Mustangs Rule
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2021
- Messages
- 855
I have had little canoes, long canoes, ones made of wood, aluminum, and various synthetic materials.
For much of my life hunting season, meant “canoe season” even in the oddest places.
One year I was hunting a semi desert environment, with this stream maybe 5 to 6 inches deep and 5 or 6 feet wide that drained some high mountains. It was a not a flash flood stream that would shrink in a flash but a stable fall little creek. The stream bed was mostly sandy, easy walking in it with dive socks and my LL Bean canoe shoes.
Pulling this little canoe, loaded with a canvas cabin tent, and all the gear for a luxury week long deer hunting adventure was a breeze. I managed to get several critical miles in past the Wilderness Boundary.
I came out almost a week later with a buck in my canoe, which I never even sat in or paddled.
Sometimes all I need the canoe for is to cross a river that is too deep for me to wade across, with my canoe shoes and leggings I cut out of an old dive suit I bought at a tag sale. Did that many times for antelope.
I look at maps, find places for crossing a lake or some protected wetlands that borders road less public land. Often I find pockets of privacy from other hunters, where game animals hide.
For example, I found one place where an otherwise inaccessible large chunk of USFS land bordered a river for a quarter mile. All around was a huge private ranch.
All this canoe awareness began as a kid on my Grandfather’s dairy farm. Bordering it, was a huge beaver pond/swamp maybe 50 to a 75 yards wide and a ½ a mile long. I used to paddle around it in a old noisy Grumman aluminum canoe with a gun rack for three firearms, a .22, a shotgun, and a rusty Marlin 336 in 35 Remington. I shot grouse, ducks, geese and totally unsuspecting deer in the cedar thickets next to the water's edge.
I have lived in four western states, most always rural and I pay attention to maps and land doing lots of scouting.
Near where I lived in Wyoming decades past, there were some lakes and quiet parts of rivers that directly connected to marshland and small ponds.
Gliding in there quietly in the first light morning mist was great way to have a close-up moose encounter. Without a motor, it is legal to shoot from a canoe
Is good to have a big canoe for moose and if there are two hunters, they should agree that only the front one is shooting.
MR
For much of my life hunting season, meant “canoe season” even in the oddest places.
One year I was hunting a semi desert environment, with this stream maybe 5 to 6 inches deep and 5 or 6 feet wide that drained some high mountains. It was a not a flash flood stream that would shrink in a flash but a stable fall little creek. The stream bed was mostly sandy, easy walking in it with dive socks and my LL Bean canoe shoes.
Pulling this little canoe, loaded with a canvas cabin tent, and all the gear for a luxury week long deer hunting adventure was a breeze. I managed to get several critical miles in past the Wilderness Boundary.
I came out almost a week later with a buck in my canoe, which I never even sat in or paddled.
Sometimes all I need the canoe for is to cross a river that is too deep for me to wade across, with my canoe shoes and leggings I cut out of an old dive suit I bought at a tag sale. Did that many times for antelope.
I look at maps, find places for crossing a lake or some protected wetlands that borders road less public land. Often I find pockets of privacy from other hunters, where game animals hide.
For example, I found one place where an otherwise inaccessible large chunk of USFS land bordered a river for a quarter mile. All around was a huge private ranch.
All this canoe awareness began as a kid on my Grandfather’s dairy farm. Bordering it, was a huge beaver pond/swamp maybe 50 to a 75 yards wide and a ½ a mile long. I used to paddle around it in a old noisy Grumman aluminum canoe with a gun rack for three firearms, a .22, a shotgun, and a rusty Marlin 336 in 35 Remington. I shot grouse, ducks, geese and totally unsuspecting deer in the cedar thickets next to the water's edge.
I have lived in four western states, most always rural and I pay attention to maps and land doing lots of scouting.
Near where I lived in Wyoming decades past, there were some lakes and quiet parts of rivers that directly connected to marshland and small ponds.
Gliding in there quietly in the first light morning mist was great way to have a close-up moose encounter. Without a motor, it is legal to shoot from a canoe
Is good to have a big canoe for moose and if there are two hunters, they should agree that only the front one is shooting.
MR
