Thanks to the forum mods for starting this Hunting and Fishing forum. This, and History Buffs forum are my favorite. Looking forward to seeing MANY more pics and stories from posters. Been fun to see all that have been posted so far. Keep them coming guys and gals !
I'm with you History Seeker I really like seeing these pictures you guys have put on this forum. Back when I was traveling around trap shooting one of the things Ann and I liked the best was all the opportunities to hunt and fish in other states and meeting the local trap shooters that were fellow sportsman. Because of trap shooting I got to hunt and fish in twenty states or so. My year would start out hunting valley quail and jack rabbits in Arizona, then varmints in Texas, then maybe quail turkey and hogs in FL, then to Missouri and turkeys, maybe WVa for turkeys, then varmints in the summer and then to ducks and geese in Canada, Missouri, Maryland and Ohio, and then throw in some deer hunting and grouse and squirrels, and then some fox hunting with my fox hound named Trouble around good old Paulding County Ohio and Christmas Time. The amazing thing about being a trap shooter in those days was all the generous people from all the states that Ann and I met that took us hunting and fishing to their favorite spots. It was a pretty neat life, and to be around shooters and guns and gun dogs and outdoor writers and see the sights. I miss it but I still can relive those hunts and times in my mind, old pictures help that remembering tremendously. So yea please everyone else keep those pictures and stories coming.
We don't have very many trappers around here anymore. I used to make my spending money when I was a kid trapping. I caught mostly rats but now and then a coon but when I did catch a mink it was a great day.We hunted fox and I only ever caught a couple of greys, I had a walker fox hound named Trouble that was pre trap shooting. Today I wouldn't shoot a fox, in fact I caught one in a box trap by my pheasant pen last year and turned him loose. I kill every coon, mink, and opossum I catch. Coons and opossums will get in a pen and kill 2 or 3 pheasants, mink on the other hand will kill a bunch. I had 2 mink get into my pen one night and they killed 88 pheasants. In 25 years I've never had a fox or coyote do any damage in my pheasant pen. Out in the wild hawks are by far the biggest killer of adult pheasants while coon and skunks are nest destroyers. I've caught skunks in traps too often but do what needs done when I do catch one. History Seeker keep those old pictures coming I really enjoy looking and talking about those old days and I think once more people find this forum we'll get to see others pictures and read their stories.
You might appreciate this Brad....A friend of mine owned a game farm years ago in northern Ontario. It was called the Cochrane Hunt & Game Farm. He raised about 6000-7000 pheasants each season, a few dozen wild turkeys and a handful of quail and chukars but the last three were never popular amongst the northern crowd of hunters so they rarely were sold and after a couple seasons he dropped the quail and chukar completely. The pheasants hunts were a tower release with a 48' tall tower located and out of view( until the leaves fell in fall) in an oval shaped stand of poplar about 50'-60' tall, 100 yards long and about 80 yards wide. The stand was surrounded on 2 sides by fields and on the two ends by bush lots. A pathway was cleared on each end about 40 yards from the tower running parallel to the tower through the stand of bush about 35 yards wide to create the oval. Encircling the poplar stand the tower was located in was a series of makeshift blinds, 10 in total spaced anywhere from 50-75 yds apart. The hunters stood in and shot from the blinds at birds flying past as they were released one to two at a time. Blinds were set up so that hunters could not hit each other in case someone disobeyed the rules that only birds flying at an elevated height were to be shot at or birds passing low between blinds were not be shot at. A party was 10 hunters(shooters) and 7 birds per shooter were released. Two of us( my buddy that owned the farm) and I would set up on opposite corners of the layout next to one of the blinds where we could watch and cover 5 blinds each in an L-shape (two blinds to each side of the blind we located ourselves on the corners) to run our dogs from to retrieve downed birds. Two young guys (local high school kids) were hired for the hunts which were run on weekends only from August to late October. They would help us to catch the birds in the flight pens, transfer them to travel crates (7 per crate) and load them onto a trailer connected to a tractor. We would then run them down to the tower and the two kids would climb up the tower steps and once inside would man the pulley system from which hung a length of rope with a spreader with 4 hooks. I would attach a hook to each corner of a pheasant crate through eyebolts located on the corners and once secured the kids would pull the crates up and stack them in the tower. While this was taking my place my buddy was getting his crew of hunters signed in at the clubhouse. The hunters usually liked to participate in some shooting practice prior to the hunt. My buddy had an old western trap mounted on a picnic table and he would load and fire off targets as guys stepped up on each side of the table and shot until they were ready to go hunting. We would then head down and get everyone placed and start the hunt. The kids would be in the tower which had an open box on top 8'x8' with 4' tall walls. A kid would grab a bird from a crate once my buddy gave them the start signal and they would yell BIRD out loud and toss a bird into the air and sit back down out of view behind the walls of the stand made from 2"x10" lumber. The bird would fly out and once they hit the field or the pathway cleared through the bush the hunters would take aim and try to knock it down. If they knocked it down one of us would send a dog to recover it. Once the dog had returned with the bird we'd give the all clear signal and the kids would launch a bird or pair of birds once again. The whole process would be repeated until the 5 loaded crates (35 birds) were released. A cease fire would be called and the all clear given for the kids to leave the tower after the hunters had unloaded their firearms. We would then assemble the hunters and any who wanted to go after any missed birds hunting them over the dogs would then join up with my buddy and I and we would set out on opposite ends of the property and work our way back to the clubhouse for lunch break while flushing and recovering missed birds over our retrievers. The kids would gather all the downed birds from the release while were assembling flushing parties and would load them in the tractor and bring them to the cleaning shack. Once lunch was over the whole process would take place again. By the time it started the cleaning ladies would arrive and start cleaning the morning kill. Once the afternoon hunt was over the kids ran the birds to the cleaning shack right away while we mopped up any misses from the afternoon hunt if any of the hunters wanted to, often they didn't want to but preferred to head for the clubhouse and sauna and drink a few toasts while awaiting their birds to be cleaned. The birds were processed beautifully by the two older cleaning gals and would be placed in sealed bags and cardboard boxes for the guys to take when they left. It was a hell of a lot of fun and I almost bought the place when he decided to close up when he bough a transportation company. I sure miss those days and wish I'd carried a camera on most of those hunts. I lived in a city an hour away running a business of my own in those days and didn't have the time to look after my dog in a way I felt was fair to a trained bird dog so I boarded the dog there and in exchange for the board I worked the weekends on the game farm helping with the hunts and to think it all started with buying myself a hunt and hunting solo their one day over my dog while the owner tagged along with me. I shot my 7 pheasants that day and an additional 3 ruffed grouse which were wild and plenty in that neck of the woods. We struck up a conversation that day that turned into a great friendship that has lasted to this day going on almost 4 decades and I met some fantastic people at that place from all walks of life. Those were the days!! In the first pic I stopped by my father's aunt and uncle's place the next town over on my way home to bring them a pheasant or two to enjoy. That is her with her youngest son, my 2nd cousin ( on the left). She insisted I stay for dinner and roasted two of the pheasants. I then went down the road and dropped off a pheasant to another of my father's aunts and uncles and once I got home to the city I lived in that night dropped another off with another aunt. LOL The second photo was of my black lab Bear Creek's "Ace" of Kizrad with a pheasant from that solo hunt that morning. As a footnote in case any are wondering safety was paramount and heavy hunting loads were not permitted. Only loads of 1 1/8 oz maximum with a 3 1/4 dram equivalent were permitted with a maximum shot size of # 7.5.
