Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Stone Sheep Hunt


By: Steve Cegielski, Operation Manager
Josh Meissner, my brother-in-law’s father, Jerry Meissner, experienced an awesome adventure this fall in British Columbia. He chased Stone Sheep in the mountains for a week. I received the following email from my brother-in-law describing the hunt. Take a look at that picture, that’s where I want to be some day.

Hi Steve

It was a horseback hunt with a lot more hiking and steep grueling mountains than he has ever been on before. He was glad the hunt ended on day 7, as he said his body had about enough. Elevation wasn't that high, maybe 6000 or so. Basically, flew to base camp, rode out (on
horseback) 3 hours to spike camp and hunted from there. They had chased this ram for 3 days, having bad luck the first two times - 1st time fog rolled in as they had closed the distance, and 2nd time a alone caribou went up the mountain right at the sheep and scared them off. 3rd time was a charm as they were heading up the drainage they had seen him in the night before.
They were only a half mile from where they left the horses when they stopped to shed some clothes. Just picked up their packs when Jerry spotted two rams coming right down the mountain at them, and it was him! A quick drop to the ground to get pack situated for a rest on an uphill shot was all it took. 160 yards seemed like 460 when the adrenalin's pumping and body is shaking, but two good hits put him down.

Josh, thanks for sending the story and pictures, always looking for a unique hunt opportunity in Canada to dream about.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The Wylie Coyote

By Norm McCreight, show spokesperson - When I was a kid my favorite cartoon was the Roadrunner, that Wylie coyote was the epitome of a born looser. In those days a cartoon wasn't a cartoon unless it had at less three sticks of dynamite in it, there was no I love you, you love me. The coyote wasn't stupid, he just had bad luck. I may have liked watching coyotes then, but I sure hate them now.
This has got to be one of the worst years yet for those predators. Nature always take care of itself, this is something I always believed in. A good example of that is when they stopped the spring bear hunt on Ontario. Without that spring harvest some areas showed great increases in the population of the bear. As time went on the birth rate of the black bear slowed down to manageable sizes.
For some reason the coyote as well as wolf has grown to problem levels. Everybody that I have talked to has reported high levels of these two predators. When I was muzzle loading in southern Manitoba this October where we usually see at lease a 100 deer in our hunting area we saw none. they pretty well went nocturnal.
In remote areas where there is just forest or bush, packs of wolves have been sited chasing the deer. I know wolves go thru cycles but coyotes are managed thru nature a lot of time by contracting mange, a disease that can quickly make the coyote drop in numbers.
When in doubt back out. That is an expression that most hunters are familiar with specially when bow hunting and your shot is off the mark. Unfortunately an arrow may veer off coarse for reasons unknown and may hit the animal too far back, a killing shot, say to the liver, but it takes a little more time.
So instead of going after the animal an hour or so after the shot, the hunter will wait till morning to retrieve his animal. You don't want to keep pushing him further in the bush if you don't have to. Well one of my friends had this happen to him while hunting, the right thing to do was to back out till morning. Unfortunately when he pick up the trail of his deer it led to one remaining hoof, the wolves got to it at night and devoured it.
A friend of my buddy John shot a deer, a good shot at that, waited two hours to be sure, found his deer eaten by coyotes in that short space of time. so what do you do? Well the first thing you do is make sure you have two, not one, two good flashlights and extra batteries with you. Wait 45 minutes then go after the animal. Caution here is the key when walking thru the bush, at night it is dangerous. I can't emphasize that point enough!
When buying your flashlight don't get taken in by the brightness of the flashlight, I'd rather have a good light that last long then a super bright light that works for half an hour. I like using two six volt lantern type flashlights with a spare battery in my pack and a LED head lamp. Two years ago I bought a million powered light it lasted about half an hour it was a piece of.... junk, I'm being nice here.
In normal conditions always back out when in doubt but for this year and maybe next be prepared to adjust to the predator conditions.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Traveling Moose


By: All-Canada Show, Operations Manager Steve Cegielski
December at the All-Canada Show warehouse means preparing all the equipment for our travels across the Midwest US is near. Our Locked at Lac Seul display of two trophy bull moose is ready to go for another year.

The moose display made its debut at the 2005 All-Canada Show, and has been on tour ever since. To my best guess the moose have traveled over 30,000 miles crisscrossing the country.

Thousands of show quests have had the priviledge of admiring the amazing mount, but only a few have seen the transport method used to safely transport the 4,000lb mount.

The moose are securely mounted to the base using 1 inch threaded rod running down each leg. The base is created of 2” X 3” steel tubing, which has 4” V-groove steel wheels mounted every 24” of the 24 foot long base. The V-grove steel wheels ride on 1 ½” angle iron flipped upside down to create an upside down V. To ensure vibration didn’t wreck the mount I used anti-vibration pads to connect the track to the trailer floor.

The Locked a Lac Seul display is slowly pulled out of trailer on the track….as the display comes out a series of 4 wheels on each side drop down to create a trailer floor height position. If trailer is positioned on level ground the complete moose display can be removed from trailer by one person.

During travel the base is bolted to track to prevent jumping off track. Anti sway bracing on the rear quarters of each moose keeps the mount from twisting and flexing. Direct straping of the antlers to each side of the trailer helps ensure no movement of the mount. So far so good, looks like many more years to admire the magnificent mount.

Come check out Locked at Lac Seul for yourself, check out website http://www.allcanada.com/ for a show location and dates nearest you.