Mike

July 01, 2018 by Mike

The first two clients to book a hunt with Pismo Adventures can choose a pack full of gear or a $100 gift card to Central Coast Archery as a token of appreciation for your business.

July 01, 2018 by Mike

The first two clients to book a hunt with Pismo Adventures can choose a pack full of gear or a $100 gift card to Central Coast Archery as a token of appreciation for your business.

June 19, 2018 by Mike

There are lots of suggestions from other hunters about gear and techniques.  Techniques fascinate me  because I don't have to find any other gear to make them work.  I use techniques with the gear I already have.  

Time and time again I've learned patience helps me kill bucks.  Failing at this technique is almost funny.  Here is a vignette about turkey hunting, but it could have easily been a deer.  

I was hunting all morning long in a ground blind.  I did everything right like: set up at dark, listened to turkeys come down from the roost and call, played coy with the call.  It was 11:00 a.m., and I wanted to go home.  A hill called to me for a check just forty yards away.  You probably can predict what happened.  I got over to the hill, and a great big tom mosey through my blind set up.  The tom was ten yards from the tree I'd sat against all morning.  I should have finished my hunt in the blind.  I tried to sneak on the bird, but I spooked him.  Patience.

June 19, 2018 by Mike

The first four deer of the season showed up last week.  I saw another four yesterday morning.  All does and fawns no bucks yet.  It is a great feeling of satisfaction to see them.  I was near the road yesterday morning and a truck barreled down the pavement toward all of us.  I got to the side of the road, but the doe and fawn took their sweet time.  I yelled at them, “Get going.” They still didn’t move fast until the truck was twenty yards away then they sprinted across the asphalt and hopped over the fence.

Some years I start counting the deer I see in April.  That’s when I’m in the forest for turkey season.  I didn’t get a chance to go out for turkey this year.  It takes a lot of patience to sit in a blind for those stubborn birds.  I went out for rockfish with my son instead.  In a kayak I am always moving, and it takes less patience.  

I count deer that I see from the 101 freeway also.  They always seem to be in the fringe areas.  I’d like to spot more of them in the forest where it’s public land.  Yet there they are smack dab in the middle of the wild oats on private land, the white squares on the map.  They’ll have to seek into cover in the green public land eventually.  I’ll keep looking for an opportunity.

June 13, 2018 by Mike

The blacktailed buck of California. Hunters have joked that finding unicorns is easier than finding a forked horn buck during deer season. They seem to know when the second Saturday in August rolls around and head straight to the brush. Today’s story is a suggestion about how to find a buck and maybe more importantly the enjoyment of the journey. You can go out in 28 days at the opener of archery season and walk into a buck. There could be one right at the trailhead where you park your car. Its just it doesn’t happen often.