways.  It used to be that keeping the larger fish was the way to go.  On many bodies of water today, it’s beneficial to the fishery to keep the smaller fish.  Northern pike are a good example of this.  On some lakes, keeping the smaller pike is encouraged.  A body of water can support a certain amount of fish poundage per acre.  For instance, if a particular lake can support a hundred pounds of fish per acre, there can be twenty, five pounders, or fifty, two pounders.  Take some of the smaller ones, the ones that we used to throw back, take’em home and eventually we’ll have bigger pike.  That’s an over-simplification, but it makes sense.  And when prepared properly, those two and three pound pike are outstanding on the table.  The same concept holds true for panfish in many lakes.  In some cases, we’re doing the fishery a favor by keeping the smaller fish.

On some lakes smallmouth bass have taken the place of walleyes.  Largemouth bass have always been in these lakes, but they lived in areas where the walleyes didn’t.  As smallmouth populations grew, they moved into the walleye’s neighborhood.  The smallmouth flourished.  They were more aggressive than the walleyes and forced them out of the areas that were originally walleye territory.

When I was younger, pheasants and jackrabbits were abundant near my boyhood home in Iowa.  Now pheasant numbers fluctuate up and down, but there aren’t as many as there used to be, and I haven’t seen a jackrabbit in a very long time.  Weather plays a role in pheasant populations, but habitat, or habitat loss, is a very important factor.  Since 1990, Iowa has lost 2,637 square miles of habitat.  That’s a strip of land nine miles wide that stretches from Davenport Iowa to Omaha Nebraska.  That’s a lot of habitat! 

In an earlier era, we never ever saw an eagle around home.  When we went on our annual fishing trip to northern Minnesota, we would usually see an eagle or two, and it was always a thrill.  Today, we see eagles in the back yard.  And it’s still a thrill.  I’m hopeful and certain that it will always be a thrill.

We also see more deer, geese, and turkeys than we used to.  Seeing deer, geese, and turkeys aren’t quite as thrilling to me as eagles, but I sure do like to see them, as long as they aren’t on the road in front of my pickup.

Most people who spend time outdoors will agree that the outdoor world is changing.  It’s up to those of us who enjoy the outdoors to do what we can to make those changes, on land or water, changes for the better.

Photo Caption—As the outdoor world changes, it appears that deer and turkeys are learning to read.

Deer Stand Memories

  “There’s a kind of hush all over the world,” sang The Herman’s Hermits in 1967. The weather a week ago Sunday and Monday reminded me of that feeling when sitting on a deer stand. The fog and misty rain wetting the leaves and tree branches, and me, made everything in the woods hushed and quiet.

    It is fun most days sitting in a tree hoping deer will wander by, but rainy, foggy days were always my favorites.  Everything is very calm and peaceful. Even tree rats scurrying around on the ground searching for breakfast don’t make much noise.

    Some noises are still loud. The “crack” of a Whiteoak acorn quietly falling 30 feet to smack a limb over your head will get your attention. But most sounds are muted and there is a special quiet to the woods.

    The patter of water drops on the black plastic bag I used for a makeshift rain cover is relaxing, bringing back memories or raindrops hitting the tin roof of the old farmhouse where I grew up.  But unlike the plastic bag roof, it did not leak drops down my collar, bringing me back to the present.

    A flicker of movement gets my full concentration, but most likely it is the flip of a squirrel tail.  I look at it through my scope, cranking it up to maximum power to try to prove grey squirrels have some grey hair. They do not.

    Sometimes the movement is from a magic deer. The woods Houdini can suddenly appear, seemingly popping out of the ground where they stand.  It is no surprise they make no noise in the wet woods, but they can walk through dry leaves just as quietly, the same leaves that made your walk to the stand sound like big foot sitting beside you chomping on ice cubes for breakfast.

    If a deer does appear it is time to check it out closely. Although it is legal to shoot a deer without visible bone above the hair and count it as a doe, not one of your two bucks, you look closely. Then you don’t care because you are hunting for meat, not horns, and don’t plan on filling both buck tags anyway.

    The quiet is conducive to deep thoughts as well as more shallow ones.  Will a doe or buck come down the trail 30 yards down the ridge from your perch in the Whiteoak. Are you hidden well enough for deer “that never look up” to miss seeing you when they look up?  Can you get your crosshairs on them without spooking them?

    More important, how many other hunters have been on this ridge where some of the oaks are more than 100 years old? Did the dirt farmer that scratched out a living here, terracing the steep hillside and moving rocks so he could grow crops to feed his family in the early 1800s hope to shoot a deer with his musket for some meat? 

Did his children and grandchildren that lived on the land after he did shoot squirrels here for a stew, or wait for deer, maybe sitting on the big boulder almost under your tree?  The old man that sold you his final piece of property before dying told you he hunted here, as did his ancestors.  Remembering brought a tear in his eye, giving up the last of his ancestral land.

It almost made you regret buying his families land but if you had not, someone else would have.  And they might have developed it and a subdivision might be covering the ancestral lands now.

    I have insured through a “Land Conservation Covenant” that nothing will be built here before I die. I hope some future hunter will enjoy the peace of this place like I do but I fear some may sing the Joni Mitchell song from 1970: “You don’t know what you got till its gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Opening Day Does Not Mean What It Used To Mean To Me

    “Opening Day!”

    Those words ranked right up there with “Christmas Holidays” and “Schools Out” when I was a kid.  Back then it applied to squirrel or dove season but now everyone gets excited about gun season for deer.

    Deer were so uncommon even when I was in high school in the mid-1960s that seeing one crossing a road was the talk of the boys at school for days.  We had the whole month of November to try to shoot two, and there were two or three “doe” days at Thanksgiving.

    I got to hunt with a bow a little starting in 1964 and got a lever action Marlin 30-30 for my birthday in 1966.  I was buzzing with excitement waiting for opening day in November that year, shooting my rifle every few day to make sure I could hit a deer with the iron sights.

    As my young luck would have it, I had to take the SAT on the Saturday deer season opened that year. I wanted to skip it but was afraid to, my parents would have probably taken my gun away from me for a year.  So I sat in an auditorium in Augusta while my friend AT took my rifle on its first hunt – and killed a deer with it!

    For over 40 years I never missed standing in a tree opening day.  From going home for the weekend while in college, even missing football games at UGA to hunt, to being out there in pouring rain, I was there.

    Deer season has a longer and more storied past up north.  Deer populations in states like Michigan and Maine never got decimated to the point they did in the south, so kids grew up hunting them.  And season in some of those states lasts only one week, so it is more intense.  Some rural schools even close for the week because all the kids would skip school to go hunting.

    When I moved to Griffin in 1972 I had some trouble finding a place to hunt so I often went back home and hunted my old areas around Clarks Hill where I killed my first two deer in 1968.  I killed a couple more bucks and does there.  Then Jim Goss took me with him to the places he hunted for a few years, and Bob Pierce took me as his guest to his hunting club some.

In 1982 I joined Bob’s “Big Horn” hunting club, a club formed by a group of doctors back in the 1950s. It was a great club for me, only 30 minutes from my house and I loved the traditions.

Every year we had “camp” the first week of November, starting on Friday night with a big steak dinner that often had 100 invited guests eating in the woods.  Then we camped in the woods to the next Wednesday, hunting, eating delicious food and sitting around the big fire that never went out snacking on boiled peanuts.

I saw many kids of members grow from young’uns too small to sit in a tree to adults bringing their own kids to camp.  It is a fantastic way to learn about life.

I hope all kids have the opportunity to go hunting, maybe in a deer camp, and continue the traditions. 

Till next time – Gone fishing!

Small Game Hunting In Winter and a Club Tournament

 The stark bare gray limbs of hardwoods right now offer the best of times and the worst of times for squirrel hunting.  Tree rats are easy to spot a long way off, but they can see you the same distance, too.  It is easier to find them but harder to get close enough for a shot.

    The population is lower than at the start of season back in August. Human hunters and natural predators have taken some of the squirrels that survived last winter.  But both have killed many more of the dumb young ones born during the spring and summer.  They are much easier targets.

    Still hunting is tougher this time of year.  Squirrels aren’t coming to an oak or hickory that is full of nuts to feed.  They are scrounging around, looking for nuts they buried earlier when they were falling, and looking for anything else edible in the winter woods.  You can’t sit under a good tree waiting on them to come to you.

    After a rain you can find them eating mushrooms in pine thickets, but that food is scattered, like everything else.  And the green needles on pines make it hard to spot a squirrel when they scurry up a tree and hide from you.

    Creeping up on a feeding squirrel is possible, but deer hunters would be impressed with the abilities of a squirrel to spot you and flee.  Any movement in their world draws instant attention and they will either flatten against a limb or tree trunk, making them very hard to see, or head for a hollow tree where they are totally protected.

One of the best tactics for me was to take off running through the woods when I spotted a squirrel in a bare tree. That usually made them freeze in place, trying to hide rather than running to a hollow.  With no leaves on the tree I could usually find the hiding critter.

A little breeze helped in several ways.  It would move bushes and limbs enough to confuse squirrels’ senses, making it easier to creep up on them. But when searching for them up in a tree a little breeze would often fluff their tail a little and the hair moving or sticking out from the tree trunk would make them easier to find.

Another trick was to scan for their ears sticking up.  Not much natural up in a tree looks like squirrel ears.  It helped that I had a good scope on my .22 to scan limbs and trunks, looking for any telltale sign.  I always carried it rather than my .410 in the winter, expecting to get shots at squirrels sitting still rather than running through the limbs when the .410 helped.

I also learned to throw a stick to the far side of a tree where a squirrel hid.  The noise and movement of it hitting a bush would make the bushy tail move to my side of the tree.  I could see him from the movement, and could usually get a good shot.

Every squirrel killed when I was growing up was eaten. I was pretty good as skinning and gutting them and mama could cook up fried squirrel with gravy, squirrel and dumplings, BBQed squirrel and squirrel stew that was delicious.  The younger squirrels were best for frying, but even tough old boar squirrels were good and tender when cooked right.

This is a great time to take a kid out and teach them gun safety and hunting skills.  Deer season is over and the woods are quiet and bare, offering fun and good food!

—

Last Sunday 12 members and one guest of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our January tournament at Jackson.  After eight hours of trying, we brought 31 bass longer than 12 inches to the scales.  Only four of them were largemouth. There was one five fish limit and no one zeroed.

Wayne Teal won with the only limit and it weighed 7.72 pounds.  Second was Zane Fleck with four weighing 5.72 pounds, Billy Roberts placed third with four weighing 4.98 and Niles Murray had four weighing 4.83 pounds for fourth.  Randall Sharpton’s 3.21 pound largemouth was big fish.

I should have gone squirrel hunting!  I guess I used up all my luck at Sinclair, it was one of those days when everything was just wrong for me.  I fished hard but ended up with one keeper largemouth weighing a whopping 1.27 pounds for tenth place.

Glenn Anderson fished with me and caught a keeper spot on a crankbait the first place we stopped.  After fishing two or three more spots, I got a bite on a shaky head worm. The fish swam toward the boat and when I set the hook I pulled a keeper largemouth to the top and watched it come off the hook.

The next place we stopped I got five bites, four on a shaky head worm and one on a jig, in five casts and missed all five!  Then Glenn threw a drop shot worm to the rocks where I got the bites and landed his second keeper.

Soon after Glenn landed his third keeper, I felt a fish pick up my shaky head in a brush pile but felt the thump of it spitting out the worm just as I set the hook.  I missed several more bites during the day, finally catching my keeper with an hour left to fish. I was in such a hurry to get it in the boat I hit Glenn in the face with it as he grabbed the net!

To add insult to injury, there was a Robby’s tournament out of Berry’s Boat House the same day. It took five bass weighing 17 or 18 pounds to win it!

When I hear results like that the same day I struggle to catch a keeper, I wonder why I even bother fishing.

Till next time – Gone fishing!

February Is A Good Time for Small Game Hunting, and A January Club Tournament

I hope everyone had a good deer season and got to shoot what they wanted, either a trophy for the wall or a freezer full of meat.  Or both!! But now that it is over, it is time to turn to small game.  Many of us older folks grew up hunting squirrels, rabbits and game birds, and there is about six weeks left to hunt them.

    Learning to hunt squirrels and rabbits is great training for hunting big game.  You learn to read signs, be patient, acquire shooting skills and identify food sources that will help when hunting deer, turkey or anything else.

    This time of year is both a challenge and a blessing.  With leaves off the trees, you can spot a tree rat a long way off as it scurries from limb to limb. But they can see you just as far away and hide before you get near. And if you jump a rabbit you can get a decent shot.

    There is no food in the trees, either.  So you won’t be able to sneak up on a trembling limb where a squirrel is busy cutting pine cones or acorns and not paying enough attention for predators like you.  When they are feeding in the trees you can often get in close for an easy shot. Not with bare trees!

    Squirrels feed on the ground this time of year. When they see movement, they will run up a tree to a hidey hole and you may never see them again.  But sometimes they just flatten against the tree on the opposite side, so you can throw a stick to that side and make them move around for a shot.

    When food sources like oak trees dropping acorns are available, you can set up near one and let the squirrels come to you.  Not gonna happen after Christmas.  Now you have to still hunt, easing through the woods alert to seeing or hearing a squirrel before is hears or sees you.

    That kind of hunting will help you still hunt for deer but multiply the squirrels ability to spot you before you spot them by about a thousand times for a deer.  But it is fun, keeps you warmer than sitting still, and can be very productive.

    My good friend AT had a pack of rabbit beagles, and we ran rabbits almost every Saturday after deer season when I was in high school. Deer season was limited to the month of November and one week at Christmas back then, so we stated letting the dogs out in early December.

    I loved listening to the dogs run and figuring out where the bunny would circle back ahead of them so I could be in position for a shot.  Rabbit hunting with dogs is easy compared to without them.

    I killed my first rabbit while squirrel hunting with my .410. As I eased along a field line looking for activity in the trees, I jumped a cottontail and hit it as it bounced away.  I think daddy and mama were as proud as I was that day!

    Once after a light snow AT didn’t want to let his dogs out, so we hunted without them.  We went to a farm where the owner had cut timber a year before, so there were brush piles all over the place between his fields. We would go up to a pile and one of us would get in position while the other climbed into the brush, shaking the pile to spook the rabbit.

That’s what my friend and fellow writer Daryl Gay calls “Rabbit Stomping,” the name of one of his humorous books.

Dove season was over by Christmas, but we still hunted quail some.  Most of our quail hunting was earlier in the year, though. Daddy often said he did not like to put too much pressure on the coveys we hunted, they had a tough time just surviving in the winter without being pushed, scattered and harassed by us.

I miss those hunting days but nowadays I prefer spending time in my bass boat in the winter!

——

Last Sunday eight members of the Flint River Bass

Club fished our January tournament at Jackson Lake. After casting from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM, we brought 23 keeper bass weighing about 26 pounds to the scales. There were three five-bass limits and one fisherman did not have a keeper.

Alex Gober won it all with five weighing 7.35 pounds and had a 1.80 pounder for big fish.  Niles Murray came in second with five at 5.52 pounds and
Doug Acree was third with five weighing 4.34. Lee Hancock came in fourth with two weighing 2.50 pounds, beating my two at 2.48 pounds by .02 pounds!

    It was a tough day. Niles said he caught his five in about an hour.  This time of year there is often a “bite window,” a short time when if you are in the right place at the right time you can catch fish.

New member Will McLean fished with me and we fished hard.  But at 2:46 with five minutes left to fish I had gotten only one bite, a four-inch crappie that hit a spoon.  I found fish in many places, some of them set up under baitfish and looked like perfect places to catch one. But it did not happen for either of us.

As time ran out Will and I were working around a rocky point. I told him I would make a couple of casts across the downstream side of the point then we had to go in, even without anything to weigh.

On three casts I landed two keepers and lost one at the boat on a DT 10 crankbait. On my Panoptix I could see baitfish all over the end of the point with fish moving around under them, like in a few other places, but thew were feeding better.

I wish I could have made a few more casts but we pulled up at the ramp two minutes before being late!

Deer Camp Memories

     As I threw another log on the fire, my mind wandered over the past 40 years of deer camp here.  When I first joined, the “old” men mostly stayed in camp and didn’t hunt much.  For several years “Captain” was the old man in charge of the fire.  Now it is my “old man” job and I don’t leave camp much.

    After spending almost half my life in the club, memories are plentiful. Hundreds of nights sitting around the fire, eating parched or boiled peanuts and sharing stores, some of them mostly true, revive past experiences. And the same ones are told over and over, drawing amazed reactions from young members and smiles from us older ones.

    And we celebrate and morn lost members. Many of the young members fathers I watched grow up and become men over the years.  They pass on their traditions to their children, just as their fathers passed them on to them. The never-ending cycle of outdoor and hunting life.

    Many of the stories are funny and draw laughs every year.  Tales of cut shirt tails, stories of first blood, memories of members walking to their stand in a circle in the dark and ending back up at camp, all bring chuckles.

    One of mine is finding the perfect place for my climbing stand, easing up the tree in the dark then staring another club member in the eyes in a tree only 30 feet away.  Or the time I helped build a permanent stand with a friend, only to have him not be able to hunt it opening day. He doesn’t laugh much when I mention the big nine point I killed from that stand on opening day, but everybody else does.

    Four wheelers stuck in the creek are both funny and scary.  Turning a four-wheeler upside down on top of you in a creek is not funny until after you are safe.  It is funny now to remember the work of the six of us laboring for hours to get it out, but at the time it was only exhausting.

    Some of the scariest stories are the one or two about stands breaking and tumbling members to the ground. Fortunately, none ended up with serious injuries, just injured pride.

    Many of my memories revolve around a stand I have hunted for more than 30 years.  It is a simple stand, 2x4s nailed between two sweetgum trees about 24 inches apart 20 feet off the ground with a 16-inch piece of plywood nailed on top of them.  Spikes driven into the trees 30 years ago are sticking out barely enough for a boot hold now.

    The stand has been sweetened over the years. A small shelf is placed in the perfect position to hold my coffee cup.  Sticks cross the area above my head, placed just right for a black plastic bag to stretch over and protect me from rain.  And a nail holds my hanging rifle in position to raise it without excess movement.

    I found the place for the stand by accident.  I found a creek hillside that seemed to be perfect for a stand, near the very end of one of our roads.  I loaded materials to build it in the truck then headed to the end of the road.

    Before toting everything through the woods, I remembered hunting too close to the other club member so I walked around a little. Sure enough, there was another stand, hidden in an oak tree, looking over the same hillside.

    I went back to the truck disappointed and started driving slowly back out, watching the ground on either side of the road carefully.  When I spotted a trail crossing it, I stopped and followed the trail though some pines to where they stopped at the edge of hardwoods.  There was a slight opening along the edge from an old logging road.

    Careful inspection proved there were no other stands for at least 200 yards in any direction.  I built the stand with help from a fellow club member.  The first morning I hunted it I was shocked how close it was to Highway 18.  The bends in the road fooled me.  I could glimpse 18 wheelers traveling along the road, and their tire noise often make it hard to hear.

    Even with the noise problem I have killed more than 40 deer from that stand.

    Some of those kills I was very proud of, some not so much.  One day I glimpsed a deer facing me about 50 yards away at the very end of the old logging road.  Young pines hid part of it but I could clearly see its head and chest since it was facing me. I shot it with my 30-30 in the chest and it dropped.

    When I got to it, I was shocked how small it was.  Although it was doe day and I was hunting meat, I wanted a bigger deer since the limit was two a year back then. I was able to pick up the 40-pound yearling by its back legs and carry it over my shoulder, not drag it out.

    I quickly gutted and skinned it and took it home, since I did not want to take it back to camp and get kidded about its size. I quartered that deer, cut its backbone in half and froze it.  Each piece fit in a big crockpot!  But it was some of the most tender venison I have ever eaten!

    I was very proud of a big ten point I shot from that stand, but I really didn’t put any effort into finding it, it just happened to wander by me.  It fell near the camp road and I drove to it. As I drug it to the truck and started loading it, another member stopped on his way out of the woods and helped load it.

    He gave me a sour look and said “I have been hunting that deer all week!”

    Don’t miss a chance to make memories in a deer camp.

Till next time – Gone fishing!

Opening Day Of Squirrel Season Memories

    I missed the opening day of squirrel season bck in August.  That would never have happened when I was growing up. Opening day was almost as good to me as Christmas and the last day of school each year!

    Back then opening day was much later, usually in early October, if I remember right.  I could not wait for it to open, always on a Saturday back then. I would be up before daylight and sitting under my favorite white oak tree as it slowly got light enough to see.

    I usually carried the Remington .22 semiautomatic rifle I got for by 12th birthday and had its “high capacity” 17 round magazine full of long rifle bullets.  I prided myself on marksmanship, being able to hit a squirrel in the chest just right to not mess up any meat.

Some of my friends shot squirrels in the head, but even though I was a good shot, I knew a miss just 2 inches the wrong way would blow its jaw off, sentencing it to a slow painful death. And I would not get to eat it if I made a bad shot, so I stuck with the high percentage chest.

Later in the season when leaves were off the trees I carried my .410 shotgun. With no leaves, I could see the tree rats better and often run to them to “tree” them, but the squirrels could see me better, too. And they often would not stay treed but would run, so I wanted my shotgun to have a better chance of hitting a moving target.

We ate every tree rat I killed. Mama would cook them in a variety of ways, from country frying young ones to making squirrel stew or squirrel dumplings with older ones.  And BBQ squirrel was always good.

With the way things are going, I am glad there are lots of squirrels around my house and I know how to kill, clean and cook them!

Kids now-a-days miss out by not going squirrel hunting.  Deer hunting is exciting, but so is squirrel hunting and you can kill 12 each day, so you get a lot more shooting.  And you learn hunting and shooting skills, as well as safety, chasing them.

Take a kid squirrel hunting. You may be surprised how much fun it is for both of you.

Hunting vs Shooting

From 2018   

It is now legal to shoot deer over bait in our area.  This change from last season came because of pressure from people wanting to kill deer easier.  In meetings around the state, a fairly high majority of those attending wanted the change.  The legislature sets hunting laws but could not come to a decision, so the governor passed the decision on to the DNR.

    To make shooting deer over bait legal, the DNR changed the rules, not the law. They simply shrank the Northern Zone, where baiting is still illegal, to include only some federal lands in the area, where baiting was always illegal.  Almost all of Georgia is now considered the “Southern” Zone, where baiting has been legal for several years.

    I very intentionally said it is legal to shoot deer, not hunt them, over bait. Drawing animals and birds to you to shoot them is not hunting.  That is why we go quail hunting but to a dove shoot.  You look for quail in their habitat. You draw doves to a field to shoot them.

    There are good and bad things about shooting over bait. For young hunters, especially those seeking their first deer, they are much more likely to be successful over bait. That is also true of some of us older folks as well as those with other handicaps that keep us from really hunting.  But it does not teach hunting skills and the pride in working to take your quarry.

    Deer tend to browse while feeding, moving a lot as they seek natural food sources.  Even with food plots they will walk through them, pausing to eat but not staying in the same place for very long.  But a pile of corn makes them come to the exact same place every day and spent more time in a very small area.

    This concentration tends to make diseases spread among the deer.  And it also makes it easier to predators other than us to pattern and kill them.  There are many pictures from trail cameras set up around feeders showing coyotes and bobcats hanging around feeders, waiting on an easy meal to come to them.

    To me there is no difference between putting out a corn feeder to attract deer to you and planting a food plot to do the same, except for the amount of work involved.  Food plots have always been legal, and they do have the benefit of providing food for deer year-round, not just during hunting season.

    I try to stay legal although I do not consider myself a deer hunter. I simply want to harvest two or three deer, preferably does, each year for the freezer. I’m a meat harvester. When younger I did thrill in looking for bucks in their natural habitat, figuring out their movements and patterns, and placing a stand in exactly the right place to get a shot at a buck.

    I am proud of the first buck I killed 50 years ago this fall, a small eight pointer. I went out on public land, found signs and figured out where to put my stand, all on my own.  It was tougher back then with fewer deer and fewer open days to hunt. I have killed much bigger bucks since then around my food plots but there is no pride in taking them.

      I found out a few years ago how effective baiting is.  I have 75 acres I hunt on in Spalding County. I plant a small field with wheat, clover and winter peas each year hoping to make it easier for me to get my meat. I have also planted crab apple trees and fertilized persimmon trees.  For years I was successful.

    About four years ago I stopped seeing deer in my food plots.  They had changed their movement patterns. I was told a neighbor with less than ten acres of land had put a corn feeder and I found it. His stand was on his side of a gulley between his land and mine, but his feeder was actually on my property.

    Deer had changed their routes, going by the corn in preference to coming by my field.  I found lots of signs around the corn and trails that led to it from bedding areas, then to other areas that bypassed my field.  That was frustrating.

    Since baiting is now legal, I will put out a couple of corn feeders. I will continue to plant food plots if for no other reason than to have food available year-round for them and keep them healthier. And I will move my feeders every few months, so the deer will not stay in one small area all the time and help spread disease.  And moving them will confuse other predators, at least a little.

    Baiting is not a bad thing for some animals. Wild hogs are not game animals, they are a serious problem for farmers and the environment.  So, putting out bait and shooting or trapping as many of them as you can is a good thing.

    Baiting bears in some states has been legal a long time, but not in north Georgia.  Bait gets bears to come to where the waiting person can shoot them. In some areas it is almost impossible to actually hunt bears due to their inconsistent movement and impenetrable habitat. Still, it is bear shooting, not hunting.

    Are you a hunter or a harvester?  You can be both, but not on the same property unless it is huge.  Putting out food for deer and shooting deer over it but hunting for a quality buck is possible, but if your bait changes the bucks habits you are not really going after him on his own natural habitat. Since bait will attract deer for an area covering at least a square mile, you really need two different places to separate the two.

    What will you be this year?

Till next time – Gone fishing!

Hunting Memories – Good and Bad

I have lots of great hunting memories, some fun, some scary and many just happy.

Sometimes I shot odd things while hunting. One year Harold and I were easing along Dearing Branch headed to some oaks to set up for squirrels. Something ahead of us on a low limb caught our attention.  It was big and brown and since both of us had .410s, so we planned to shoot it together.

Somehow I misunderstood Harold when he said shoot, and I did, alone. But the great horned owl fell. I have no idea why it was active during the day; it should have been roosted high in a big tree and hidden from us. It was huge, much bigger than I ever imagined. It is the only owl I ever shot and somewhat regret killing it, but that was 60 years ago!

The first year Linda and I were married she taught school while I finished my senior year at UGA.  Money was tight and we ate anything I could kill, just like my family did growing up.  Squirrels and rabbits were the main meat de jour.

One afternoon I saw a ball of fur up in a bare oak tree. If the leaves had been on the trees I would never have seen it. But with my scope I could tell it was a big raccoon.

I shot it, the first one I ever killed, and took it back to our trailer in town and cleaned it.  I contacted the cook at my fraternity house and he told me to boil it for three hours then cover it with BBQ sauce and bake it. 

I thought it was good but Linda not so much.  Tasted like BBQ chicken thighs to me!

Years later I shot a beaver on my pond and just had to cook it.  A Google search turned up a recipe for Mississippi Baked Beaver, a legitimate recipe.  It involved boiling, sautéing and then braising it.  It was the reddest meat I have ever seen, and the beaver was almost impossible to skin. I had to cut every inch of hide between meat and skin, there was no stripping it off.

Again, I thought it tasted pretty good but Linda did not like it. It was not delicious enough for me to clean another one, though.

A few years ago on-line I told the tale of shooting a killdeer (we always called them killdees) because ai wanted to see exactly what it looked like.  They were common in our field but very spooky and I could never get near them.  A few times shooting doves one would fly near my blind, but I definitely did not want to explain to the others on the field that I knew it was a kildeer not a dove if I took a shot.

I did sneak up on one and hit it with my .22, finally getting a good look at its brown and white feathers with golden highlights. It was very pretty and I never wanted to shoot another one.

When I told this on-line, a troll in the group threatened to sent the federal wildlife folks to arrest me since killdeers are federally protected birds. I jerked the jerk around a little on-line – everyone in the group made fun of him he was so out of it – and he got madder and madder, making all kinds of threats.

When I pointed out I had said up-front I had shot the bird when I was 12 years old and that was in 1962, long before the law protecting them went into effect in 1976, he shut up and disappeared from the group for as few days.

I did not cook the killdeer but I did cook many other birds I shot as a kid.  They all tasted just like the doves we shot.  Robins, bluejays, sparrows and blackbirds all tasted about the same roasted over an open fire in the woods or in my rock fort.  And all were very tough, from my method of cooking or their age.

The only two birds I would not shoot were cardinals and bluebirds. They were off-limits, just too pretty to shoot.  But stalking all others and getting close enough to kill them with my BB gun or .22 helped me learn a lot about hunting and shooting that was useful later in life.