Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: Marc St Louis on November 15, 2015, 01:55:58 pm
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I was out hunting yesterday beside a dead Beaver pond. I was sitting on a ridge about 10' above the pond which is mostly overgrown with grasses but with some open water, actually very thin ice right now. As I was sitting I heard a slight noise down below me and looked down. The noise was being made by a small Vole not much more than 2" long running across a stretch of thin ice about 6' across and every once in awhile he would break through and that was making the noise. The little bugger was making tracks and I literally saw him run across a stretch of open water in the ice that was about 8" across. It was CAYUTE
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Now this what it is all about!
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...being able to enjoy the simple parts of nature. 8) simple for us, maybe not the vole!
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Those moments when you can really empathise with an animal and get a real sense of our kinship with them are priceless. :)
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some of my most memorable hunts have been when i observed animal behavior,that is not normally witnessed.In 1 case,i passed on an animal,to keep observing and not disturb.How many have witnessed an all out Jack rabbit brawl?
It is brutal and rivals any Stud horse fight ive ever witnessed.I didnt know Jacks could make some of those sounds.LOL
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voles or lemmings have some sort of way to do that "walk on water" trick .I have seen it more than once, but never saw one try to cross too wide a creek, so I do not know how far they can stay on top like that.
I used to think that when I witnessed a owl or hawk make a kill in front of me, that I was in the right place at the right time, but once we were hunting a grassy alpine island for deer and there must have been thousands of voles on this island, as we were kicking them up out of the moss and short grass constantly . there were also about twenty or thirty hawks hunting the voles around us. The wind was pretty steady and the hawks were hunting by hovering over a spot and waiting for a vole to make a move. By the time we finished driving the island for deer, some hawks were lined up hovering only a few feet off our shoulder. sometimes we could have almost reached out to touch them. when we kicked up a vole , the hawks would swoop in to nail the it, only a few feet in front of us. A tactic I realized I had seen before, but not been aware of how I was being used.
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Good story willie
I was coming back from the hardware store last Summer and just as I was getting near our house I saw a large Vole start to cross the road ahead of me. All of a sudden he stopped in the middle of the road, turned around and started to head back the other way at high speed, that's when I noticed the Raven on the telephone pole on the other side of the road. The Raven swooped down, picked him up and landed on the field on the other side of the road for his meal
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I watched two squirrels, fighting, and it sounded and looked like a dog fight! I am talking some serious growling! Voles are neat. There was one that lived in a vacant lot, next to our house, and when I would go to put nuts out for the squirrels, it would come out of the little grass burrow, and I would toss it a nut, and it would grab it, and hurry back to it's burrow. It got quite tame. But the lot was cleared, and that was that.
Wayne
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While sitting on a ladder stand hoping for a deer a few years back, I watched a couple of cat squirrels getting frisky. Well, the boar was! The sow didn't do much.
The female was sitting on a log about 20-25 feet in front of my stand. The boar ran circles around the log until he figured out she wasn't going to run away.
He finally cuddled up behind his sweetie, quivered for a few seconds then collapsed, tumbling off the log. He lay on the ground for a few moments, jumped up, ran around behind the sow, and cuddled up close again.
He quivered a couple seconds and then fell off the log once more! After 2-3 seconds the persistent little bugger returned to his girl friend, cuddled up real close and she took off like a shot!
The poor devil just sat there as if too stunned to chase her!
:P
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Willie talks about how he was used by the raptors to "bird dog" the rodents for them, sometimes it is fun to be used, huh? I have fond memories of watching a redtail hawk perch on a a sickle bar mower off the side of the tractor I was driving to cut hay. She was a mere 5 ft away, and facing backwards where she could pick off the dazed and wounded mice in the now shortened grass. She payed less than a whisker's worth of attention to me. I got the sense this was the first time for me on that mower, but not hers!
Yeah, something nice about paying attention to everything in the field, not just what you are hunting. You paid for the ticket, enjoy the whole ride. Right?
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I have seen the deer kick the rabbits
out of the clover, Yes and with their feet.
Today I watched the squirrels attempt
to run the crows off,
They didn't. But the crows didn't get a bite
until the squirrels left.
Critters?
Zuma