END OF YEAR WRAP-UP

As 2008 comes slowly to a close,I wanted to post a few pictures of some of the tremendous bucks killed this fall.Although we had a terrible winter last year,as you can see there were some survivors that were true trophies in anyones eyes! First of all,I would like to congratulate Steve Eldridge on his mind-blowing accomplishments both in the field and on the water here in New Brunswick.Steve is a forest ranger in the west central part of the province and in September of this year he caught the new New Brunswick record Muskie in the Saint John River.In doing so,he became the first fisherman to break the 50 in. mark.His Muskie was 52 in. long and this fish has been accepted by Musky N.B. as the new provincial record! The irony of this story is that the Dept. of Natural Resources doesn't recognize muskie as a game fish and here we have a DNR officer setting the NB record.As if that wasn't a big enough story,Steve turned around and killed a mammoth buck that is reported to score in the 190's Boone and Crockett! If his accomplishments aren't formally recognized in some way,then we as sportsmen here in this province are truly missing the boat. The other photos in this post are one of George Chase's new N.B.archery non-typical record buck taken this past fall.Now for those of you that don't know George,he was responsible for introducing our potential for trophy bucks to some very influential American sportsmen associated with White-tail Magazine back in the 1980's. George was also responsible for putting together the first book of N.B. Record Bucks.Again,we have a sportsman taking it to the next level,as George new full well what kind of a deer he needed to break the non-typical record and he absolutely shattered it! The other photo is one of a Mr. Prosser,a 75 yr. old farmer again from the west central part of the province with a huge non-typical he killed this past season.I don't know the official score,but as you can see,this buck is trophy calibre all the way. I have photos of a few typicals that were taken this past fall that are equally as impressive,but I don't have the space for them in this post. We are between seasons right now with rabbits occupying most of our hunting time,while we are getting ready for ice fishing to start on Jan.1st.We will have our fishing shacks all set up on Grand Lake and Salmon Harbour,complete with bait.Target species will be smelt,white fish.burbot and pickerel.Please give me a call or send an e-mail for more info. on any of our adventures and we will arrange your trip in no time. Ken and I,as well as our guides,would like to take this opportunity to wish our friends and sports a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,so Tight Lines and keep the wind in your face! We hope to see you all in the New Year!

N.B. SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR?

KEN'S LAST MINUTE BUCK

The 2008 deer season is now over and the projected kill was pretty much right on the money. The DNR had predicted a kill of around eight thousand deer and the tally is around seven thousand eight hundred,with two stations yet to turn in their numbers. The accuracy of the projected numbers means that the DNR has a good handle on what is happening with our deer herd and this translates into better management of the herd. We were blessed with a snow-fall the last day of the season and many hunters across the province hit the trail hard and were rewarded with some nice bucks for their efforts. As you can see from the photo in this post,Ken was amongst those lucky hunters to harvest a buck on the last day,actually in the final minutes of the season.Now many of you are probably thinking Kenny tracked this deer in the snow and bagged him on the trail. Not so. In the previous post I said the best way to get one of these Big Woods bucks is to wait for him to cross when he gets running around and thats just how Ken got him.Now if you know Ken at all,you know he has trouble sitting.But he played himself out the two weeks prior to the final day,so he decided to sit on a crossing where this buck had been travelling with some consistency during the season.I had told Ken that this buck would be killable when he got running and sure enough,Ken had only been there for about ten minutes and he blew his deer call and the buck walked out about ten yards from where he was standing.What a great way to end the season! The other photo is of Jamies buck he got this year.Now both of these bucks were the same age and weight,but Ken's had a little bit bigger rack,but they both were nice bucks. The biggest buck entered in the local big buck contest was two hundred and twenty -four lbs. Although this is not huge by New Brunswick standards,it is still a pretty nice buck. I'd like to congratulate all the successful deer hunters and hopefully this year our winter will be kinder to the deer and us two legged critters,too!