Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Where do otters go in the winter?

The reason I mention the above is;

1) There are all kinds of deer camps and cottages north of Toronto that go unused in winter.
2)There are all kinds of trappers who have remote cabins that go unused and whose skills go unused (they would make the best guides)in years when the fur prices are low.
3)There are all kind of mom and pop fishing camps that go unused in winter.
4)All the northern animals eithger starve or get diseases like rabies when their numbers get too high.
5) If a mixed bag of Lynx,otter, fisher, marten, beaver were lumped in with wolf, fox and winter grouse where avaialable the woods would be much more interesting.

I don't mind the huff and puff sports like cross counrty skiing but after a while they get awfully dam boring. Hunting works both the body and the mind because its like detective work.

You get the exercise on skis or snowshows without even thinking about it, and you get to try to figure out what that scuff mark on a tree means, or that claw mark or that slide mark down a hill. Trapers know this already but this kind fo information is fun to learne especially if it leads to a lynx skin or a beaver skin.

A huge winter sporting resource is going to waste in eastern Canada at the moment and thousands of square miles of crown land, free for anybody to use, is sitting empty at the moment.

Why does everything have to die with you? What is your problem?

sometimes its a lot more fun to sit and watch them..
I have seen a cow elk chase a black bear up a tree when it got to close to her calf.
I have watched a blond griss sit at a berry bush and strip it.
Ihave watched many times a heard of elk in nursery mode,with as many as 20 calves 10 yearlings,600to700 feet from my house ,on my ranch.
Ihave seen many times also ,cow elk in May come out and stand in one spot for hours,3to 6,,and when she feels it is safe will go drop her calf,for the next 2to3 weeks you only or almost only see them at night feeding,

Ihave watched a sow first with twins then triplets ,take them around her territory being careful about them humans,leading them to hawthorne trees to eat the berries.


yes they all taste good but the memories of watching them lasts forever,

Right on man/ I have had many more enjoyable hours watching rather than skinning critters.

I guess you shot that grizzly in the photo on your website just to make it easier to watch -if you even did shoot it?

Hopefully you took enough time off from watching the dead bear to skin it out so the hide didn't rot.

norm99;
Thanks for sharing the cool stories and memories with us. I truly enjoyed them.

As I've written before, some of my best hunting memories didn't involve any animal ending up on my horse or in my back pack. Yes that is one reason why I head up the mountain, but not the only one.

We are blessed here in that we have mule deer as regular visitors/residents on our small acreage, so we get to see some interesting interactions.

We watched a young buck nose one of the house cats down the driveway, watched a doe teach it's fawns how to chase the cats and even watched a doe chase a fair sized racoon up a Ponderosa Pine one morning as well.

I could go on about seeeing rutting bucks chasing the does behind our horse pen and does tending to fawns on the lawn and such.

Anyway, I agree with your thoughts on the matter and enjoyed your stories.

Thanks again norm99.

Regards,
Dwayne

If we are hunters we respect, admire and enjoy wildlife.
Randy

But in the end we kill them!

I should have added that from the animal's point of view it makes not the slightes bizt of differnce if you are killing him for food, for sport or as a varmint. A bullet hole is a bullet hole.

Its important to recognize that no matter how much you trys to dance around the issue by either sticking a branch in its mouth or professing great respect that once you pull the trigger that animal is dead or wounded be you a card carrying member of green peace or a Nazi and the last thing the animal is concerned
about, or that willdo him any good, is the personal philospohy
or delusion of the guy who pulled the trigger.

Do you think the bear 378Canuck plugged is impressed because he sits in the woods and watches the little birdies. It couldn't care less nor will aynone else who knows he plugged it.

The only bears I have shot were bad bears not good bears. But you wouldn't know the difference- now would you, because you wouldn't take the time to study them. Bears that chew on worms like you mostly.

Everybody in the picture of you with the dead bear seem to be happy having enjoyed the bear hunt as I would.

Hard to believe they were on a grim mission to kill a "bad" bear.

This talk about "good " bears and "bad" bears is silly. There are no bad bears - just bears looking out for their own interests like everyone and everything else.

Your biggest problem is finding people willing to pay money for such adventures, in other words establish a market. There are a host of permits needed for otter,lynx,etc. There are guys selling trapline adventures, mainly BC and Alberta. Also, no Ontario resident will pay money for such an endeavour, your clientele would be US and Europe.

Animals don't starve or die of diseases if we don't kill them. Read some wildlife books before posting nonsense.
I don't get your line of thinking. How's this "winter resource" going to waste? Nature goes to waste if humans don't exploit it? I think you may have that backwards.

jburner. i didn't shoot any of those animals i talked about.
yes i have shot deer,moose,elk,for meat bear when i had to horses when i had to and beef to butcher,but i dont kill for trophy or wontonly..


when you have to put down [KILL] a domestic animal that has been your friend and companion,you treat life with more respect...



the exception to this ismarmots distroying grassland and damaging equipment..


when i had my ranch i left more 3,4,5,point bucks for DNA build up than i shot ,,5 meat animals in 15 years of living there.

Dear bearguide,

You are right a market has to be established but it can be done. Prior to I960 bears were vermin in Ontario and now because of the closure of the spring bear hunt are becoming vermin again - but I believe there is a market. It just has to be developed like the spring bear hunt was.

Dear Norm 99,

I respect your decision to hunt and handle animals the way you do. But I am not you. I'd love to shoot a bighorn and for the most part it would be for the trophy to stoick on the wall although I know they are very good to eat and would do so.

I once shot a few bears for their skins but did not eat them because they were full of parasites. I have eaten a few fat healthy ones in the fall.

Dear Bearguide,

Animals do die of disease and starvation if we don't kill them. I have read the animal books.

Charles Elton, the father of ecology, studied Lynx and hare population fluctuations based on the trapping records of the Hudson bay Company for 300 years. Some people call it cycles but its just that animal populations rise and fall as they run out of food starve, gets sick and die off.

Your information/observations are completely inaccurate and I say start by reading Charles Elton's books which are listed on Wikipedia. There are hunderds and hundreds more examples - rabbits and tuleramia, beaver etc etc. but just start with Elton.

I have no idea what the meaning is of your first sentence.

Death by disease and starvation has nothing to do with hunters. Lynx and Hare populations are cyclical, I'm well aware how that works. However, when the snowshoe hare numbers drop considerably, this doesn't mean the lynx disappears. It's a common predator/prey relationship.
When the lynx population is low, there are further trapping restrictions, even closures, since the added strain of trapper harvested lynx would stress the population to the point where it may not recover.

Predators will never completely wipe out a prey species. Survival of the fittest. Fewer young will survive,etc until the prey species gains strength, and the cycle is repeated.There isn't necessarily a set time frame for this to happen, but it will. Of all the mammals on the planet, only man is accomplished at exterminating a species.

Shooting bad bears is one of the perks from being the top shooter in the big calibers at the shooters club(rifle range). I have a few shooting buddies that are LEO, probably types that you would avoid.

Jointburner let me tell you of only one incident about bad bears.
There was a spinster lady who lived alone in an old run down shack, her older brother lived 5 miles away on the original homestead. The old lady phoned her brother and told him she was having a bear problem. He came over to investigate, and being an older gentlemen didn't hear the bear come up behind him, knock him down and bite him in the neck at the base of the skull. I don't need to talk about any more details. The older lady called the RCMP to come and help. They promptly came and did there best along with Fish and Wildlife to get this crafty creature which seemed to vanish whenever they arrived. So after a few days they moved the older lady to a relatives home since she had no vehicle. 2 weeks later-thinking everything would be fine she returned home. That same night the bear was trying to break down her door. She banged pots, did everything she could think of and couldn't sleep and again called for aid. Again she was moved and 2 weeks later returned. 2 nights later the bear was back. That's when I received a call from a friend. "Could you help us?" I visited with the older lady for several days and she took good care of me. Finally 3 days later the unwelcomed guess was put down. I did this service for no charge and I would do it again in a heartbeat. The newspaper article on the 3rd page mentioned a gentleman had been killed by a bear and no further details were released. Would you call this a good bear or a bad bear?

Sounds like the London Free press you got there!!!!

I'm not familiar with this paper, is that London, Ontario. This happened in Northern Alberta.