Charlie Elk

pseudonym of a man

  • News
  • Think Pieces / Opinion
  • Turkey Hunting
    • Fall Turkey
    • Spring Turkey
    • turkey hunting tips
    • Stories
  • Humor
  • Deer Hunting
  • Willow Ridge Custom Turkey Calls

When the Deer Season Ends

January 20, 2019 by Charlie 6 Comments

Pig trapping by First Bubba

The days in the box blind on Red River were relatively sparse but productive; a doe in “Primitive Arms” season and a pretty nice buck in “Deer Gun” season.

Sunrise on Red River

Thankfully, the trail cam did not reveal any feral hogs in the food plot, until deer season was over. Then here they came!  EGADS! Big ones, little ones, ugly ones, scary ones! One huge male is black and white mottled with the pronounced humpback, long snout and back mane announcing his decidedly Russian boar heritage. A smaller boar is jet black and another one red both with distinctive Russian traits.

While the landowner gave us his blessing to remove all we can from the farm, we have no interest in the bigger ones other than adding them to the “feral swine genocide” numbers. The landowner loaned us his trap. Our interest is the 15 odd piglets in the sounder weighing 20 to 30 pounds on the hoof. Tender, juicy and dress out just right to be grilled whole.

Saturday was gorgeous for Oklahoma in January, not a cloud in the sky, light breeze with temps in the high 60’s. Snow and rain forecast for Monday and Tuesday which left the ground soft but not bottomless. Chuck brought his small tractor, and we head out to move the trap to the food plot.

My Dodge 3500 can’t make it up the hill! Too slick!

Chuck’s Dodge 2500 4WD can’t get the tractor and trailer out of the low spot.

The little John Deere 3038E 4WD saves the day.

We get Chuck’s pickup, and trailer snaked onto higher ground and checked out the trap.

Pig Trap

Mac has hay stored in a “trap.” A fenced off area that keeps it relatively safe from his livestock…but not from the feral hogs! We found five different trails the pigs use to get into the trap to root in the rotted hay at the bottom of the big round bales.

Pig Scat

There were piles of hog scat that would make an elephant proud and tracks of all sizes!

We decided that the trap didn’t need to be moved; simply baited and set.

Trapping hogs is not a difficult endeavor. After building your trap, lock the trap door open, bait it and sit back for a few days. Once they get accustomed to the trap, rebait it, set the door, trigger, and wait.

The trash can atop the trap is a feeder that will help keep the trap baited and the hogs interested until the trigger and door can be set.

On Monday, the trap is re-baited. Wednesday, the bait is refreshed.

Friday, the bait will be refreshed again, however, THIS time, the door will be unlocked and the trigger set.

Saturday morning, “hopefully.” a trap full of piglets will be our reward!

After the Wednesday “re-bait,” I pulled the SD card from the trail cam to check for activity. There is no doubt the pigs have cleaned out the trap. The SD card contains no less than 1000 photos of pigs and a few shots of Mac’s market calves! The big ugly mottled boar from the food plot shows up.

Friday starts not with sunshine, but with raindrops, clouds, and wind. The hay and the trap are swamps! The rubber boots are heavy on my feet and I feel off balance. With a sigh of relief, I get to the trap, get it baited and the trigger set.

The trick now is, get back to the truck “without” falling into the muck and get the truck off this two-lane mud track and back on the pavement.

WHEW! We made it! I have one little track of mud on my right knee, but I’m still clean enough for our social function. LOL!

The weatherman says this rain will taper off tonight and tomorrow (Saturday) will be cooler and windy but clearing and dry. However, the weatherman spoke with forked tongue.

Chuck has invited me to a “Men’s Breakfast” at his church.

Rising when the coffee pot starts bubbling at 6 AM, raindrops on the tin roof and wind whistling around the house corners assaults my ears. It is so wet, getting out of my yard was questionable, but I persevered and made it to the highway in the pouring rain.

Chuck and I talk at breakfast. As nasty as the weather is, we still have to check the trap. I despise feral hogs, but I won’t let them languish in a trap. Despite how I feel, they ARE God’s creatures.

We get to the river about 10:15 AM.

The roads and hay trap are rivers of livestock muck and slimy Oklahoma red clay mud.

It HAS eventually quit raining, but a 20 mph north wind slices to the bone. Before unloading the tractor, we tentatively peek over the hill:

AHA. Pigs in the trap!

It takes a second once we approach the trap to figure out that there are two adult sows and four piglets of about 30 pounds each! Just what we were looking to trap.

Piglets

The little ones will fit on my grill whole and will cook up awesomely (if that’s a word!) tender.

Completely dressed out, they weigh 12 and 15 pounds. PERFECT!

I’m gathering the smoking wood in my mind now!

Filed Under: News, Trapping

Wisconsin Hunting and Trapping Forecast

September 5, 2016 by Charlie 4 Comments

Wisconsin DNR’s annual Wisconsin Hunting and Trapping Forecast is published and available.  

The downloadable PDF is here:

2016 Wisconsin Hunting and Trapping Forecast

Download Wisconsin 2016 Hunting & Trapping Forecast

Some of the highlights inside include

Find a place to hunt in Wisconsin

Pocket Ranger App has been downloaded 210,000 times for Apple and Android phones.

  • Places to hunt
  • Deer registration locations
  • Rules and regulations
  • License and permit information
  • Safety communication tool
  • Advanced GPS mapping features
  • Trophy Case, join a community of anglers and hunters
  • News and alert feature.

Public Access Lands (PAL) Atlas

Finding Open Lands – A mapping tool shows the approximate location of all MFL–Open and FCL lands in Wisconsin – here, you’ll find landowner info, acreage, and enrollment information.

Voluntary Public Access VPA and Habitat Incentive Programs HIP

Provides financial incentives to private landowners who open their property to public hunting, fishing, trapping and wildlife observation and improve wildlife habitat.

FFlight the Fields and Forest Lands Interactive Gamebird Hunting Tool

Features available within the program will help hunters locate DNR public parking areas, overlay township descriptions, and provide access to maps and aerial photos of prospective hunting areas.

Deer District Forecasts

  • West Central
  • Northern
  • Northeast
  • Southern

Migratory Game Birds

  • Ducks
  • 2016 Changes
  • Canada Geese
  • Mourning Doves
  • Woodcock

Upland Game

  • Wild Turkey
  • Pheasant
  • Ruffed Grouse
  • Sharp-tailed Grouse
  • Bobwhite Quail
  • Rabbits & Hares
  • Gray & Fox Squirrels

Furbearers

  • Raccoon
  • Coyotes
  • Gray and Red Fox
  • Beaver
  • River Otter, Muskrat, and Mink
  • Fisher
  • Bobcat

Black Bear Forecast

  • Northeast District
  • Northern District
  • West Central District

The folks at WDNR did an excellent job producing a thorough overview of the upcoming 2016 fall hunting and trapping seasons. I highly recommend you download this document; there is lots of useful information.  You will not be disappointed.  Good hunting.

Filed Under: Deer Hunting, News, Trapping, Turkey Hunting, Upland Birds Tagged With: deer, Fall turkey, news, Turkey Hunting, Wisconsin deer, Wisconsin Grouse, Wisconsin Turkey Hunting

Your Secret Hunting Location and Metadata

June 21, 2013 by Charlie Leave a Comment

Metadata may lead another hunter to your most favored haunts.

Metadata may lead another hunter to your most favored haunts.

So you thought you’d done a good job keeping your prime hunting spots top secret even from most of your closest buddies. Heck, season after season you’ve bagged a trophy so what’s there to worry about now? Except then on occasion, you see another truck parked around “your” area, then another and another. What’s going on? A random hunter invasion or something else?

Well if you took pictures near the kill site, texted or made a phone call. Oops, you’ve marked the location of your honey hole with metadata.

Metadata is information that includes GPS coordinates, information about communications you send and receive, the type of device used, email subject lines, search terms and the websites you visit. It exposes your reading and viewing habits. If you carry your cell phone to a gun range- Don’t worry about any of the firearm databases; you have just disclosed to anyone in the world who understands metadata that you are probably a gun owner. As a matter of fact, if someone cares to track you, metadata can construct a map of your daily movements.

Analyzing metadata requires specialized computer skills right?

Not really, all you need is a computer program with the right algorithms; Google has apps for that which are available for free.   Digital pictures contain the GPS coordinates of where and when they were taken, so do text messages and emails.  You won’t find GPS coordinates listed as such because they are contained in the code, so you need to run a program to sort them out.  With this program you can check out all the vanity pictures posted online, sent by email or texted.

Very soon there will be a new easy to use deer scouting app advertised by some large hunting company that will search the trophy deer picture for its GPS coordinates. Someone somewhere is working on that app marketing right now. In the meantime with an understanding of metadata analyzing and the right Google app,  anyone can find the GPS coordinates of a picture taken with smartphones and the new digital cameras including trail cameras.

Metadata is one of the reasons why charlie does not carry a smartphone hunting, and his camera is old with no GPS capabilities.

Ways to avoid having your hunting location metadata-ed

  • Do not take a smartphone hunting
  • Take your vanity pictures in locations where you do not care about disclosure
  • Do not use your phone as a GPS rather use a GPS that broadcasts no identifying information
  • Do not text or send emails from your hunting spots

Of course, the best-looking pictures are those taken in the field shortly after the game is killed.

How to “scrub” your photo for online use:

Open the photo in one program and open another new file, use a crop box tool to select the open photo displayed on your screen. Paste it into the other empty file then rename it and save.  The only metadata it should have now is the file creation date, file type, and size.

Filed Under: Deer Hunting, News, Think Pieces / Opinion, Trapping, Turkey Hunting Tagged With: deer, hunting, news, Turkey Hunting, WI deer hunting, Wild Turkey

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No other email will be sent to you.

comments

  • Justin on Bulllet Head Stamp Gallery
  • Kathy Eldred on Beavers Eat and Store Corn
  • Toney Jacob on Hunting Deer From the Ground in Wisconsin
  • Anthony Lumbard on Bulllet Head Stamp Gallery
  • Bryan Ash on Wild Turkeys See In Color; But Will Pink Spook Them?
  • Jim Sinquefield on How to Legally Bait Wild Turkeys

Top Posts

  • How to Legally Bait Wild Turkeys
    How to Legally Bait Wild Turkeys
  • Sunrise on the Oklahoma Red River
    Sunrise on the Oklahoma Red River
  • The Rain Bird
    The Rain Bird
  • What do Wild Turkeys Eat?  Crops tell the story
    What do Wild Turkeys Eat? Crops tell the story
  • Patterning Board Surprise!
    Patterning Board Surprise!
  • After The Storm
    After The Storm
  • Best Coyote Call - - Turkey Yelps
    Best Coyote Call - - Turkey Yelps
  • The Turkey's Snood Knows
    The Turkey's Snood Knows

Recent Posts

  • Kirkland Warbler, Wild Turkey use Audio Bait
  • A Little more Frigid or Warm; What is better for Wildlife?
  • West Nile Virus detected in Wisconsin Ruffed Grouse
  • When the Deer Season Ends
  • First Bubba Chili Pucks

Recent comments

  • Justin on Bulllet Head Stamp Gallery
  • Kathy Eldred on Beavers Eat and Store Corn
  • Toney Jacob on Hunting Deer From the Ground in Wisconsin
  • Anthony Lumbard on Bulllet Head Stamp Gallery
  • Bryan Ash on Wild Turkeys See In Color; But Will Pink Spook Them?

Videos

Mosquitoes use six needles to suck our … [Read More...]

Have you ever had a whitetail deer standing real … [Read More...]

Copyright © 2023 charlie elk

 

Loading Comments...