Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

We had a really nice weekend. I'd call it a grouse hunting and small projects combo weekend.

We got the the cabin Saturday morning and we learned that the flies are in full deer camp mode. Yep, its that time of the year where you visit your cabin to find that it's been taken over by black flies, yuck. With a combo of removing screens and simply letting the flies out along with many fly strips and a dust buster we got it under control. Pam started removing storm windows for the first time in 5 years so she could clean between the storms and regular windows. I began clearing a spot on the edge of the "yard" with the tractor. Between all these separate little tasks we found time to shoot a few birds (Ruffed grouse).

Here's one Pam got on Saturday.



I had bagged 3 sharp tail grouse earlier and had them prepped for a wild rice/grouse meal. We added a pair of ruffed grouse to the meal on Saturday. This was some really good stuff. We thought for sure we'd get visitors that we could feed, but nobody came out.

(cell phone pic)



Sunday morning came and the little hunter was ready to go at sunrise. So we got dressed and headed out down the trail as planned. Joe wanted to carry the 410 shotgun. I had my doubts about that, I had a nice little youth bolt action .22 for him to carry but he wanted the shotgun. I had him shoulder it and point it. It was pretty long for him but he seemed to be able to hold it pretty well regardless.

We didn't quite make it out of the sight of the cabin and I spotted a bird, pointed it out to Joe, helped him get his little shotgun snapped shut, hammer back, and told him to shoot when ever he's ready. The bird was standing on the ground 20 yds ahead of us, I covered it with a 20 gauge and waited for Joe to shoot.

BANG! Joe shot and he hit the bird!

That was a big deal, Joe's very first game animal. Got his first grouse, at age 8.

He couldn't wait to show his mom





Joe and I continued our walk and managed to pick up one more bird. We returned to the cabin, had breakfast and then it was time to get back to work.

Pam painted the outside of the cabin door which was a burgundy/red color, she got brown paint to match the fascia. (looks way better now)



Us boys continued to work on the site we began clearing on Saturday. We figured it looked like a good spot for the sauna. Once we got the site cleared and fairly leveled we detached that 5 year old empty sauna frame from the cabin and moved it over to it's future location.



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Those that know the camp will see pretty clearly by this shot where the sauna is going.

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As I'm working on removing a joist from the cabin that belongs to the sauna frame, the boys found a grouse back in the tags behind the sauna site.

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While we were playing in the dirt, Pam was painting the kitchen in the cabin.

It's just the first coat but it helped lighten it up in there already.

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We planned for a deck out the front of the cabin, and sort of planned the layout for the sauna too.

We'll be busy with materials lists this week now, trying to figure out what we need for this deck and sauna project and seeing how much of it we can get done this fall yet.

I just love fall, fantastic weekend, can't wait till next weekend.

Actually we got 8 ruffed grouse total over the weekend, that isn't bad for the little effort we put into it.