Tales from the outdoors: What’s up, Doc?

By Bob Chapin

Many of today’s hunters got their hunting careers started hunting rabbits, or more correctly cottontails.

The style of agriculture with family farms with wind rows and shelter belts created ideal habitat for the rabbits to proliferate, not to mention their procreative tendencies. It was a match made in heaven … little boys with single shot 22s or similar shotguns after school roaming the back 40 pursuing what for them must have seemed like big game. Much of their efforts ended up in the family stewpot.

As we grew up, larger more exotic game such as turkeys, doves, squirrels, ducks, and geese and eventually whitetails took over as the object of desire and the lowly rabbits took a back seat for a while. Growing up on the East Coast in Connecticut, I always wanted to pursue rabbits as I would see them frequently on neighbor’s lawns and unkempt wood lots. Other game was very thin and rarely seen, let alone harvested. 

Alas, my dad was not a hunter, well not a real hunter. He proudly showed us kids a 16mm film of his buddies hunting black bears in Maine, of all places, but what I took away was my dad was a “slob hunter,” too much adult beverages, shooting contests in camp that resulted in damage and debris, and the hides of cubs that he had salted and brought home for us to see.

Rabbits became a target species for me during my first operational assignment in the Air Force stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base Alaska. The guys in the fighter squadron I was assigned to were real hunters and we talked about flying and hunting almost exclusively. While I would eventually work my way around to most of the species discussed, initially the talk of rabbits and snowshoe hares really perked my interest and I listened intently to how and where they pursued them. It was not an accident that rabbits and snowshoe hares came into season when other species were not available. Big game hunters were not opposed to chasing the wily rabbit when other game was not on the menu.

Cottontail rabbits breed in yearly cycles. Some years you have very few, other years it seems as if the country is overrun with them. On the highway that ran down the Kenai Peninsula the rabbits would come out on the blacktop at night to take advantage of solar heating. If you drove down the highway in the summertime after dark, you could almost use their eyes, that would reflect your headlights, as road markers.

I made one of my biggest mistakes while hunting rabbits. My wife was never keen on my hunting, still isn’t, but she tolerates it. In the early days she would accompany me and follow around behind me as I coursed through the willow breaks and spruce thickets looking for rabbits.

Where we lived, we were blessed with both cottontails and snowshoe hares. We were hunting this day after a recent snowstorm and there was about six inches of new snow on the ground. We had been hunting for a couple of hours and I had managed to collect a couple.

We were in a horseshoe bend of a slough covered in ice when we entered into a willow thicket that had several trees that had blown down. I was looking pretty far ahead because you could sometimes see a rabbit before they jumped offering a decent shot, when she whispered to me, “What about that one?”

She pointed to a blow down about 10 yards away that bowed over and was covered in snow except for a shallow depression where the snow had been scoured out by the wind. Sitting in the depression, perfectly camouflaged in his white coat, was a cottontail. I would not have seen him without Sue’s help and without his coal black eye staring back at me.

I had been shooting a 12-gauge shotgun for the longer shots, but he was much too close to hazard a shotgun shot. I was carrying a larger caliber pistol as we all did, more for bear protection than actual hunting. With slow deliberation I drew my revolver and aimed at the quarry. I never for a minute considered what the aftermath of my shot would be, not once.

At the shot a huge puff of snow kicked up, the rabbit only went about 5 feet, but the snow behind where he sat turned a brilliant shade of red against the snow. As a hunter, I knew what to expect and was prepared for it as part of hunting. My wife was not. I looked at her and tears were running down her face. That was in 1975. She has not hunted with me since. <

Tales from the Outdoors: The Worst Hunt Ever?

By Bob Chapin

People often ask me, “What was the worst hunt you were ever on?” You would expect it would be a hunt where I was injured, or where an airplane taking us in crashed on the way out, or simply where we did not get the quarry we were after.  While my last horseback elk hunt in Idaho was no picnic (three broken ribs, knee wrenched and back injury when the horse fell on top of me) it was still a good hunt in beautiful terrain with good companions, and we heard and saw elk though did not shoot at any.

A contender for the worst hunt started out with such promise. There were four of us who were flying in via float plane to a secluded peninsula down in Prince William Sound, Alaska for Black Bear. We flew in on a De Haviland Beaver, the work horse of the north. The plane is capable of carrying a tremendous amount of gear and passengers—as they say you ‘cube it out before you gross it out’ meaning you can’t load any more into it before you reach the gross take-off weight limitation. We took what we thought was going to be a comfortable camp for 6 days in the wilderness—tents, food, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, clothes, and rain gear.  The weather the day we flew in was spectacular—sun shining, not a cloud in the sky, no wind and temps in the 70s—not bad for an Alaskan May.

About the time we got to our campsite and got the tent set up the clouds formed then parted and it started raining like a Southeast Asian Typhoon. It didn’t let up for five days!  We made the best of it we could and hunted hard the first three days. By the fourth day it turned into a survival trek. Everything we owned was wet—all our clothes, our food, our bedding, everything in the tent was wet and so were we.  We even dug a trench under the edge of the tent and bailed water out of it with cooking pots in an effort to find a dry spot. Tempers flared. A normally convivial bunch of guys who all got along well on a normal day, were suddenly at each other. To make matters worse, the promised land of Black Bears was suddenly devoid of game. One guy saw a bear, got a shot …and missed. I don’t know why but we all hated him for missing, like if he made the shot, we all would have somehow felt vindicated. That hunt could not have ended soon enough. Fortunately, the clouds parted the morning of the pick-up day and our air taxi operator showed up as promised. It was a quiet ride out.

Another bust hunt was an elk hunt in western Colorado. This hunt had everything going for it. We had a guy on the ground in Monument who was our liaison, he knew the lay of the land, had hunted this area in the past, was going to get and pre-package all the groceries for our drop hunt and lined up a packer he knew with horses to get us and our gear into the public hunt zone. We had driven out from Virginia for this hunt and were eager to get started. The first indication of trouble was when we arrived at the trailhead to find several horse and camping trailers already there—not good! We pressed on as the packer was confident that this was the entry to a vast area and we would soon out distance the other guys. We used a camp the packer had used before, it was a couple of wall tents and a horse corral. Normally, the wrangler would have ridden out with the horses but two of us elected to hire him as a guide for the first day.

Our guy on the ground and his buddy from Colorado left camp at daybreak and proceeded to fan out on the mountain opposing our camp. The wrangler took two of us up to a saddle in the mountains where, “the elk just pour through here” according to him. We were not 20 minutes out of camp when we heard shooting coming from camp’s direction and we secretly rejoiced for our friends. Shortly, as we approached the saddle we stumbled upon another occupied camp, clearly positioned to intercept the elk as they came through. The area was not large enough to support both our parties, so we returned to camp planning on helping our buds recover their elk.

When we rendezvoused with our buds, we couldn’t believe the stories we heard. The buddy from Colorado shot at a bull but could not describe where he was standing when he shot, where the bull was when he shot, what the reaction of the bull was when hit, or what direction he went once shot. Upon further questioning it was discovered this was his first hunt…for anything, it was a borrowed rifle, he had never fired the rifle on the range, and had no idea where it would hit at 100 yards! We spent two hours looking in vain for any sign of a hit. This guy should never have been in the woods.

Our buddy’s story was even more bizarre. He is an accomplished hunter and should have known better than to leave a novice alone on the hillside. Our buddy shot a cow elk about the same time his buddy shot but rather than stick with it, he elected to go look for his buddy to see if he needed any help…nice thought but not the correct response. Unfortunately, after he heard his buddy’s saga, he was unable to locate his cow. Again, we used valuable hunting time looking for a cow that should have been recovered instantly. Those were the only living elk seen that trip.

Two days later I was hunting in the same general area, and I could smell a dead animal. I started a search pattern across the hillside and had not gone far when I discovered a deceased cow elk under a blown-down tree. In just a couple of days it had been found and fed on by coyotes and a black bear. The shooter walked up as I examined the cow and harvested only the eye teeth as jewelry as the meat was spoiled.

These were two hunts I’d like to forget! <

Tales from the outdoors: More black bears than you could want (continued)

By Bob Chapin

Special to The Windham Eagle

When we left this story last my hunting partner and I were being charged by a black bear, fired at it and watched it disappear over a steep ledge.…About that time we heard the cubs… yes she was a mother bear trying to protect her cubs. We were hiking up to locate them when here came mama bear again. Unseen or heard by us she had circled back up above us where her cubs were. In all that spotting and watching we had not seen nor heard the cubs. This time she angled off of us by about 10 degrees and about 10 feet away. We each fired again, and she disappeared over the edge. We later found her piled up against a group of alders.

We hiked up and found the three cubs, all up a lone pine tree beginning to topple over the steep terrain. We knew that this meant we had to try our best to save the cubs, bring them to the Anchorage Children’s Zoo, and give up Mom’s hide as hunters cannot profit in a situation like this. Burt shinnied up the tree and grabbed the first cub by the scruff of the neck. He said, “Chapo, catch this” and he dropped the cub down hitting me in the chest. In a second, it was biting and clawing its way up to my head before I could get a grip on it. Let me tell you those little buggers have sharp claws and teeth. I grabbed it off my head a threw it to the ground where I pinned it then put it into a backpack we had. I said, “Burt, next time just drop it on to the ground and I will get it from there.” And that is what he did. So we had two of three cubs in hand but the third one proved problematic. The more Burt climbed up that pine the further up the cub climbed and by now the tree was bending way too far over the hill. If Burt had fallen, he would have bounced off the hillside and there was no telling how far down the hill he would roll. We decided to go take care of mama first and maybe the third cub would come down so that is what we did.

Once we had the mother’s hide lashed to a packboard we climbed back up to where the cub was, but he had not moved. It was now getting dark and we started down the mountain. By the time we got to the shore the tide had come in and the only way back to camp was through a grove of dead pines with branches all the way to the ground just waiting to poke an eye out in the dark. We wisely decided to spend the night on the beach and built a small fire for warmth. The cubs were quite content in the backpack and seemed to enjoy the granola bars we shared with them. Sleep was fitful on the shore, but we did get some. First light, which comes real early in Alaska that time of year, we started across the bay floor now exposed by low tide. We repeated the drill getting across the stream and once we got some warmth back into our feet we hiked back to the tent where our wives were sleeping.

For whatever reason we thought it would be funny to pitch the two cubs into the tent on the sleeping girls which we did. We immediately saw the folly of this when we remembered that we had left two revolvers with them “for protection” and what if they started blazing away with us a tent fabric away. So we had a big reunion and the cubs became the center of our life. We kept them in an old wooden barrel that had washed up on the shore and fed them instant oatmeal which they must have enjoyed because they ate it all. Burt and Margie stayed in camp and Sue and I continued to hunt. 

I was back searching the hillsides trying to make the best of the few hours we had left before pick-up when Sue said what about that one? While I was busy looking at the hillsides a bear came out at the base of the peninsula we were on, about 300 yards away. I quickly stalked within 100 yards and using an old sawed-off stump as a rest dropped the bear with one shot. We admired the bear then set about skinning it with an eye towards a bear rug. Back in Anchorage my hide went to the taxidermy, the cubs went to the zoo, and Burt went to the game department to S’plain himself. <

Tales From The Outdoors: Five more tips to make your outings fun

By Bob Chapin

I believe that vocalizations when deer hunting can be useful in attracting deer to your location or to trick them into identifying their location. To that end I have two calls…a fawn and a doe bleat that sound quite realistic, at least I know the fawn bleat is. I was bushwhacking down a small stream once in Virginia as there was no trail and the brush was thick on both sides. I came to a game trail that crossed the stream at the precise moment when a young fawn, who had become separated from its mother, got to the stream from the trail. We surprised one another and it bleated several times in an attempt to locate mom. That sound stuck with me and is mimicked very well by my call. 

The problem was both calls made by the same manufacturer looked, from outward appearances, to be identical. Small gold letters on the barrel of the call identified the sound it made but they were difficult to read in the good light of my kitchen but nearly impossible to read when up in a deer stand at dawn. To solve this problem, I took a three-cornered file and cut a small notch into the mouthpiece of the doe bleat large enough to feel with my mouth but not so large that I couldn’t cover it with my lips. So now I know instantly which call I am about to blow!

When I began shooting a bow, I routinely traveled to a couple of nearby ranges in order to take advantage of elevated shooting stands designed to copy the angles and ranges you could expect to shoot from in actual hunting situations in tree stands. Though the ranges were nearby, it was a pain to drive there during their hours, engage a safety observer or instructor, and leave when they were scheduled to close. I quickly realized if I was going to shoot with the regularity that most sources said a beginner should, I would need an elevated stand at home. 

So I built one out of pressure treated lumber complete with a seat and a safety harness and attached it to
a tree in the back yard. Rather than have only one target at a fixed range I located a company that was throwing out blocks of styrofoam roughly a foot square. I spray painted a “bullseye” on each and could locate them at various unknown ranges, some quite close to my stand. 

As it turned out that was good practice because none of the dozen or so deer that I have taken from a tree stand have exceeded 20 yards, and two of them I have had to wait for them to walk out from under my climbing tree stand foot platform before I could shoot!

The question of what footwear to put on when venturing out into the wild can be perplexing but it needn’t be. It really depends on where you are going.  The first consideration is comfort because if your feet are not happy, you will not be happy, your trips will be shorter, and probably not as successful. The second consideration is safety. Will the boots you select support your ankles and protect them from rocks and sharp sticks as you climb. Finally, will your feet be warm in them? Nothing shortens a day of ice fishing faster than cold feet. It really boils down to three basic boots with minor variations for style or cost. If you are going hiking in the mountains leather boots that cover your ankles are the ticket. I would shy away from the sneaker style even with reinforced soles as they tend to break down with
rugged use. 

The rubber soled lace up L.L. Bean-style hunting boots are great for most Maine woods where climbing is not anticipated. Also good in the flat land are the knee-high rubber boots such as the Muck boot. As long as you are careful not to exceed water depths in excess of the boot’s height you should be fine. I find myself reaching for the scent-free knee-high rubber boots most frequently even when launching a boat. Have I stepped over them on occasion, of course. It is never a fun experience.

When you go afield for the day take more than one pair of gloves. It is likely that the first pair you wear will get wet climbing frost covered tree stand steps, positioning decoys, or paddling your canoe. Warm hands keep you hunting.

I always carry fire starting equipment with me when hunting. I was able to recover a cold, wet hunting partner in Alaska close to hypothermia with a drink of hot chocolate made over an emergency fire. <