What do you need to do to get ready for next year?
Get some guns ready to go. Which ones .. depends on what tags I get. Hunting public land, there are no feeders to mess with (it would be illegal to put them out here, considered baiting, and you'd lose your hunting privs for 5 years or so if caught), no hunting shack to maintain, nothing like that. Totally different hunting culture than the Southern US.
I expect it most likely that I'll draw the muzzleloader tag I put in for. It's a unit that I have hunted off and on for over 40 years. There are no roads I don't know about, no trails I don't know about, nothing new map-wise to figure out. I know it like the back of my hand. There is no real point in scouting ahead of time because the ML season hits just after the rut begins and everything we thought we learned about the deer in summer and early fall is thrown by the wayside when the rut kicks in. The bastards that stayed holed up within a 200 yard circle for 6 months vanish and reappear 5-6 miles away.
If I don't get the ML tag, then I need to work a bit more with my .308, chart out the drop at longer distance, stuff like that. The gun is fundamentally good. It shot a 1.34" 3 shot group at 320 yards last September and it gave me a 1.1" 200 yard group last weekend with a different scope. It has never moved 'cept when I adjusted the scope, not a quarter of an inch. I would like to stretch it out to 400, maybe 450, and chart how the drop tracks with the B&C crosshair so if I get some longer shooting potential (most of where I hunt is 75 yards or less but there are a couple interesting burns and I found a little water hole in one which is most intriguing early in the season) I'll be ready.
Tom
