1st Hunt of the Season

Jeremy's a happier guy this week. He was able to figure out the hunting situation. Turns out he can hunt as a non-resident with his fire arm declaration that he had to fill out to bring his guns across the boarder. It does allow him to buy ammo. Whew, if he only knew this weeks ago, he could have been out on the weekends. Oh well, at least he finally figured it out and I'm sure Hayde's happy now too.

We went yesterday afternoon out on Barron Canyon Rd (the road leading to Algonquin). we finally remembered to time it. Turns out it's just under a 20 min drive to get to. We took one of the side roads once we hit crown land and parked and spent about an hr trudging thru the wet woods. We waited until later in the afternoon because it kept raining earlier and finally stopped, but only briefly so by the time we got out, it was raining pretty good. (Thankfully, I have some decent rain gear so I kept dry, but I forgot to put on my rubber boots, but somehow my feet didn't get too wet). We found several lakes/ponds, but weren't lucky enough to find any birds. We did see one chipmunk that Hayde chased into a tree and heard a goose calling out looking for a place to land for the night. Other than that, the woods were silent and bare. Hayde had fun sniffing and running around looking for whatever she could find. We found a good sized moose rub. At it's tallest point it was taller than Jeremy! We also found lots of animal paths running all over in the woods, so they must be out there somewhere.

This morning we went back down Barron Canyon Rd, but stopped just short of where we were yesterday, just off a pond/marshy area. We scouted and walked for about 2 hrs. We heard a few birds, but didn't see any squirrels or chipmunks. Others were out target shooting or something as we heard lots of gun shots. As we were heading back and not too far from the truck, Hayde ended up flushing three grouse. I only saw two, but Jeremy said he saw three. Of course they all took off in different directions so we had to contemplate which way to go. Jeremy almost tried taking a shot at one, but Hayde was too close and in the line of sight so he opted not to shoot. We made a circle around the area we thought they went, but had no luck finding any of them again. We then decided it was time to leave and just as we were nearing the road, Hayde flushed one again. We saw it head parallel to the road so Jeremy headed back into the woods just a little bit as I took Hayde with me next to the road to see if the three of us could find it and flush it out again as we walked in the direction it had gone. We didn't have any luck so this time we ended up leaving. We did see the remains of a very active beaver. He had taken down a lot of small thin trees and taken HUGE bites out of some pretty good sized trees in a small area by a lake. I think I found his house too. Most of the tree cutting looked fairly new.

As for other things, Jeremy made two jars worth of pickled eggs on Friday before heading off to hockey. He hasn't tried them yet. Sat we spent a few hours trying to filter all the seeds and stuff out of our wine and get it into our other bottle for it to start bubbling for a couple months. We just found out that it should really be at a slightly warmer temperature the entire process, so we'll have to see if it turns out. We had it locked in the little room next to the front door where we keep all the hunting/sports stuff and it's usually cooler in there than the rest of the house. Now that it's closed up, we can keep it out (the animals won't beable to get at it) and maybe find a better, warmer place to store it until it's ready to be bottled. I almost forgot. We finally managed to stay awake Saturday for "Hockey Night in Canada" - the weekly hockey program on TV.