Mother Nature sure is busy this morning.. its 8 AM

Elk bugling in the back yard in the neighborhood.., went out to look at them, as they were just out of view from the angle looking out the window.
about 50 in the herd, with the bulls circling the cows from the wood line and bugling.

come back around the house to come in the front door, got 14 deer grazing in the yard, and they seemed highly inconvenienced I was out walking around...

flocks of Canadian geese over head honking I guess trying to chase the elk off their old golf course landing ground...

Deer season opens next weekend.. and per usual, I bet none of this will be anywhere in sight...

The animals know when hunting season starts before most of the hunters knows when it starts...For Dumb Animals... they are pretty darn smart..

Seafire, It's a city boy thing...first, the sporting magazines say you have to 'scout the territory', so they do, beat the roads in droves, then they got to camp close to the hunting area...really close..in it if possible. Then they got to check the rifle for zero, close to the camp which is already in the hunting area. And of course, they brought handguns for some reason, might as well shoot them too. Then a night or two before opener, they got to celebrate, this involves a bonfire the size of Mt St Helens, this involves really loud music, this may even in extreme cases involve the handguns again. Then comes the after action report on Monday, "There ain't no deer I tell ya, them old baby boomers shot em all years ago".

Bonfires, debauchery, reveling, and random,drunken night time handgun fire??

Dayum

Where all the partying ?

When I was young we hunted blacktail deer on Georgia Pacific timberland on deer opener every year. Since it was private timberland and they wanted everyone out at the end of the day they checked hunters in and out at the gate. For those not familiar GP land is was vast, we're not talking about a few hunnert acres here, we're talking hundreds of miles of roads.

As a by-product of this check-in, they tracked deer kills, both size and numbers. Opening day saw a fair number of 4x4 (mature) blacktails taken, proportionate with the smaller bucks. But by mid day Sunday, day 2, the mature bucks had it figured out and for the remainder of the season almost none of the larger bucks went through the check point, while smaller bucks continued to get killed all season long.

When people say they don't go out opening day, "too crowded", I go back to my youth remembering those cardboard stat sheets at the checkout station. You gotta be out there for the first weekend if'n you wanna catch a bruiser buck unawares.

I recently was able to access an area that had been closed for the fires for a couple months. A lack of traffic was obvious as game was out moving around peacefully. I'm convinced opening weekend and the last week are the best times by far to hunt blacktail deer.

I love it.

Bonked 4 nice chinook, and 4 native coho in the last few days. (Plus a few more released.) 2 of the silvers came from outside the jetty tips during the non-select season, got my limit of one for the year in the Nehalem system, and one more for the year in T-Bay. Wednesday and Saturday baby!!!

Chanterelles are the target today, I'm thinking.

I kinda don't like summer too much any more. Too damned hot and dry for my liking.