Thankful Outdoors: Outdoor Journal Week of August 9th through August 15th
Before I get into sharing the weekly outdoor journal with you, I want to take a moment and thank you for the support you have been showing the weekly feature. The phone calls, text messages, and comments shared have been wonderful to hear. My favorite is when you stop me in a parking lot to share a story with me. I love to listen to what my followers are up to in the outdoors as well. Those moments are what keep me wanting to share the outdoors with each one of you, now onto the adventures!
August 9th – Setting Craig’s bear baits
This outing, I have been waiting to begin from a couple a month back when Craig notified me that he had drawn for a bear tag in Zone C. He finally had reached out and said it’s time to start the setting of the baits. My oldest son Jared was to tag along with us on this outing. Not only was I looking forward to his youth and strength for gathering logs to cover the bait, but I also looked forward to spending some time with him, our time together as he enters his young adulthood is limited.
I have enjoyed setting bear baits ever since I was a little kid; Dad used to take us, boys, along running baits up in the Medford area. The aroma of donuts, ice cream cones, liquid smoke, anise, and cinnamon to me is like what most people feel about the smell of fair food.
Our first set was one that had been used a few years back by Craig’s friend Todd. It was good active bait for them back then, even though a tag was not filled. We were also going to be able to test out new saws and ratchet pruners from EZ Kut Products. Let’s just say that these tools were AMAZING and helped in getting trails groomed and logs cut for the sets. What was more impressive was the ease of cutting up 4 to 5-inch logs to cover the bait. Jared’s hand experienced just how sharp the saws are, he hit his hand on the blade, and it cut open part of his finger, bleeding all over the place. As a future logger, I think he learned his lesson on the importance of wearing gloves.
The second set was going to be a new area that was discovered during one of our deer drives in the Mead Wildlife Area. It’s an area that was logged off a few years ago, and it has a vast swamp that borders the logged area. Thick woods and swamp on public land have us thinking it’s going to be a good location.
We set the trail camera to video mode and look forward to getting in to check them over the following weekend!
August 13th – Ice Age Trail walk-in lake offers nice crappies
This trip was supposed to have an early morning start time, but due to thunderstorms, we had a seven-hour delay. Dad and I were to meet Kurt at 5:30 am to start our walk into the little lake located just off an Ice Age trail. Kurt had found this lake a couple of years ago while on a winter scouting trip. We have fished it a couple of times since; it takes some effort to get your canoe or kayak into this location, but it’s a good time once you locate the lake.
As we arrived at the location, I did some looking around the primitive campsite area and stored that away for an upcoming winter camping outing that will include ice fishing. As we unloaded Kurt’s kayak and my canoe from our carts, a father and son had come down the ice age trail. They had shared with us that the son has a goal to walk the entire Ice age trail system. We discussed how neat of a goal that was, and they carried on with their journey. If you would like to learn more about the Ice Age trail system in Wisconsin, I have included a link to a great website as a resource of information. Click here!
As Dad and I pushed off in the canoe, he threw his line in the water to start a tactic that we call canoe trolling. This tactic is a simple technique, just paddle/drift real slow until you get a hit. I had not even tied on my jig head, and Dad already had his first fish caught. It took me a bit longer before I had landed my first fish; I think Dad had already caught a half dozen by then.
Kurt was fairing pretty well in his solo efforts in the kayak. As with most times outdoors, a couple of hours had gone by in a blink of an eye, and we had a couple of nice stringers full of black crappies. Knowing that this lake is small, we had decided we had our limit for the three of us. Keeping just under ten fish per guy is plenty for the freezer.
The journey back out took forever; we had to backtrack to locate the other half of Kurt’s fishing pole that ended up getting snagged on a branch, and then it took all of his line off the spool. So when you walk the trail four times, you are getting your workout in for the day!
August 15th – Bear Baits are getting action
Saturday morning arrived, and I waited out on the deck, enjoying coffee, tunes, and taking some time to write for Thankful Outdoors. I couldn’t wait for Craig, Dad, Corey, to pick me up to check the baits to see if we were having any success in the locations that were chosen almost a week ago.
As we walk into the first bait station, we can see that it was tore about, we grinned with excitement as we pulled the SD card from the trail camera. As we put the card in the viewfinder, we realized that we had mounted the camera to high and didn’t get much for video. We could tell that we had an average-sized bear coming into the bait from the little bit of footage that we did capture.
We gathered the oil-soaked logs that had been thrown about like lincoln logs and reassembled the bait station. A discussion was had about changing the tree location that we had planned on setting our stands in, and the trail camera was relocated to a better spot to capture better video.
The second station took us some time to locate as I had forgotten my Garmin GPS at home, which had our trail marked, and we didn’t do an outstanding job of marking our path when we went for the first time. After a group search, we finally located the bear bait, and this one was a mess.
You could already see the trail being made by visits from the bear, we pulled the SD card and started to watch the video, there were all kinds of bear activity on this station. The bear in the area had visited that station every day that week, and we were even more excited to see some of the activity was happening during legal shooting hours.
We put this bait station back together and marked a better trail so that we didn’t have to struggle so hard to check on this set when we come back this upcoming Saturday. We are looking forward to September 9th, which is opening day for Craig’s season.
In closing, I hope you find a way to get into the outdoors, create your adventure and memories, but most importantly, find a way to “Celebrate the Experience.” Go check out www.thankfuloutdoors.com for more content and share your “Celebrate the Experience” moment with us!
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Author: News Desk
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