“The Answer is Blowin’ in the Wind”

     When Cy Weichert’s e-mail came across my screen last fall I was at Kindred Spirits chasing whitetails. It was pretty close to prime time and the last thing I felt like doing was reading e-mails but I clicked on Cy’s because he is a no nonsense kind of deer guy who doesn’t waste people’s time with a whole bunch of junk mail.

Boy am I glad I did, because Cy’s e-mail introduced us to a new weather website specifically designed for hunters (and anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts). Now he had my attention because if there is one thing I need to know as a deer hunter and planter of food plots, it’s the weather.

I clicked on the www.scoutlookweather.com  link and immediately discovered Cy was talking our language. For starters I was able to locate and get a quick and easy hour by hour forecast for Kindred Spirits. It included the usual stuff like temp. precipitation, wind direction and speed, but it also offered free solunar times, barometric pressure, tides and other weather tools organized in categories based on your quarry of the day.   ScoutLook would provide me  complete weather services that are geocoded right down to the exact locations of my tree stands, turkey roosts, duck blinds or favorite fishing spots (or other activity locations year-round). Pretty neat stuff.

This in-and-of itself is great but the real bonus (in terms of deer hunting) came when I discovered what else I could do with the site.

With the click of a mouse and a little dragging I could pull up a nifty aerial photo of my hunting property. A little zooming and I could locate and mark and label all my stands and best of all, there was a nifty little feature called “scent cone” which showed the path my scent would travel as it left my stand. It read in real time but I could plug in any time I wished.

That’s right, if I was thinking about hunting my “pond stand”  this afternoon all I had to do was locate the stand on the map, enter the time I would be hunting it and there superimposed on the aerial was a  scent cone downwind of the stand. No more guessing where the wind would be at a given location at a given time. With the “select a time” feature I could even pick out tomorrow’s stand based on the wind velocity and direction forecast well in advance of hunt time. I was psyched and ready to kill some deer!

Anyone who has attended any of our seminars or read our books and articles knows full well that we believe wind direction is the #1 factor affecting hunting success---especially when it comes to hunting mature deer. The wind will determine how, where, and often the times when a mature deer will move. A whitetail “sees” the woods with his nose like a human “sees” with his eyes.

We have little confidence in scent control systems and products and are convinced that the only way to beat a big buck is to hunt down wind and stay down wind. We frequently arrive at a stand only to discover that the wind is wrong and we need to get to another stand. More than once in a season we change stands in the middle of a shift just because the wind shifted and is now pumping our scent into a bedding or approach area. In other words, we constantly pay attention to wind direction and hunt accordingly.

The ScoutLook weather system would give us a useful tool in predicting wind direction on our property.  Because wind movement is strongly influenced by topography and things like spruce clusters and creek beds, we will need to check the predicted scent cone against the actual cone (as found on the stand with powder or bubbles, or wind floaters) but in time we would be able to square predicted wind cones with actual readings taken from all of our stands. ScoutLook’s “SetZone” Wind Map for Waterfowlers and “DriftPoint” Fishing Wind Map are equally as effective for their respective sports.

Having hour by hour stand specific wind and weather info at the click of a mouse is only one of the great features of ScoutLook. Being able to locate your stand on an aerial photo and “play” with different wind directions is another. Since discovering ScoutLook, I’ve spent hours locating my stands on aerials and studying how various winds move across the stand locations. I’m able to “guesstimate” the effects of topography on the wind movement and check it out later when I get to the stand. Plus, it’s a whole lot of fun.

ScoutLook also contains additional useful whitetail information written by deer experts such as the effects of the moon and temperature on deer movement. Sunrise and sunset times are given as well as those tried and true solunar game movement tables. There is also a record keeping system for hunters interested in keeping track of how weather affects deer movement on their particular hunting areas. Basically this site provides you with all the necessary weather tools to take all of the weather guesswork out of hunting your property. 

Weather reporting has come a long way since we hung our first outdoor thermometer on the porch of Kindred Spirits.  We still like checking the old Coca-Cola thermometer but when it comes to accurate hour by hour forecasting and choosing stands to hunt you can’t beat ScoutLook. ScoutLook gives you all the forecast information you need to pack for a week in the woods or squeeze in a two hour sit after work. It will tell you which stands to hunt, when to hunt them. Heck, with a little recordkeeping and paying attention to detail it will probably give you a hunting game plan for the whole season. There is no limit as to what a clever person can do with the ScoutLook weather program.

 We strongly recommend you visit www.scoutlookweather.com.  It is a first class, year-round weather source. It will make you a better deer hunter and maybe even teach you something about fishing to boot.

2003 was the year of the ground blind at the NorthCountry Demo Center. We tried a variety of models (pop-ups and rigid). Each time we set up a new blind, we sat in it that night to check out the deer's response to the new arrival. Yearlings and fawns all came within ten yards, while the older more mature animals held back just a bit.

Our favorite blind of the year was a rigid box model by Shadow Hunter. This beauty is truly the "Cadillac" of ground blinds. It's carpeted, insulated, wrapped in camo-clad aluminum, with amazingly easy to use windows that slide quietly.

To give the Shadow Hunter Blinds a true test, we set one overlooking a brassicas plot, while we elevated the another Shadow Hunter Blind over one of our browse cuts. As we all know, late hunting season can be brutal with cold temperatures, snow and wind. Single digit temperatures and nasty hunting conditions can really put a damper on the amount of time you spend on stand come December - Not with the Shadow Hunter! While our neighbors were sitting by the fire in camp dreaming of deer, we were seeing the deer, sitting in propane-heated, short-sleeve comfort in Shadow Hunter Blinds.

Shadow Hunter Ground Blinds are here to stay at the NorthCountry Whitetails Demo Center. “NorthCountry Whitetails “Tested and Approved”! For more information visit www.shadowhunter1.com

 ARCHERY SHOP

     Most QDM enthusiasts are serious bowhunters. We certainly are.  In fact Craig has been in the archery industry for almost 25 years and Neil was literally raised with a bow in his hands, taking his first big game animal (a bear) at the tender age of 12. Any how, we know bows, we know broadheads and we know a good archery set-up when we see one.

We also know a good archery dealer when we see one and that’s exactly what we saw when we visited the newly opened Heritage Outdoors in Phelps NY.  Heritage is run by Mike Price a long time archery guy and world class (insert certification) coach. Mike has been in archery for over 20 years and has won his share of championships but his real claim to fame is the ability to help people become better shooters and bowhunters.

  Mike does this by offering state of the art archery gear at fair prices. 
He doesn’t sell junk equipment or fad products, no archery gimmicks,
just rock solid equipment from reliable manufacturers.  Equipment that won’t let you down when you need it most (like when that 5 ½ year old buck finally shows up)

But, it doesn’t end there.  Heritage has state-of-the–art bow tuning equipment to ensure a proper tune and set-up. They have indoor shooting lanes to try out your gear and three angle video camera gear to help you analyze your shooting form and style. Best of all they have Mike Price, who is without equal when it comes to setting up shooter with the right bowhunting gear.

If you live in the Syracuse-Rochester NY area you need to be a regular at Heritage Outdoors.  Besides offering top-of the- line archery equipment they have a beautiful and challenging 3-D outdoor course and all kinds of known distance targets set up for fair weather shooting.  Their indoor lanes will help you beat the winter doldrums and stay sharp in the off season.  If you hail from Albany, Buffalo, Erie or Binghamton you need to visit Mike once or twice a year to keep you and your archery equipment in tip-top form.  Trust us it will be worth the drive.
      Oh, we almost forgot, Mike, and the whole Heritage gang, speaks QDM. They get it! They are one of us.  Neil does food plot and habitat workshops for Heritage and they really know bowhunting and deer management.

When Tom James toured our research facility late last June, we had no idea that four months later he would come back toting a totally new piece of equipment he called the Firminator.

Test one: We regularly over-seed our plots in early spring with clover and brassicas and decided this was a great time to begin testing our new Firminator. In years past, we have simply spread our seed with a hand spreader during the spring thaw, giving us germination rate of about 50%. Not this year. With our new Firminator, we were able to straighten out the implement's adjustable discs and lower them to cut a one to two inch deep slot in existing plots. The discs spread the ground while the spreader dropped seed evenly over a six-foot swath, which was followed by the culti-packer pressing the seed into the ground. With the Firminator method we were able to seed about two acres in half an hour. Best of all, germination increased to nearly 95%. We were amazed! The Firminator was our early season ticket to getting the Demo Center ready for visitors allowing us to have several acres completed in just one day. We were sold, but it gets even better.

Test two: We took the Firminator to some bare plots and some with a thick base of sod. This time, we offset the discs to better work the ground and adjusted the dig to about six inches. In only a single pass with the four-foot trailing version we were ready to seed. We had never seen an implement as capable as this! Next, we put all three features to the test with the disc leading the spreader and the culti-packer firming the seedbed. Talk about perfection. We could see why Tom had named it the Fiminator, gawking at our newly planted plot with its perfectly packed seedbed. All we needed was a little moisture and we were ready to go. After some rain, as in test one, in days we witnessed 95% germination!

We were sure we had found the perfect all-in-one food plot implement. We know what it is like to put your hard earned cash and more importantly your time into a food plot. If you are questioning if other “all -in-one” implements are really doing what they claim or you are sick of having to create nearly perfect soil conditions in order to use your current “all-in-one model"; look no further because the Firminator is NorthCountry Whitetails “Tested and Approved”. To learn more about the Firminator visit www.thefirminator.com

The Perfect Food Plot Tractor?

If we had to design the perfect food plot and small property management tractor from the ground up it would probably look a whole bunch like the TC 40 DA from New Holland. Our 2006 model arrived early summer and our food plot work has been a whole lot easier ever since. In fact, our planting and all around utility work has been down right pleasant.

Affectionately called “Little Blue” the TC 40 DA has more than enough muscle for any and all food plot work. We put in a dozen or so food plots in some of the nastiest rock infested clay soil in North America. Most of them were done with a 72” roto-tiller crawling along at a couple of miles per hr. Average time: 1hr. 15 min. per acre. As a test, we also did a few acres with a two bottom plow and an aggressive cutting disc. The tractor never bogged down, never heated up and never even thought about asking for a break.
“Little Blue” really shone on our smaller, irregular shaped hunting plots most of which are less than an acre. Unlike some of our bigger tractors, she handily wove in and out of the tightest spots leaving no spot “unturned”. Her front wheel assist came in handy when the going got tough crossing seeps, springs and pulling out of some pretty vertical drainage ditches. The same spots that have stopped much larger 2 wheel drive tractors in the past.

The easy to adjust 3 pt. hitch hooks up in a snap and the drive controls are highly intuitive. Hydrostatic drive keeps shifting to a minimum and gives you something useful to do with your right foot. These features are super handy for weekend enthusiasts who are more comfortable driving a pickup than a serious tractor. Don't underestimate the importance of easy to understand intuitive controls. They are really important when you get into “sticky” situations and brain forgets you aren't driving a pickup.