Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Are You Ready for Sikas

 

 Whether you started early in the summer or are just now getting out there the following are some tips that may be helpful in getting you “up-to-snuff”. I wrote this article last year and it pertains pre any start up. Good luck this season ... let me know if any of these "hints" helped you.  

·         Sikas leave lots of visible evidence that they are using the area. Stags mark areas with wallows; the equivalent of a whitetail’s scrape. They are normally found on islands, tumps, or fingers of land that are slightly elevated above the water covered part of their habitat. These muddy holes average one to two feet in diameter and stink as the stags often urinate in them then wallow or roll around in them just like bull elk do. During the heavy rut you can often smell the stags before you see them. They also thrash and rub bushes and pine saplings and break off common reed (phragmitis communis) stalks. Trails are fairly easy to find and follow in a marsh. As with other species check for trails and droppings. Of course, you can’t beat physical sightings. Trail cameras can tell you a lot about the sikas using your area. 

·         Identifying areas where bugling is occurring gives you great advantage in knowing where the stags like to hang out if trophy racks are your thing. The best times to listen are sunrise and sunset but that doesn’t mean you can’t hear them at any time during the day especially rut time. Make sure you arrive early and stay until the end of legal shooting time. The best stags I’ve taken have been cruising at mid day.  High temperatures will sometimes tend to shut them up.  

·         Make vocalizations as sikas are very vocal animals and you can call in males and females alike. In calling stags you appeal to 1) their dominance and 2) sex drive. Challenge a bugling stag with a bugle and/or growl and you’ll find out quickly if he thinks he’s the badest stag in the phrag. With hunting sikas through the years, I’ve found that you usually can’t call a stag 300 or 400 yards across a marsh. So, you need to move to the stag’s core area which, often times, is a thick phragmitis or briar bed. It’s important to be quiet and not blow the stag out of the area. Once you get set up close to his bedroom, a challenging bugle can get him to close the distance quickly looking to make contact with the intruding stag. Use some whines, soft whistles or chirps (hind/cow talk) and you may sweet-talk him in. Hinds and calves also respond to all of the sounds. You can team up with a friend; one calling with the other out front. Always be cognizant of wind direction when setting up. Distances can vary depending on the weapon used. The Sika Seducer is the premier call marketed and sold by myself and in stores in the area. Elk calls can be modified as well..

  • When hunting the sika marshes it’s good to use a GPS or compass as the marshes all look similar at night and even sometimes during the day. I sometimes will tie a green or orange, six inch snap light or light stick (best time to find these are at Halloween) up in a tree. If I have to head out into the marsh to find a sika that’s been hit I can easily orient again. 
  • Use Google Earth, Bing maps or a similar program to help in your quest for taking a sika. The satellite images available now are invaluable in helping you understand a lot about the vegetation features in the territory you are hunting in. Small islands of vegetation, phragmites beds, openings in heavy cover and mud flats will be very apparent. 

  • You’ve seen the vegetation called phragmites ( sometimes called phrag or common reed) if you’ve been in sika territory. The leaves are about 2” wide and 20” long. In August and September  it develops a feathery-looking plume at the top of a stem which grows to a height of 10’ to 12’.  It normally grows in clumps or beds, often out-competing other marsh plants. It spreads by seed dispersal as well as by rhizomes or an under –the-surface root system. These dense beds provide travel corridors and protective cover that sikas absolutely love. Fight your way into one of these beds and you’ll see what I mean. Especially during the rut, stags love to cruise these beds in search for hinds in estrus. Find a climbable tree inside a bed and you’ll surely see deer although there are not many openings. Station yourself between two beds and you’ve found a great spot as they move from one bed to the other. 

  • In typical wetland vegetation still hunting works well. Sneaking along quietly in heavy cover can put you face to face with sikas quite frequently. A subtle splash here and there along with some low-volume vocalizations sounds quite natural and can actually draw a deer to you. Make sure to move into the wind to avoid blowing your cover. They spend most of their lives not able to see more than 20 yards in front of them. You can definitely use this fact to your advantage. 

  • The marshes that sika like so much are interlaced with rivers, creeks and guts. Shallow draft boats with Go-Devil motors, kayaks and canoes are ideal for getting into this favored habitat. Why not utilize a boat as they can get you into places that many hunters can’t get to. You can cover a lot of territory and see a lot of interesting things out there besides. This mode of travel might even help you find some great duck hunting spots as well. 

  •  It’s important to pay attention to weather conditions as unusually high water levels will temporarily move sikas onto higher ground. Change your tactics and hunt the islands and higher ground in these conditions. Hurricane Irene may have done just this. Frozen marshes with a lot of ice will do the same. 

  • Don’t neglect hunting natural foods that produce hard mast like acorns and soft mast like persimmons. Feeding or baiting works extremely well for sikas as well. Corn is the most popular draw followed by others like: sweet feeds, corn/soybean mixes, small grains like sorghum and pellets. Spin feeders, drop feeders and just plain ole spreading it on the ground will do the trick. Sikas love food plots and agricultural grain crops as well. Take note of any persimmon trees in your sika hunting area as sikas, like most other mammals, really love munching on them

  • Sika decoys work in the right situations. Decoys need to be seen for a long distance like on the edge of a needle grass / short grass marsh or food plot. Sikas, especially stags, will come investigate them especially during the rut. Give them a try. 

  • Storms and full moons have put water into places that rarely have water. With that comes mosquitoes; usually lots of them. Do yourself a favor and invest in a Thermo Cell. These devices will keep the mosquitoes off of you which will in turn keep you from making a lot of unnecessary motion. The light smell doesn’t seem to bother them. The next best thing is a bug suit that I often use; sometimes both. 

  • Ground blinds for sikas?…they work well. Normal precautions using them must be taken however. Make sure they’re scent free and you place it downwind. Unlike with turkey hunting, it helps to have shoot- through netting covering the openings. It also helps to brush it up to blend in with existing vegetation and/or tuck it in some existing shrubs, needle rush or common reed. 

  • Practice shooting often as these are small animals with small kill zones. The smallest whitetail target will make a large sika target. 

  • The jury is out concerning scents and lures as I don’t think enough hunters have experimented enough with them to give a definitive thumbs up or down. If they have…no one is talking. One good sika hunter I know told me he once had sikas licking the leaves that he had sprayed an apple flavored foam on. Downwind Scents Foam has never scared them away for me. 

  •  Knee or hip boots are advised depending on the water levels in your hunting area.  

·         Concerning the proper camo; if you’re hunting from the ground then it’s good to match the habitat. Otherwise being still, scent free and playing the wind is much more important
 

·         The peak of the rut occurs around the third week in October. I like to hunt late September and early October best as stag movement and bugling really increases then.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Getting Ready for Hunting Season

Been working on all kinds of hunting related activities:
 1)  getting hunting spots ready - treestand sites, herbicide trails, etc.
 2) watched deer coming out in the evening - about 30 each night with a couple of fairly nice 
     bucks 3 1/2 and 4 1/2.
 3) I've been working out since we came back from our cruise to boost my upper body strength.
     Am happy with progress and my will to stick to it. I wish my weight would go down as
     quickly. The upper body strength is more important to me right now.
 4) Re fletched some arrows and have been shooting the recurve quite a bit. Am pleased with
     that aspect.
 5) I was having trouble with my progressive lenses and seeing the 5 site pins on my compound.
     So, I purchased a single pin , movable sight and sold the other one. I've been shooting with 
     long -time friend Dennis and he had one of these sights and shot well with it. We got mine set
     up on our first meeting. Yesterday we shot again and tweeked settings. I ended the day 
     shooting a 24" group at 80 yards ( 80 is fun but I'd not try an animal that far). 

Dennis and I talked about our elk trip next year and finished by shooting an elk target at 50 yds.

A friend called and invited me for the first day of dove season. He said there are more doves so
far this season as hes ever seen. The sunflower field is in perfect condition. 

Stay tuned for a lot more with some great photos ...

Summer Travel Over - Hunting Season Next Week

My wife and I purposed to travel this summer. First on the agenda, after school ended, was to get to Atlanta and visit our daughter, her husband and our grandkids. What a great time we had. The kids had grown up alot since Christmas. We did some special things but the most important was to just play with the kids. Mission accomplished.

We were back a week and then left to celebrate 40 wonderful years of marriage. We flew into Montreal where we started our Holland America cruise out the St Larwrence stopping at all the great Canadian Ports and ending up in Boston where we stayed an extra day. A great trip indeed (except for Alice's knee).

After a few doctors visits and some quick scheduling, Alice had here knee operated on ... fixing a badly torn miniscus. After two weeks of recovery we took on phase #3 of our summer travel.

Our daughter Kelly and her two sons, Alice and I headed to Myrtle Beach for 4 days. The weather was great and we had a lot of fun. Alice and I survived some high pressure sales techniques trying to get us to buy a timeshare. They don't like to take NO for an answer. We left Myrtle and headed west to Atlanta where we all get to be together at Courtneys. We loved the Coke Museum and LeggoLand. Got home in good shape and Alice moved into "School Mode" The school year for kids starts this Monday.

Sales started picking up, as expected, for the Sika Seducer ... especially overseas. I spent the week putting packages together and getting them in all the stores and added a couple.

A great summer for sure .... thank you Lord for good health for all of us.