If you haven't given Google Earth a shot, you need to give it a try. Go to http://earth.google.com and download the free Google Earth program. You can then search for your hunting spot regardless of where it is in the world. Yes, the world!
The clarity is not the same for every area in the world, but for many you can zoom into your hunting area and see what the terrain is like. As you get more familiar with it, you can use it to rotate your perspective and see the landscape in 3D as well as rotate the view for a full 360 degree look. It really is amazing and gives you a great view of your area.
I'm currently using it to scout for an elk trip in New Mexico and I feel like I have hiked the area. The amazing part is it's free!
Mountain Hunting
When mountain hunting there is a simple item that can make a big difference in making your trip more comfortable.
Bring along a pair of broken in leather gloves. When hiking in the mountains, you are almost guaranteed to slip and scrape your hands at some point. You are also constantly using your hands to regain your balance or push away brush.
Your hands won't sweat as bad with leather when your hiking up the mountain and you can still shoot your rifle or handle your pack. They also work great for the desert.
Elk Hunting
When elk hunting and you come to an area in the deep, dark timber with lots of elk sign, slow to a crawl. Every couple steps take a hard look through your binoculars for ears, horns, or tan colors. Calculate every step to avoid making any noise.
Elk nearly always bed in the thickest, darkest areas they can find and many times I have snuck in on elk from the downwind side and spotted them feeding or bedding down for the day.
We have just added several videos by Steve Chappell and Chappell Hunting Productions. Steve is an outfitter and guide in Arizona as well as the Primos representative for Arizona.
The first video is Extreme Bulls 4. There are numerous up close shots of giant Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado bulls with rifle and archery equipment.
The second video is all Coues Whitetail Deer. The majority of the footage is taken in old Mexico with number 100"+ deer taken on the video. This is a great and needed addition to our inventory. For those of you who are planning a Coues deer hunt, but have never hunted one, you will see the terrain and the shots offered on these petite deer.
Be sure to visit our Hunting and Outdoor Clips section of the website. We have added a video we received by e-mail of some elk scouting footage. We have also placed a short clip of Fred's stag before he made the shot. We have some great footage of killer whales up in Alaska and we will be adding this footage in the next month. We will be updating the page with clips on a regular basis, so check back.
Extreme Coues is a new video released by Steve Chappell and Chappell Hunting Productions. This is one of very few hunting videos strictly focused on Coues Whitetail Deer.
The majority of the hunts are in old Mexico with the exception of two in Arizona. The video starts out with a hunt in Sonora with guide Jay Scott’s wife. They glass up a nice whitetail and she makes an excellent shot dropping the 108 gross Coues. The second buck is truly and whopper and is taken at just over 300 yards. The buck is a beautiful deer with nice mass and great length, scoring 119 gross. Buck number three is killed at 460 yards and scores 105 gross.
The video continues with an Arizona buck and several more old Mexico bucks, all over 100” except one which grosses 97” The DVD finishes with a massive Arizona Coues deer the hunter had patterned for the previous four years. He truly has a club on one side and grosses around 130”. This is a once in a lifetime deer and the hunt and kill scene is captured on the video.
If you are planning a first Coues whitetail hunt and would like to know the type of terrain you will be hunting, the equipment needed, and what these bucks look like bedded in the desert, this is your video. You will see first hand, if you want to kill a good Coues deer, you need a flat shooting rifle and you need to know where it shoots at great distances.
Welcome to the August 07 Hunting Videos Online Newsletter. As I told you in the July Newsletter, Susan and I had an amazing trip to New Zealand and I will share the remainder of the highlights with you.
On Fred's second day, he and Johnny found his stag near a small creek. As they were getting set up on him, he stepped into a small creek and laid down. He was obviously feeling the pain from the rut, and was cooling off, relaxing, and revitalizing. After quite a wait, the stag finally stepped out of the creek. He took a few steps and while Fred was finding him in the cross hairs, he laid down again in the grass. After two hours of waiting for him to stand, Fred finally shot the stag through the neck in his bed. It was a great shot and the stag never knew what hit him. He is a wide stag with great crowns and another true giant for free range.
To fill you in on Fred's pig hunt, the morning I headed out with Johnny in search of a stag, Fred went in search of pigs with Daniel, one of Johnny's guides. Daniel has two pig dogs, a German Shorthair and what appears to be a Pit Bull cross. They hiked from the ranch house up a huge ridge on the back side of Johnny's ranch. As they reached the top of the ridge and peered into the river valley below, a cloak of fog hung in the valley. With the white capped mountains protruding through the fog, the view was nothing short of spectacular. The pig hide out was down in the fog, so Fred got a much needed breather.
Once the fog lifted, Daniel let the dogs off the leashes to begin the hunt and soon after all h@#) broke loose. The dogs took off at a sprint and hogs began squealing and running in all directions. Fred and Daniel did the same, sprinting down the hill chasing the dogs. The dogs shot by one boar in full pursuit of another pig and the boar ducked down to hide. Daniel caught the boar stopping and pointed it out to Fred. Fred lowered the 30-06 on what he thought was the pig and took the shot. Nothing. Seconds later as Fred was trying to decide if he shot at the pig or not, it jumped up and headed off at a dead run. Fred pumped another shell in the chamber and took a second off-hand shot. Nothing. Fred jacked bullet number three in the chamber and down went the pig.
This was only the beginning of the excitement. Daniel and Fred then headed toward the squealing pig the dogs were holding. The dogs grip the pig by both ears and as it fights to get free, the hunter piles on the pig and kills it with a knife. Fred finally got the pig tipped over and finished her New Zealand style. If you haven't seen it already, check out the video in our Hunting and Outdoor Clips section. The hunt is fairly graphic, so if you have a weak stomach, you may want to skip this one. Fred's final challenge was getting the pig back home backpack style. Another tough, but rewarding day of New Zealand hunting.
The following day, the fog moved in heavy. After a brief discussion, Johnny offered to take us to another area where we would take a helicopter up to search for chamois and at the same time get to see more of the south island.
We decided it would be an exciting trip and we headed to another of Johnny's hunting areas. We arrived that evening after one stop along the way for some great fish and chips. We stayed right on the edge of a lake with the Southern Alps in the distance. The following morning our new area was fogged in as well. The fog finally lifted enough to allow the helicopter to fly and we boarded and took off in search of chamois. These chamois are well educated to a helicopter and after numerous disappearing acts and nearly two hours, we finally found one on an open slope. We dropped the helicopter to the ground, jumped out and ran to a spot for a shot opportunity. The chamois was headed uphill and finally stopped for a look back. The location he stopped only showed him from his shoulder up and he was over 200 yards, but I decided it was the only shot I would have. The 270 roared and the chamois dropped in his tracks and began tumbling down the hill. A lucky shot indeed.
After pictures and congratulations, we headed to town for a bite to eat and to wait until the evening hours. Several hours later, we lifted off in search of tahr. We finally found a group as the light was fading and I missed my chance after several long shots didn't connect. I decided it wasn't meant to be, providing an opportunity to return and hunt them the hard way.
Once again, we hope you enjoy the newsletter and come visit us at Hunting Videos Online.
Tim spends his July keeping his bowhunting skills intact. He relates: In the heat of the summer we hit the waterways and shoot fish. These fish are amazing and are a blast to shoot. Just keep your head down. Kevin Wheelright, Rich Pletz and I hit the waters of the Illinois River with 18 other teams in search of ,,,you guessed it CARP. Smelly, slimy, bloody,,,did I say slimy fish. Our endeavor started with an hour ride up to Henry Illinois for the 6pm check in. S I X PM check in. That’s right,,,its an all nighter.
We arrived and checked out all the cool boats set up by the many professional bow fishermen and compared our rigged up War Eagle carp killer. Everyone commented on our boat and had several remarks concerning our rig. Someone said nice boat, you guys going to land a helicopter on that deck you built? Oh, did I mention we built a last minute wooden deck on the front of the boat? I guess the other teams were not impressed. It looked like something from Gilligan’s Island. The other shooters were really nice and gave us rookies some good advice like dump that stupid deck off the boat before someone tries to lands a helicopter on that thing. I also did not mention that whoever was driving the boat couldn't see where they were going. That was just a slight technical difficulty. We FINALLY got our rig right and set off with the other teams.
Click the arrow below twice to play a clip of the trip.
We shot from 7pm until 10am the next day. We lost 6 arrows, one bow and I will never be able to take the girls out for a relaxing evening cruise in my boat again. I should note Kevin lost six arrows. I guess he didn't make many of his Boy Scout meetings and never got his merit badge for knots. We shot 112 fish out of the air and had another 30 to 40 jump in the boat. At times we had 30 to 40 fish in the air at once. It was an incredible sight. We all took multiple hits but survived the bombing. Or count was good for forth place. Our largest fish was a little over 22 lbs. We could have made a run at 3rd if we kept the fish that jumped in the boat. We did not know this practice was legal. First place scored around 400 fish.
Man these guys know their stuff. My War Eagle boat has officially been slimed. I let Rich park it in front of his house, it smells like nothing I have smelled before. My thanks to Ed with the Bowfishing Association of Illinois and all the shooters who gave us advice. Watch upcoming episodes of Relentless Pursuit for some exciting flying fish action.
Below are some comments and highlights of Jim Shockey's trip to New Zealand: We might have saved the best for last on this incredible safari to New Zealand and Australia. I got a monster sambar deer, which is like an elk, it has the body size of an elk, and antlers with three points on each side. It’s the toughest of all the species in the South Pacific to get, so we’re lucky to get one. Perfect, 180-yard shot, and the deer will score around 125. I know that there's been one killed with a muzzleloader that's the biggest ever with any hunting tool, so this one should be the second biggest ever with muzzleloader.
It was a heck of a deer and a great hunt, jungle hunting type of stuff which I love. The guide, Craig Ferguson of Kiwi Safaris, knows more about this animal than any guide I’ve had about a specific species. He’s really like a sambar deer scientist, he spends his whole day with them. He takes only five hunters per year and is 100 percent on sambar which is really rare. We saw five other stags as well in the previous two days with bad weather.
Before heading out for sambar we were at the Poronui Lodge on the North Island where I got two nice Sika deer. The weather turned crummy and it was absolutely pouring rain, but what a wonderful lodge! On the Sika deer we had to make a really tough shot in the rain, through trees, around bushes, at a stag which was standing with his butt facing toward us and only presenting a neck shot. Everyone said that I missed when I shot and I thought I'd missed and was depressed. Then I heard the guide hollering on the hillside in the forest. The stag had only gone 40 yards!
It's been a fabulous safari. Australia might not come to your mind as a hunting destination, but it's excellent. Just a great travel destination. But soon I'll be home in BC getting ready to head to moose camp in the Yukon! Can't wait for that.
Hope you enjoyed the August 2007 newsletter. We sure enjoyed reliving the hunts. We'd love to hear your comments at dukatsoutfitting@yahoo.com. See you in the field!
On Fred's second day, he and Johnny found his stag near a small creek. As they were getting set up on him, he stepped into a small creek and laid down. He was obviously feeling the pain from the rut, and was cooling off, relaxing, and revitalizing. After quite a wait, the stag finally stepped out of the creek. He took a few steps and while Fred was finding him in the cross hairs, he laid down again in the grass. After two hours of waiting for him to stand, Fred finally shot the stag through the neck in his bed. It was a great shot and the stag never knew what hit him. He is a wide stag with great crowns and another true giant for free range.
Daniel has two pig dogs, a German Shorthair and what appears to be a Pit Bull cross. They hiked from the ranch house up a huge ridge on the back side of Johnny's ranch. As they reached the top of the ridge and peered into the river valley below, a cloak of fog hung in the valley. With the white capped mountains protruding through the fog, the view was nothing short of spectacular. The pig hide out was down in the fog, so Fred got a much needed breather.
Tim spends his July keeping his bowhunting skills intact. He relates: In the heat of the summer we hit the waterways and shoot fish. These fish are amazing and are a blast to shoot. Just keep your head down. Kevin Wheelright, Rich Pletz and I hit the waters of the Illinois River with 18 other teams in search of ,,,you guessed it CARP. Smelly, slimy, bloody,,,did I say slimy fish. Our endeavor started with an hour ride up to Henry Illinois for the 6pm check in. S I X PM check in. That’s right,,,its an all nighter.
Before heading out for sambar we were at the Poronui Lodge on the North Island where I got two nice Sika deer. The weather turned crummy and it was absolutely pouring rain, but what a wonderful lodge! On the Sika deer we had to make a really tough shot in the rain, through trees, around bushes, at a stag which was standing with his butt facing toward us and only presenting a neck shot. Everyone said that I missed when I shot and I thought I'd missed and was depressed. Then I heard the guide hollering on the hillside in the forest. The stag had only gone 40 yards!
