October 23, 2018

-
I didn't have the rifles yet, but had learned about WMA's.

 Wilderness Management Area's (WMA's) are owned by the public and scattered all over the state. I was surprised to learn that there were eighteen such WMA's in Olmsted county alone, varying in size from 10 acres up to around 3,500 acres. And a mere thirty minutes from home is Whitewater State Park, with an attached WMA of over 20,000 acres!

 I dropped the kids off at school and decided to head to Whitewater and explore. The lady at the State Park visitor center directed me to the WMA headquarters a bit further up the road, and after explaining what I was there for to the supervisor, she educated me on WMA's. It was deer season, and although it was legal to use any of the WMA, I didn't want to go traipsing through some other hunter's shooting area and/or bump deer away from someone in a tree stand somewhere. She pointed me toward the Game Refuge Area, where you can't hunt deer or waterfowl, but apparently can hunt small game like squirrel and rabbit. 




 So I headed up there and spent a wonderful couple hours hiking around the woods and plains in the area.

 I didn't see any of the quarry I would potentially be hunting, but I did see lots of birds! Woodpeckers and Bluebirds stood out amongst the more common sparrows and crows.

 I climbed through the hills and found lots of deer beds. Apparently they know they can't be hunted here as well.



I hiked across prairies of tall grasses.
I found deer beds everywhere.


It was incredibly scenic and quiet and peaceful, and I could not believe that I had been living not an hour from this place for more than a decade and had never visited.

It was a beautiful day for meandering through the woods and wilds. 







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Yards

-
Image
This was the day. I could feel it when I woke up. It was going to be a warm, drizzly day. Upper 30's, maybe into the 40's. And I could feel in my bones that today would be the day I shot at a squirrel. I dropped the kids off at school and reflected on the night before. I had been catching up on transcribing my journal onto the computer. On January 4th, I had been part way up a steep hill and heard chittering that I thought might be a chipmunk. Last night, on the 6th, I had done some more research and found that it was actually a squirrel. So that day, all of those critters I had heard were squirrels. Lots of 'em. And I knew where they were. So today HAD to be the day. HAD to be. I drove up to that same spot and decided to climb all the way to the top of that big, steep hill and glass the trees for the squirrels. Imma gonna climb that hill. It doesn't look that steep from here! My pack seemed particularly heavy on this day. I got a two liter water po...
Read more

Peach and Opa

-
Image
After a quick visit down to see Dad for Thanksgiving, I was able to bring the rifles home with me. Peach is a Savage 24D series M.  Opa is a Remington Model 33 that originally sold for $5 when his family got it for him in the early 1930's. There's a picture of him somewhere holding it. I like to feel the connection to my grandfather's when I carry these. Just a little piece of family history. On the 27th of November, I took them over to the local gun shop to have them checked out by a gunsmith. He deemed them in good shape, so I used their 25 yard range to do some shooting. After a hundred rounds or so, I felt pretty comfortable with them. So on the 29th, I headed out into the woods for my first actual hunt. It was a cold day. 24 degrees, and winter had finally brought some snow to our area. I was headed for the Rock Dell WMA after dropping off the kids at school, but stumbled upon the Keller WMA on the way, and seeing nobody in the parking lot, decided to g...
Read more

The First Journal Entry

-
(My first journal entry. Perhaps some repeat material.)      Some time after being a part of a buffalo hunt in the summer of 2018, I decided to teach myself to hunt. It was, and continues to be, a hard choice, as I've spent my life caring for animals of all kinds. In the past, my perception of hunters was based on the myriad of shows where they seem to glorify the kill above all else. Where they smile over their dead "trophies" and always seem to be looking for something to hang on their wall. I've always found trophy hunting to be deplorable. I doubt my opinions of that will change much. But I understand hunting to eat. After seeing the Lakota ceremony after the buffalo kill, being a part of it, it made a huge impact on how I viewed sustenance hunting. Hunting for food. Using every part of the animal. I'm ok with that. Not celebrating death, but being thankful for the sacrifice of the animal so that my family can eat. That rang true to me. The fact is, I li...
Read more