Ep 4 Norm Brethour

Norm Brethour is an avid big game hunter from southern Ontario. Norm has spent his whole life hunting and fishing and has hunted all over the province. Norm gets into how his hunting career started as a kid by plucking ducks for some hunters and getting paid to do so. He tells us about his multiple moose and deer hunts. Norm has over 50 years of hunting experience and I know for a fact we didn't cover even half of what he has done in this episode! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello listeners, welcome back to the Game and Gun Podcast. I'm your host, Ian. Today we are with Norm. I forgot it already, Norm. What is it? Breather. I apologize. We are here with Norm Breather. Now, Norm has over 50 plus years of hunting and fishing experience, and this guy has hunted all over the place. He just from the past two days talking to him on the phone. I know that he's got stories to tell. You know, he hunts everything from every big game species to small games. Typically, if if it if it bleeds, he can kill it. So, Norm, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

I'm top shelf.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Good. I'm glad to hear it. Thanks for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Having hunting withdrawals, I must say, at this time of year.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah, it's nice to just sort of when you get those hunting withdrawals, it's good just to talk about it with somebody, huh?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's kind of all I think about most of the time, but still trying to get an efficient bug out of me.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

And uh at the same time, then it's time to be getting setting up for cameras and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yeah, it's coming around real quick.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Haven't been into the bush lately. Uh gotta stay away from the bugs because it's coming.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, I know. Those bugs are getting real bad out here nowadays. We gotta we gotta friggin' do something about that. But um, well, you're here, we're talking, let's dive right into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

I I am cut I am shooting guns on the weekend. There you go. And the one thing about guns, if you're gun hunter, let alone bow hunting, yeah, you should stay out shooting your bow as often as you can. It's a great time think time through the summer to be shooting your bow. But when it comes to guns with me, 50% is hunting and 50% is shooting the guns. And shooting the guns is it's big fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

No, it definitely is. I like shooting too, and you know, it's it's a good way, like when you're shooting your gun, you know, ammo's gotten so expensive now, but you don't care. You don't care when you're just having fun, so it's it's it's a few hundred bucks depending on what you're doing. Skeet shoot out on the trap range, get 250 shells, you know. That's gonna it costs you like 169, 180 bucks now.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So yeah, nowadays you're not really saving a lot of money if you're reloading and I shoot all hand loads, yeah, and I have all the reloading equipment, you're really not saving a lot of money. But the cost of ammo and how much it's gone up, in particular, even in just the last few years, blows my mind. Yeah, you know, we used to get a box of 410 shells for $10, $12. Now, if you can get one for under 40 tax in, you're lucky, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Yeah, I I remember you came to the house one day, and you're saying, Ian, buddy, you got any 410? Because you were you were heading up moose hunting or something that going up shooting gross up in Nikina area.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

So, I mean, we shoot a lot of birds, we shoot rough sprucies. We also get some sharpies there. Uh, it's getting pretty growing in up there now, and it's getting harder to find the sharpies, and they're coming a little bit later. But we still do get some sharp tails. But I mean, we got roads there, if you want to call them roads, they're not. Uh some of them we walk where there's so many gross, you can kick them out of the way. But we used to shoot them with 22s, that's all we ever shot them with when we're when I was younger in the moose hunting days. We'd shoot them all with 22s. And I had a couple Browning Lever Action 22s, great little guns for killing them. But we had a few years where they were shy. And uh my aunt always used the 410, and after I saw that 410 being shot, I've owned a half a dozen of them since. You know, they're they're meat in a pot, is those 410s, and they're they're a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, when we did a when I did a moose hunt up in Red Lake, we were fortunately my buddy who had the tag, he was working at the time. He was the he was the conservation officer up there at that time when we went. So the first two days we weren't able to hunt because he was working, so me and my buddy just went and we went and shot a couple grouse. And I was using my old double barrel 410 that I bought off of a I bought at a gun show for like 200 bucks. And that thing is just a grouse's worst nightmare.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Oh god. I spent uh two weeks in the bush, camped out in the bush before my cousins showed up who were my moose hunting partners. And I get up in the morning, put the coffee on on the Coleman stove, walk up the laneway with my moccasins on, shoot a couple of grouse, come back, some bacon in the pan, some grouse breasts, and a couple eggs, and that was breakfast.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Breakfast of champions right there. Yeah, you got her, buddy. Nice hot pot of coffee and a nice cool October, November air. Oh, fantastic! Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Things were different then because the moose hunt used to open up in earlier October. Now with it opening up so late in the 18th. I mean, it used to hunt, it would open anywhere from say the third, the fourth, to the seventh. Now they've got it all backed up to the 18th. Used to be we'd stay a couple of weeks, moose hunt, and by the time we were getting out of there, we're fleeing out of there with the snow. Now, I mean, our climate's changing. I noticed it a lot now, the difference in the falls now. But in the day, oh my god, I mean, guys would have to hunt out of snow machines, or a lot of the places we hunt you can't access. Or some of the water you want to hunt is getting too frozen on the shorelines to even get out to hunt. Tough hunts, you know, it was different.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah, no, it definitely would have been different. But um, hey, at least you still you you you did what you could, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yeah, we killed moose.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, hey, you filled your tags, that's the important part. Yeah, a lot of guys aren't able to get that done. And you know, some in most places, well, not most, I guess, but in this, you know, uh middle to southern Ontario sort of area, before you start getting into the big northwestern area, you know, your your moose season's only a week long.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Yeah, there's a lot of areas that have these short little seasons, eh? Yeah, you know, unless you're up north there. I mean, it goes, it still goes to December 15th. But uh getting the tags is the issue. So back in the day, uh you could buy a tag. When you got a tag, if you you had to apply for a tag, you only needed three or four guys in our area back then, 21A, 21B, but we owned a 21B. So you automatically got a calf tag. So one year I got a I got my bull tag. My cousin got a calf cow tag. I think it was the second or third day we shot bull cow and two calves. Next year we go in, my partner he gets the bull tag. He we drop him off second morning, shoots a beautiful big honkin bull. And uh my buddy comes back on the butt-tuggy to camp because there's two bulls down the road. My uncle still had a tag, so we rip down the road. I go walking in the back of a trail. Well, don't I cut off a cow with two calves? So I shot the two calves. And uh that's nice to have there's only four guys in camp, so it's nice to have that meat. Now you get big groups of guys, man, they get one freaking tag. You're you're lucky if you get a bag of a package of ground and a roast, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yeah, no, I I've seen I've seen pictures all over the internet and stuff. You know, you get some guys out there that it's like 20 guys to a camp. It's like, where are you whose property is this? Where are you guys going? How much money do you got if you're doing like a a guided hunt or something, or at some um you're at some well, whatever, a guiding service, and you know, you got 20 guys there, and that's gonna be. I don't really know what they're charging now. It depends where you are, but it's not really cheap.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Even if you have a lot of guys that go into camp, you meet up there, set up one or two camps. You got 10, 12 guys in each camp. There's a lot of logistics in that. You spend more time messing around than you do hunting. And personally, myself, I'm a real lone hunter. Uh I do the odd deer hunts with some guys. When I'm hunting myself, whether it's the bow hunt or the gun hunt, or I'm just watching deer, I like to be by myself. And, you know, I know what the winds are doing, I know what I'm doing, I know there's no interruptions. It's kind of a solo thing for me. And the the moose hunt's gotten that way too. We've always had four guys, sometimes five guys in our camp for moose. And uh now I hunt with a guy who's a 22-year military man. Him and his wife cut and wrap bears for two outfitters. And uh uh he's my moose hunting partner. He traps beavers full time. So I went up last fall for three weeks. I saw bears and multiple bears every day. The number of bears is astronomical. I'm I I'm I'm thinking that those years that we didn't have the spring bear hunt had a lot to do with it. So not being able to get moose tags, I don't think I'll get a tag this year either. You know, I don't have enough points. I got eight. So we put in for the second one. Yeah, so really don't think so. But a lot of times we'll have a guy in town, just 45 people that live in a small town where I go. Somebody there might have a tag, and they're older, whatever. They want their tag filled, they they they will come to us. Now we got a tag down on, you know. So I'll take the tag holder with me and go, come on, we're going. I'll do the calling. You know, and that's kind of what we've been doing. But shooting bears for guys that can't get tags for moose, that bear hunt is an awesome option because there's so many of them and it's a fun hunt, and there's nothing wrong with eating bears, man.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

No, there there absolutely isn't. I I know firsthand because I've shot and eaten a few of my own bears myself, and you hear a lot of people saying bear meat ain't no good. Bear meat ain't no good. Okay, well, you know what? Maybe if you're shooting a 600-pound black bear, they don't try they don't usually get to that size, but if you're shooting a big, dirty, fat old boar, it's gonna be like anything. You shoot an eight-year-old buck out on a you know, an old eight-year-old swamp buck, he's gonna taste like shit too.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Hey, anything over anything over 200, I'm happy to be eating. Yeah, even if it's a buck eighty, but I like them about 250 to 300. That's a good freaking bear. You don't want to shoot small bears. There's no freaking meat on them, you know. They're hardly worth the effort. But now, my buddy, I was telling you, he cut and cut and wrapped for a lot of years, he and his wife, for some outfitters. And uh we cut and wrap all our own meat. Nobody touches my game meat. My deer bear moves, we do our own meat. So, anyhow, a lot of the American boys tend to come up there bow hunting in the spring, and guys out of the city, they don't know enough about eating the meat. They're up there for the camadre with their buddies, they like the furs and the head, that kind of thing. They might take a little bit of meat home, back strap or a couple of rows. They don't know what to do with the stuff half the time. So I had to tell my buddy, quit showing them what to do with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I was coming home with coolers of meat. I go up in the fall, he's got it all ready for me. You know, do I shoot you a moose or a bear? Do you want meat? So just a couple of years ago, I come home with eight shanks off of bears. That's four bears. Shanks off of four bears. And I ran them down to the butcher shop down the road here, frozen. I got them to cut them all so they look like veal shank and use it all for a subuco. Fantastic, fantastic eating. But a lot of people they just don't know how to cook it. You're not taking a steak and throwing it in a barbecue like you're throwing a rib steak on a barbecue. It's the same thing with uh with with the moose or deer, too. Also, you don't cook a prime rib steak like you cook a blade roast, you know? And uh any meat you're cooking, well, slow cooker will look after anything.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah. I just got an I just got a new slow cooker uh last year for I guess it was for Christmas, I suppose. And my mother was asking me, uh, she's like, what do you want? I was like, I could use because I'm living on my own now, I like I could use this freaking slow cooker crock pot. And she's like, done. I was like, perfect. God bless her heart. I I've never been one to describe what I want. So I just wanted the little dial, three settings, low, medium, high. That's it. That's all you want. She got me the frickin' ninja one that can saute and sear and Christ, you could smoke meat on the damn thing, probably. It's got so many, it's got so many.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

She didn't get you one of those Instapots, did you?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

I don't know what it is. All I know is that it can do everything, and I'm intimidated by it.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

My mother bought me a slow cooker 35 years ago as a Christmas gift. And if it could tell stories, man, it makes the best venison stew in the world, man.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

You know, I don't doubt it.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

I do cottage rolls in it, I do stew, I do everything in it. Those slow cookers. Now, Lynn Bravo that owned the farm next door here. Her mother had passed, so she had all this stuff. She's getting rid of. There's a great big slow cooker there, brand frankin' new, man. So I told her, what do you want for that? Because they're selling the stuff out. She goes, Normie for you, it's yours. Okay, great. It's still sitting here, still hasn't been used because I'm using the one I got 35 years ago every time I go to one.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Yeah, too funny.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Too funny. Well, you got a good backup one, though, no, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Oh, yeah. So now you're talking about shooting deer, big deer.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Okay. Big deer. So I always pick a deer every year that I hunt. I got one. I I got one already that's in my area. That's going to be my target deer. I had one last year and I didn't shoot them, okay? But I got a deer there right now that I'm liking. But uh, as far as eating goes, the big deer, whether you're shooting uh uh a si four or a six point, or you're shooting at eight or a twelve, the deer around here, man, the only difference is the size of the back straps.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Because they are so good to eat. They're not eating all bark and bud like they do up in the big forest up in the say the Perry Sound district.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, they're they're eating actual crop. Have you noticed a difference in taste between a buck and a doe? Because I'm I'm pretty sure I have, because I've had times where like most growing up and everything, when we'd get a deer, it would be it'd be a young buck, but then you know, three bucks later we get a doe.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

I just didn't like it. I don't like it as a big thing. There's no testosterone, right? So I'll give you an example. A cow and a bull a cow and a bull moose, you can really taste the difference between a between a bull and a cow. My and I my cousin brought this to my attention when we first started killing moose. We've been pretty efficient at killing moose. And he says to me, When normally when you're eating this cow the first time we shot one, he says, You're gonna notice the difference between that and that bull, right? He says it's like it's like eating a milker, you know. He says the the texture and the the the meat, the flavor is just a little different. It doesn't have the testosterone.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

But so you're saying the testosterone makes it taste better.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So uh and I don't know if it does anything to the green and the meat. I really can't I wouldn't know that. But when it comes to eating doughs, well, and and the difference in the two, I'd be hard pressed to say, you know, maybe you're right. But I mean I do I grind a lot. I do a lot with ground, you know, venison meatballs and uh tortilla pies and that kind of stuff. I and I do my my cabbage casseroles with venison. But what I eat is the back straps and some steaks off the rear. Yeah, you know, and I I would rather grind as much as I can. You know, I don't mind a nice little venison roast. I prefer to cut it in steaks, you know. And I like to do my steaks in a cast iron pan, a little bit of onion and the way I do them. Or the backstraps, I cut cut the steaks. I don't keep any of the bone. And uh I do them on the queue. A little bit of olive oil on them, a little Montreal or black pepper, and and ah, baby, I'm eating them. So the deer that we shoot where we live here in farm country and which is broad in southern Ontario or Central Ontario, it's like eating meat. I call it meat candy. It is it's meat candy. It is very sweet. So I have a friend who got into got into the hunting of moose. His first hunts were to go back to Kippewa, I believe. And then he went up, came up with me one year up in the north, and he said to me, because his family's got farms in this area, and he said, Norm. Later on he tells me, he goes, I like the venison way better than the moose. I'm like, really? You know? I said, You're kidding. He says, No, no, I like the venison way better. So you can't compare the two, you know? That's like trying to compare uh a lamb to beef.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, you know. That's a completely different thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

I would say the closest thing you can compare a deer to is a goat. Because they are a freaking goat, you know? You wound one and spine it or something stupid like that. Nobody wants to make a bad shot, but let's say it does happen, and your deer goes down and he ain't dead yet, they start squawking and buying. They're they're they're squawking and buying, you would swear it was a goat.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

I've done it and I've heard it.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

And that was on that was my first buck I ever shot. So and that thing frickin roared, and I pumped another round into it because I was like, what is happening? I'm thinking to myself, I was only like I was either 14 or 15 when it happened, and this buck comes walking out from behind me, and it was his rack wasn't great, but he was an old buck because he was you could tell he was just on his down low. And I shot, and I just had an inaccurate gun I was using, but I got him in the spine and he went down and he just started roaring unreal.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

So so you're talking that also. I mean, I've shot some big deer, you've seen the heads, and uh, and you've shot some absolutely amazing deer yourself. But we're talking about shot, you know, you're saying it's a bad shot. A lot of times it's not necessarily the bad shot. There's other circumstances that that make it happen. That deer can move just that tiny little bit, or your angle's off, just a little things where the the shot that that can make that shot not quite right. It's I find it's more common with archery than gun. And a problem too with guns, especially if you're shooting guns, deer with black powder, for example, or slugs, a lot of guys will shoot a deer and they've shot that deer and it's ran off and died. They don't even realize they hit it. Because the the the the the bullet's not doing anything, it's zipping right through it. You know, you might see a little movement from the deer, but usually it'll do a kick, especially if you gut shot them. You all of a sudden there's a kick and that thing runs off. And you may never find that thing, you know. The only way you'll find it is because the coyotes are squawking or the crows are around it two days later, right? Yeah. So that's the whole thing is when you're shooting deer, is uh injuring them and recovering them are two different things. And uh I've had deer drop dead and I've had deer go a long way, man. A long way. I shot one out of a tree stand in the hardwoods, and it just as soon as I shot it, it just started running. No action or no nothing, man. And that thing ran for about 150 yards and never stopped. And that's I found it. Right. You know, I've I found it and which was nice. And uh like I said, we like to shoot big deer, but I don't have a problem shooting forkies. I don't have a problem shooting a fat doe. You know, I'm not a trophy hunter, I'm a meat hunter, so I mean, every deer you shoot is your trophy.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

And uh there's nothing nicer than walking up and finding your deer. I've done a lot of afternoon hunts where I shot with them shot them with a bow and they've gone in and they've taken off into the into the bush. And I'm in there with a flashlight looking for them, man. You know, because you can't leave them, the coyotes are gonna get them. So uh you're shining the flashlight and all of a sudden the eyes light up. Well, you know, all of a sudden the eye lights up, and you go, so there's like a like a cat tack in the bush, right? There it is, you know? No, it's the best feeling. Oh, when you've got when you I don't care if it's a doe, a spiky, uh forky, a big buck.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

You got your six, seven months of food there. I've now I since you know I've always kind of I've I've shot all sizes of deer. I've shot you know year and a half olds, I've shot two and a half, three and a half, four and a half. But I I do really like um I do really like shooting bigger bucks. I've only I've I okay I've only really shot one, as you could, as most people would say, is a big buck. But I've all but for the past few years I've just let other smaller bucks walk because one, I wasn't living alone at the time, and two, I also had other meat. So I would go out in September and do a bear hunt, shoot a bear. Now it's okay, I got meat in the freezer. It's nice to have deer meat, it's nice to have a plethora of different things to eat, but I only got so much freezer space myself, and it's only me and one other person living in the same house. So, really, how much can we do at the same time? So I do like 'cause on my game cameras, I've I've showed you a few pictures. Yep. The friggin' deer out there. Use I get three that a lot of people would crap their pants if they even saw it on their camera. I get three every year on one farm, and then I get a plethora of smaller bucks and does and everything. And it's like it makes you think, I got three chances walking around out here. So not only am I getting meat in the freezer, I'm also getting a new piece of wall decor. It's never about that, but if yes, but it's just an extra bill, really, to pay. That's it, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

But so this is why I apply for a doe tag every year. Because uh where I gun hunt here, I mean I can go up to the own sound area with some friends and do a rifle hunt early season or Perry Sound District, but for my hunt here, as yours is, we have one week that's a shotgun or black powder hunt, and I love shooting the slug gun. But early season bow hunt and late season bow hunt. So that one week turns our tag into an anything tag. If you want to shoot a deer, it's brown, it's down for that one week. If you haven't applied for dough tag, after that, with archery, you can only shoot a buck. So when we apply for a doe tag here, it's for archery only. Yeah, I believe it's a hundred percent chance. I apply for that because if I haven't killed my deer for the last week of December, because I'm usually after a deer, then I'm shooting, I'm shooting deer, right? So two years in a row, I didn't get my big buck. And uh I had does all around me in front of me. One of them was literally uh two days before the end of the year. And that my favorite time is between Christmas and New Year's. I love bow hunting at that time. It's always cold, it's always snowy, and the deer are on the feed. So those two years, I shot a yearling. I shot the biggest friggin' doe or fawn you ever saw, because there's all these does here, there, and I picked those deer out to shoot specifically. First of all, they're like eating veal, but I had a I had a bit of meat, and that dough that I let go is probably gonna drop another one in the spring.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

So that's what my thinking behind that is. But what I really like is I like smaller box, you know, like a six-pointer, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

That's my one to two and a half year old, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Yeah, one two and a half, three and a half is good. Yeah, you know, three and a half year, eight pointer is really nice. It's not a big eight, it's just uh, I mean, those are those are eaters. Yeah. I'm not I you can't eat horns. No, exactly. I've shot some nice, nice moose. Yeah, and same thing. I don't care about the horns. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Well, I've I've even found with some guys I know it's like you show them the rack of your deer and they're all pumped up, excited for you. Show them the meat in the freezer, and they're just as excited. They go, look at look at what you got. It's like and then they're always saying, Oh, don't I have some? It's like, yeah, yeah, you yes, you can. I don't mind sharing at all.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

So it's not that many years ago that we were allowed to shoot two here. You got you got your original tag and you buy second tag. They were trying to call them out. There's a lot. Of course, now the coyote number's up and they've had less roadkills, so to speak, so they've adjusted their numbers. But I like two deer. That one deer is uh it's not a lot. I mean, I I can eat that up pretty quick. There's only two of us in my house here, but I feed my sister-in-law and everybody all the time. When they they come for dinner, I got a stew going. You know, I got a cabbage casserole going for dinner, you know. They'll bring the dessert and I got the casserole going, kind of thing, you know. But in this picture right here, up there, I got the knives in my hand.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

That's two that I shot. One the first day of shotgun, one the second. And then there's a picture over there, both an eight and a six-pointer. I shot one with the bow, and I shot the other one with the bow. And I ate those. So freezer space. Well, there's two of us in the house. I got three fridges and three freezers.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

That's my issue. I don't have the freezers for it. I would love to have an abundance of venison, but I just I have one frickin' freezer. And yeah, I yeah, I could go and buy a new freezer, but I don't want a base. Like, and I'm not like I don't want to go buy a dirty used freezer. Yeah, it's gonna work the same. I don't know what that freak I just bought it from put in there. You know, you know, you could add anything. Sure, it's most likely just gonna be food. You don't know, but I like that'd be something I want. And with my luck, the frickin' the I've got these smaller ones, you know?

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Yeah. So that way when one's empty, you can defrost it and clean it up. Right now I got three of them and I got all kinds of stuff in them, right? You know, I got briskets in there and ribs and chicken and all kinds of crazy. I got I actually still got about 11 partridges that need to be eaten. I should be doing that real soon. Venison, I've got very little, just a few packages of ground three, and I'm saving those for tortillas. Tortiers. Yeah, I'm I'm running out of game meat real quick.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Well, that's you know what? We are in June, July, August, September stuff starts opening up.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Yeah, we're only allowed one tag. That's part of the issue, too. One deer. A lot of people don't realize they see that thing, they think it's a lot of meat. When you got that thing all ground and cut and wrapped, and it's in a couple of boxes, it doesn't look like that much unless you're keeping bone in, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Which I don't do. I debone everything, even my moose, I debone it. Might keep a few bones for soup bone or whatever, but I debone it all.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

The whole shooting match.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Well, geez, we just jumped right into that, and I'm uh I gotta pick your brain on more stuff. Like, you just gave me so much information of what you've done and how you cook and how you've done this for years and everything. So let's let's sort of bring it right back to the beginning. What got you into hunting?

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Oh, that's inter that's interesting. When I was a young kid, my dad had Labrador Retriever all the time. He trained them for for retriever trials, that kind of thing. And my dad was moose hunter. They hunted Abitibi up in Mousini. They went, they went up there every year shooting geese on the moose hunt and the goose hunt. Okay. And uh, so my dad was a big hunter. That's what really got me into it. So basically, I mean, I remember them coming home, he'd always bring me home a bag of wings. Sometimes he'd bring home a skin. And you know, it just excited me to no end. And I have a lifelong hunting padre. He's got a place up in Markdale. Back then you could deer duck hunt down on Lake Ontario. So he and I are just kids in like grade two and grade three. We're not going to school in the morning. Our parents think we're going to school. We're going down to Lake Ontario to watch the guys duck hunt. And we could call ducks, divers, you know. We'd chirp in divers. And the guys, some of the guys that we'd see down there, get down here. They bring us down to their blinds, right? Because every time we call with our voices, the ducks would come flying in, right? And a lot of these guys knew my dad, because my dad and my uncle both hunted down on Lake Ontario there. And uh they pay us to pluck their ducks. So we sit in the blind call ducks and we pluck all their ducks. It just became an absolute set obsession. That's the one thing that I'm really missing these days, is those diver, duck, duck hunt, and diver hunts. I had 300 plus decoys. I actually have a nice, nice collection of old hand-carved wood decoys, some hangers and that kind of thing, right? But uh I mean I had a pile of decoys, mostly all lesser, greater scop, and some golden ice. So it's funny we're talking about it because I just talked to a guy that's down in in in uh Port Maitland, and he's guiding guys for doing that. So I think I'm gonna bite the bullet bullet and do a couple of couple of diver trips with that guy this year.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

You probably should.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

It's my big it's my big passion, is that yeah. So when we were kids, I I started shooting a bull when I was really young. My dad took me to classes at one of the high schools down in Burlington. The guy by the name of Klaus, he owned Trans-Canada Archery Sales up in Hamilton Mountain. He ran the class. So my dad, I shot a little 25-pound bear. And one year for Christmas, my dad bought me a 55-pound Ben Pearson two-piece takedown that came in a case. Well, he bought it off this guy. Well, this guy didn't realize that it was my dad that bought it for me because I was already going to that shooting, and I come there with the bow, right? Holy Jesus! Because it was 55 pound, it was too big a bow for me. He says, shoot the smaller bow. You'll grow into that. So that's kind of what happened. But we we used to go up along the train tracks down the uh in sort of North Burlington at the time. And back then we had jackrabbits, big jacks. And my buddy who I'm talking about calling ducks, we'd kick the rabbits up out of the ditches, and he would whistle. And then rabbits would stop, and I'd shoot them with the 22. At an old cooey single-shot 22. We'd be carrying these jack rabbits over our shoulders. The damn things are hitting the ground. You know, we're just kids, right? And finally, my dad says, just leave them. When you get home, we'll go back and pick them up. My dad was so excited to have them, you know. He's making pies and stew and everything. Go get some more of those rabbits, boys. You know, but it just kind of evolved and grew into it that way, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

That's that's awesome. Yeah, just always been there. It's it's amazing because I've all I I'm only 27. I've lived in this same area my whole life as you have. You've lived here your whole life. And what I would give to be in my 70s or something right now, just so I could have experienced what it what this area was like back then.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Yeah, don't rush.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

I've but the stories I've heard from other guys, like the fun you guys had.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

That's a that's a conversation for another day.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Hunting in the aging hunter.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

You know, I just I had some guys that I hunted with at my sister-in-law's lake across the road here, and we shot geese, and we shot geese, and we shot geese. These guys, uh, his best friend owned Hearst Airway, George Villiers. So they flew out of there, did you know, spring and summer fishing trips, took the grandkids everything. But they moose hunted out of there. So I shot a did a bunch of bird hunting with these guys. And uh they always said to me, Norm, do it now. Do it while you're young. Don't worry about later, do it now, could be said. As you get older, you you you lose your mojo, you lose your ambition.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Things change, you know. You know, it's just getting out of bed at four o'clock in the morning and going sitting out in the bush, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Well, you've done that.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

That's another thing, too. Morning hunts are evening hunts. So much easier for a guy to go out and do an evening hunt than it is a morning hunt. But I'll tell you what, man, you miss a lot of the world if you don't get up early and get in those, get in the bush in the dark and see the world come to life. Yeah. Because you see a lot of things you'd never see otherwise, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Yeah, that's my favorite part of it. Like, you get out there and it's pitch black and you climb your stand, you sit there and wait, and you just, you know, you just watch the world come to life.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Someone asked me that question. They said, uh they said, Normie, what do you prefer, morning or afternoon hunting?

SPEAKER_01 33:45

I was just about to ask you that same question.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

And I had this, I had to say, geez, that's a tough question, you know? That's a tough question. I like going out early in the afternoon. I prefer dirty weather over good weather. But, you know, I've been out so many times. I mean, I remember the one time I was out there, I was out in my stand. It was like 3:30, quarter to four. It was quarter to four. And the sun was still up, you know. It's not the ideal time to be out there hunting, right? In the in warm weather. And all of a sudden I look across the field in the corner. I see something. I go, there's a deer. I could see the sun glinking off its antlers. And I could see it starting to come across the field, sort of over towards the bush where I'm at. It came out of a bush where they bed. And uh it comes coming wander along. I go, Oh, it's gonna cut into between that that fent hedgerow, right? Oh, it keeps coming. And I go, oh no, it's gonna go in the bush in behind me, because they come out of there too, right? And it starts turning, I go, oh boy, this thing's gonna walk right by me. Right? So and it wasn't a big deer, you know, a little like this. And uh I said, Well, it looks like there's my deer. You know, I was shooting Matthews DXT then. So he was about maybe 12 yards, maybe. And I just zipped and jumped right through it, and it ran across the edge of the field, and there was a big rock hedge row there, and the hard was while I'm watching it, and it was all I saw jump into the woods, but it's all I saw was white in the air. Oh, he's dead. Yeah, and I went, There's my deer. You know, now I can kill coyotes. Now you can have fun, go shoot something else.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Yeah, exactly. That's that's just great to hear.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Um He wasn't a big one, he was an eater. It's like Ted Nugent always said, a trophy is whatever you shoot.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

I feel like I'm talking to a Canadian Ted Nugent right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like you have just got you've lived the life that I'm hoping I get to live. You are. You're living it, man. And I'm gonna, and I'm gonna keep that going. And you have gone from you've okay. I know you've fished and hunted all over Ontario. Have you ever gone outside of it?

SPEAKER_00 36:06

No.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

No? You've always stayed within. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Now I have had lots of opportunities and still do to go to BC in Alberta. Guy that I grew up with, we're talking about dogs. My dad had labs. I had three German short hair pointers. Hardest thing I did in my life was uh, let's put it this way, I don't have it in me to train dogs the way I train those dogs. Uh, that's them right there. I had them down hand signals. I got invited to pointer clubs and everything, but they were my hunting dogs, right? I take them to watch when they were pups to watch skeet flying, all kinds of crazy stuff. So a friend of mine lived over in the 7th here. We grew up in Burlington as as uh kids in the early days. We used to hunt up well flying past the Mohawk up there. We used to go shooting hogs up there. We go in the fields and farmers' fields shooting hogs. I'm a big gun guy, too. So there were hogs back then, tons of hogs. And we shoot them all up in Durham and Markdale. And uh we're shooting with the uh 243s, but 25 odd sixes were our go-to, 125 grand hollow points as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

We don't hear many people shooting that round anymore.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

So it's it's a dandy round for for varmits. And one guy would watch through the scope, you know, we'd take some cold drinks in a pack, sit in the field, and yeah, we'd watch through the spotting scope and take turns shooting, you know. And I can remember the one time the farmer he'd come out in the field in his tractor, Jesus boy, what are you shooting out here? Cannons? You know. Just anyhow, this guy that I grew up with, I got one of his pups. He was here yesterday from Alberta. He's a big bow hunter. He shoots Black Widow mostly. He's a recurve guy, and he was teaching shooting in water down at that school, kids after our school there, and at Triggers and Bows out in Burford. He was teaching there.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

But uh You're talking about the youth center. Yes, that new building. This isn't years ago. This is just like this is recently.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Yeah, yeah. He's teaching kids. That's awesome. He was teaching there and teaching triggers and bows in Burford. So, uh, anyhow, long story short, he was here yesterday. He's got him and his wife are in a camper over at uh uh Flamborough Park. They they do that because they got a couple of dogs. He's got a wire hair, German wire hair. So, anyhow, they her mother's turning 92 or something, so they did a trip out here. He's got two sons, one up in Tweed, his son's hunt. And he just did a little summer tour out here to visit his two sons. But he sold his house down the road here and bought a house in Alberta. I think he's near Pincer Creek, but he's got critters all around him like crazy, and he just told me Norman, you want to come out and shoot Muleys? Because that's kind of on my bucket list is to go shoot Mulies. He says they're really easy. He says they're stupid, they're not like whitetails.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Well, there's a question that I was actually gonna ask you later on. Um, if if mule deer is your bucket list, is there anything else that you really want to do?

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Uh as far as critters for killing, that's that's probably it. I can get everything I want right where I go here and where I got family in a small town of 45 people in a bush up in the Nikkeen area.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

I got enough bear hunting and bird hunting and all that stuff to do up there with our gun hunts here. And right now, I I think about hunting all the time. I've got beside my bed, I got gun books. I got hunting books. It's Jack O'Connor's book. I've read it six half a dozen times. I got books there, cartridges of the world. When I when I think about something, I just scan through them all the time to keep the stuff fresh in my head all the time, right? And uh I bought a lot of guns, a lot of guns, uh, with the amnesty going on and all that kind of stuff. So my go-to gun for shooting coyotes and hogs turned into a 22-250. I had a single-shot octagon Browning falling block, but I bought an Ackley improved. That gun was a bit of a pain. You fire for you shoot factory ammo, fire form it, get a little more powder in it.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

So I got rid of that because I was also shooting a 220 Swift. So now I've downsized in some of my guns. My big gun, if people tell you it might be an overkill, but it's a 338 win meg, so it's a 33 cal instead of a 30. Uh a lot of years I shot 308. If I needed one gun to shoot everything, it would definitely be a 30 odd eight, 308. A lot of people say 30 odd sixes, I'd say 30 odd 308. Yeah, it's a comfortable gun, less recoil.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

There it'll do everything you want it to do. Yeah, there is a lot of like there is a lot of recoil in a 30 odd six. I got I bought a 30 odd six when uh I was at a gun show and my buddy texts me. He says, Hey, you want to come moose hunting this year? I says, Yeah. He's like, Alright, apply for your tag and buy a gun. So I was like, Well, perfect. I'm here at the gun show right now, so I'm looking around. And um, I used to work with a with a Newfoundlander uh at sale. So we'd be sitting there selling firearms and stuff to the everybody and who'd come in and want a new gun and everything. And he would tell, like, you talk about if you think you know someone who has shot a lot of moose, this guy has shot a lot of moose because he lives in Newfoundland and he just every year he gets a tag. There's almost no draw. So every he's he's in his 80s. I think he's in his 80s now. So he's probably shot at least 50.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Yeah, oh yeah. Now you're talking about Newfoundland. I know some guys from here that gone to Newfoundland. I could do that real easy. That could be a bucket list going to Newfi to shoot moose. Just because the train and everything's beautiful. I've seen enough footage of of it from the Beasley boys and whatnot, and shows a guy hunting Newfi. It it looks like like these it the these spot. Now it's easier also to get tags in the area in Quebec. But you're talking about the 30-odd six. The 30 odd six now is probably the most popular cartridge in gun camps.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

And uh, but a lot of guys between that and 270, I think. Well I know a lot of guys that shoot 270.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

I bought a 270, a couple of them. I've owned a couple myself. The last one I bought was a Weatherby, absolutely beautiful gun. I bought it at sale. I put a uh Nikon ProStat 5 on it. Beautiful gun. I've owned a couple of them. I've shot groundhogs with them. Now, my my hunting padre up north there, trapping the beavers. Three moose. I've seen him that we've had to go and try and find that he shot that we didn't recover. Break your friggin' heart. From what?

SPEAKER_01 42:44

270.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Now you can kill moose with 270. Sometimes it's that second shot, but it has to be placed right. That I I I swear by the 30 cal because you got enough kinetic energy there.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

You know, and that's what you need. Now mine's a 338 wind mag, and so it's a 33 instead of a 30. Uh, the guys out in the west, that's probably the most popular cartridge out in the west coast for shooting bears and everything, is the is that gun. My gun, my three thirty ewinmag is a model 70 XTR sporter. It uh it I got a Pacmire recoil pad on it, but it shoots like a dream compared to a 300 Wind Meg. I have never shot a 300 Wind Mag that shoots comfortably. They thump you. Yeah, you know, but my 330 is comfortable. So I shot a beautiful moose. He wasn't really big, I think he was like 38 or 42, I can't remember. And it's just a few years ago. I think it was 38. And I shot him from 310 yards, and the bullet went, I was shooting off of sticks. Uh the bullet went between the ribs, straight through the top of the heart. There's a hole right through the heart, out between a rib on the other side, and I had a little piece of uh meat here. I lost a piece of meat about the size of a pound. Butter. But you know, I was just talking about that with deer. Guys shooting them with black powders, zipping right through them, and they don't even know they hit the damn thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Yeah, unless you hear that meat pop, then it gives you an idea. Yeah, exactly. I and I it's oh, it's cool to hear that meat pop.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

I hear stories about guys shooting deer with 270s and they're damaging a pile of meat, and they say that they just damage a ton of meat. But I the if I was you know, actually to go to a for for a deer, mine would be a 270. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

From what I've witnessed just from now, I don't have the experience you do, but I have seen the difference in between some calibers. 243 is a mean little round. At least my 243 is because I've shot a black bear with it, and I've shot coyotes with it. I want to shoot a deer with it up north really bad. But from my black bear and the coyotes I've shot with it, I've cut coyotes in half with it, and I blew a frickin' basketball-sized hole through a bear. Now, 30 odd six, same thing. Was a bigger bear, but when I shot, it's it left a great blood trail to follow. But my buddies, when they shot their bears, one buddy's shooting a 308, one buddy's shooting a 270. My buddy shoots his black bear with a 308. You know, we're all from the same distance, you know, we're all about 50, 60 yards from the bait site. They shoot, he's got no blood to follow. Just little tiny drips. Now, yeah, there is a lot of hair that can get cut, that can get the blood caught up in it. But little tiny drips, same with my buddy, he shot his bear twice with his 270. Hammered it once, it did a little roll, he racked his bolt back and put another one through it. Same thing, next to no blood.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Well, you know, depending on where you hit it, too. Yeah. All that, and you know, let's say the bullet goes in at mushrooms, winds up on the hide and the other side, or it's in there, caught some bone. It could bleed internally so that the belly's filling up, and the whole the wound has got some fatter meat that's got to be so.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Depending on what time of the year it was, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:09

So you're talking 243. 243 for younger hunters and apprentice hunters is probably the absolute best gun.

SPEAKER_02 46:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Low report, low low recoil. And I got some buddies that hunt up in that kind of Owen Sound area and me for they shoot, they kill a lot of deer with 243s. I have two for two 243s, that's my varmit gun. So I'm shooting a heavy varmit, the heavy varmit model 700 BDL Varmit Master Remington short action for the for the shell, because uh it's the same as a 308, because the 243 is a 308 shell, neck down to three to six mil. So, but it's too heavy for carrying around. I got a bipod on it, a 4 to 12. It's real heavy. So I just recently recently purchased uh a Model 70 XTR featherweight, and I got a 2.5 to 10 on it. So I'm shooting off of sticks with that. That's my that's my go-to coyote gun, and I would not be shy to use that for deer. I'd never shoot bears with it, but I'd shoot deer with it. Well-placed shot with a 6 mil works well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Yeah. What would you say? You've hunted everything. You've hunted things I wish I can hunt, and I'm going to one day. If you had if if you were to say you can only hunt one thing from now on, what would you say that would be? Hmm. That it'd be that's it, Normie. You can only hunt one specific game from now on.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Yeah, it's funny because you know, we're hunting so much different things through the season, and as the season grows, right? Yeah. You know, like I mean, even after the snow's down, you can go stomping and kicking rabbits, you know.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

Uh I don't know if I don't know if you have ever shot crows in the snow. Oh my god, that's a lot of fun. So we used to go up by the agreement forest up there, and uh, we'd wear the white overalls, you know, just the thin overalls, right? And put a cow owl decoy in the tree, it like in the in the pines, and we run a rope to it, a strength so you could make the wings move, and we start calling the crows, shoot the sentinel, and they just keep coming. You just pound with the 12 gauges. It's a lot of fun. If I could only shoot one thing, it'd be deer.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Deer? Yeah, all day long. Would you say deer holds the most special place in your heart for hunting?

SPEAKER_00 48:20

That's a tough one.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

See, I would because I was thinking maybe my previous question was a little bit hard for you to answer, so I was gonna try and reroute it to what it gives you the best feeling for hunting, sort of thing like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

So well, I mean, when when when when you're in a stand, and I I hunt out, I got ladders with little clip-ons, low wolves, all and and climb up ladder stands all over the place. I love hunting the air. I don't have a problem hunting off the ground either, but I love getting up a little bit, you know. And when you know you see those deer coming, or you got them right in behind you, and they're I mean, oh my god. I've been up my stand before watching deer where the deer's there and he's got his head down and he knows something's wrong, and he snaps his head up and looks at you. You know, and or and they just keep staring at you, or they put the head down and they stomp their rear foot. You know, trying to get you move. They put the head down, snap it up quick. I've had all that kind of stuff happen. And it just puts your it puts your heart right in your throat. I've had it before, a good bucks right there, and I'm well, I can't, I'm so tense from trying not to move. I'm not even squinting my eyes, and I got face, I got a face cover on and everything. I'm I'm trying not to squint, squint my eyes looking at it when I'm so close to them and they're doing that. And usually they're like 14 yards kind of thing, right? And uh I can't even I I'm I'm gonna now I got my shot, he's got his head turned, or it's down. I'm so tense I can't even pull the freaking bow, you know. I've had that, and now I gotta put it up in the air, try and try and pull it. Now he's caught you in the movement. He takes a few jumps, and you're like, oh shit, you know, now he's 30 yards, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:58

What's your poundage on your bow? Uh 60. 60?

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Yeah. I shoot a little, I I've got it, I shoot a 60 pounder. I've I've shot cut it down a bit. I was gonna buy a 70. You don't need a 70-pound bow. And you know if you if you can pull it back, no problem, then go for it, right? I'm a short guy, you know. I like to shoot short bows, you know. You know, that's another thing. Bows, man, we could talk about those things for freaking hours. The the quality of the new bows, there isn't a bad bow out there. I don't know. I mean, I used to shoot hoits. My first my first compound was a PSE. I got rid of that and went back to recurves, you know. So, but uh yeah, there's not a bad mow bow on the market. The whole key is just having a bow that fits you right and that draws right.

unknown 50:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

If it doesn't fit you, it's good for nothing, you know?

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Yeah. I'm I got a bow at home too, and you know, I've I've shot my I shot a turkey with it once, and you know, I've I like using my crossbow. A lot of people think that crossbows are just whack, and they don't like them, and they think that you're not a skilled hunter if you use them. But you know what?

SPEAKER_00 51:06

If you want to think that, go ahead. I love shooting them with the crossbow. Those two fawns, two different ears, I shot both of those with a crossbow. But I've shot between between shooting them with the gun and shooting them with the bow, uh I've I probably shot more with my bow than I have with the game.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

Well, you've had more time to do because you got three you got take three months, get rid of two weeks in that three months, and then that's your bow season, and then you got one week you can't hunt because you can only apply for one gun season, and then you got that one week that you did apply for the gun season that you can hold a gun.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

I saw more deer last fall than I saw through the whole hunt than I've seen in a lot of years. And I hunted a lot, and I think there's only two days that I didn't see deer.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Really? Yeah. How many days do you think you sat? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

Well, let's sit, let's say say the gun hunt was pretty much. I think I missed one day in a gun hunt, and the rest of it probably uh oh man. 30 plus.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

So you basically got a full let's just say you sat a solid five and a half weeks.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Yeah, I sat a lot.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

A lot. Sometimes just a morning, sometimes an afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

You know? Now I should say there was days that I went in in that period where I didn't actually hunt. I went in after the morning hunt and did a quick little scout and had a poke around in the field and where I was at to see what's going on. And some days I went in uh midday to see if there was fresh scrap from the night before. I go in and get out, you know? I did a lot of that too. Yeah. But I did a lot of sits, man. Oh my God. I think I was telling you the last week I I go to go in and I I'd actually put some corn and apples out. Here, here's a buck. And I'm going in it's like 20 to 4. I'm going in too late. He's standing right there on my stuff. And it's as light out as it is now, right? So I I couldn't go anywhere. I had to wait and sit there. So I'm kind of in the edge of the bush where I come out to the edge of the field to go down. All of a sudden look across. Oh, there's deer. Right? And oh, and there's snow on the ground. And there's more. They came out. There was nine of them. There was they were all does. One of them was last year's doe. So last year's fawn. But not one of them had a fawn with them. No fawns in the whole, no yearlings in the whole friggin' in the in the in the group of them, right? And I've been seeing a lot of that too. A lot of does without fawns. My sister-in-law saw some out the back of her house a week ago, and there was some couple of fawns in there, which was which is nice, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

The coyotes are eating them up, man. I I don't have them on my cameras, but my my buddy has pictures of a uh coyote walking with a fawn from a few years ago. With walking with that fawn fully in its mouth, just walking away with it. Found it in the tall grass, just was like, ooh, a nice little meat snack, and picks that up, walks away. It probably didn't even eat it that day, I guarantee you.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Just take seven, eight, ten fawns into one den site.

SPEAKER_01 54:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

And I think I was telling you the other day that it's no we call it pupping. They're pupping. That's when they're going from milk to hard food. And it's no coincidence. Nature has a way of working things out that the fawns are dropping as the coyotes as the pups are going on to hard food. And that's their food, man. Now, a lot of guys that are shooting deer and not recovering them, we see a lot of that during the shotgun hunts.

SPEAKER_01 54:52

Yes, we do.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

We call it coyote feeding season. Yeah. It's coyote feeding season. You're gutting your deer in the bush, man. Christy, I mean, before you even get halfway across the field, if it's at night in the dark, the coyotes are on your on your food.

SPEAKER_01 55:05

They're just waiting for you to leave. Yep. They know. And each property, you know, each each hundred-acre plot around here. For every square hundred acre, there's got to be at least three, four coyotes on it.

SPEAKER_00 55:23

Yeah, there's a lot of freaking coyotes, man.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

And then it doesn't, it doesn't take long for a coyote to, you know, zip through the center of a hundred-acre plot. Takes him two minutes, and then he's like I shot five right here in my backyard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:37

I shot three of them. You like this. I shot two of them with the 240. I shot three of them with a 17 HMR. I've wanted to try with this.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

I wanted to try. I've watched videos and they're dropping them with that.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

I shot four here with the 17.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

Yeah. Yeah. Now would this is something from what I've noticed when I've been coyote hunting. So I've shot a handful of coyotes. My ratio, if I'm putting ratios into proper terms, for every let's say like every seven male coyotes, I'm shooting one female. One female, eh? Yeah. And uh, you know, a good coyote's a dead coyote, but I want to shoot more female coyotes because that female coyote turns into six more.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 56:26

That freaking a male will go around during mating season and he'll just put kilometers and kilometers of walking in, and he'll bang as many as he can. He'll mate.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

So I'm a years ago with some guys that that ran dogs. Yeah. Okay. My one buddy had this absolutely beautiful dog that he he shipped out from out west. But uh local farmers here, Harold Hamilton, Ivan Watson, uh Joe Joe DeLuca that owned Elder Shot Landscape, he had his had a group of dogs too. We don't see too many guys doing the dogs uh anymore because it's a lot of work. Not only do you got to train them, I used to I used to do it too. Yeah, you need to uh you gotta house the dogs. You gotta work them in the off-season too. What my buddies did was they put shock collars on the dog and they hang a deer skin, pull it out of the freezer and hang it in a tree, right? As soon as the deer dogs go to it, they whack them. Because I mean, the one guy's I was with, we were we had the dogs running through a bush. They come out, nine deer in front of them, and they're running after the deer, right? So you gotta train them not to not to chase the uh deers. But the quality of the uh like Fox Pro, for example, whatever the quality electronic calls is fantastic, and men, they work really well. They do. Really well. They get smart to it quick.

SPEAKER_01 57:41

They work well. I've noticed that they get smart right away. I find you can get one sit on a farm, you can't go back for like three weeks. Because there's you know, there could be coyotes there on camera, but they're they're not gonna come out.

SPEAKER_00 57:55

Yeah, you just gotta you gotta change it up to a different call.

SPEAKER_01 57:59

I've tried I've tried a whole bunch of different calls on there.

SPEAKER_00 58:01

And big trick too is uh a lot of people don't realize and they make mistakes is they start out too loud.

SPEAKER_01 58:08

I always start off at six. I give it about 15 seconds, then I put it to nine. A lot of times I don't have to go past 12. Yeah, it goes to 20. And I'd say I'd say probably 70% of the time. I'm getting coyotes in and I'm putting coyotes down within one minute of that call being on.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:33

Yeah. Well, I asked you this one question earlier when I was giving you the rundown, and you said you got a story for it. I can't wait anymore. I gotta hear it. What is the scariest thing you've ever seen, witnessed, heard, whatever out in the woods when you've been hunting?

SPEAKER_00 58:50

Well, it's not really a critter story. It's a weather story. So what I had done was uh I had an old 63 International 4x4 that I was my bush truck. Picture of it up there. I crashed through anything with it. I'd go down these old growing in log and roads through some bush, and there was a water spot there at the bottom of a lake. There's a giant beaver dam, and it narrowed down into where there it turned into a creek. So I had a canoe there, and I went past the creek into a pothole. We called it the pothole, meet in a pot. And uh we shot a couple of moose out of there, and I did a lot of my own hunts by myself back in there. Take the canoe in, go back into the bush, and then I'd hunt there. So I'd go in early in the morning and I'd stay there till dark. And I'd literally be padding it, just get into the truck as it's pitch black, and I'd come out in the dark. I'm there all day. And uh I'd take a pack with some drinks and a lunch and thermos of venison stew was always my fave. But I got hung up in there one time and the weather got really, really bad. Really bad, man. I mean, I had a Martin just about run over my legs. I had a partridge up so close to me I could have poked it with a stick because I got underneath a bunch of pines because it was snowing and it was blowing, and it was blowing so heavy that trees were crashing down everywhere in the bush. Literally, like it was like being on another planet, man. The wind was so heavy, it's miniboreal force in this butt, old gross stuff, and a lot of it was snapping off, a lot of it was coming down. There's no way I could get out of this place, man. And so now my cousins, there's four of us, those three, they're they're getting a little freaky. Like, okay, Norm ain't back yet, and you know, now it's like you know, we're we're getting midnight, right? So, and my biggest mistake was telling them, don't worry, guys, you know, if I don't get out, leave me till the next day, you know. We had no communication there. So, but and we didn't use radios then either. So we learned, we we learned after that trip. We started, we got a hold of some our radios, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:13

And we also used them to to find a moose one time. And we had a guy, my cousin's kid, hunting with us one year, and he we're trying to find a moose that got hit. And uh it uh uh he got lost. He got lost, and we had the radios, and we're communicating with him, but we don't know where he is, he doesn't know where he is. So we told him, don't move. He was panicking. Sit down, relax. He smoked cigarettes. He said, Have a smoke, don't go nowhere, we're coming for you, you know, that kind of thing. So what happened was when I was come out of there, I'm in the canoe, had a Coleman Square back, and uh I had to go across a stretch of water to get to where it was, and it's blowing so hard, so so heavy, that this canoe will not go straight. It won't do nothing. You know, I go I go ten feet and it wants to do complete 360s. I mean, it was brutal, just brutal. So if it it it it's it's not that it scared me, but it it it got my nerves going, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:14

And it was a weather, it was a weather incident.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:17

It's got my nerves going right now, just thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

It it was it was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:21

You were in you were basically in a you you weren't in one, but you had a lot of potential to be in a survival situation at that point.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:29

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:30

For anything that could have you a tree could have fallen on you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:32

Yeah, it was brutal.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

That canoe could have flipped over.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:35

Yeah. So we got I educated the boys after that. Yeah. Yeah. They told me, you know, yeah, you're coming out before dark, okay? That's all there is to it. Yeah. But I mean, man, we we shot a lot of moose right at that last the witching hour, you know. Yeah, did that storm just come right in out of nowhere?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:54

Right out of frickin' nowhere, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

Yeah, just just blew up like it was nothing. Yeah, and and just just out of nowhere, man. I had a beautiful day in there, beautiful morning. There was some breeze, you know, and that. And uh there was nothing, you know, just all of a sudden, it just came on, man, just like a just like a whirlwind. And the trees were crashing down. It was unbelievable, man. I never seen nothing. It was like being on another planet, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:23

So we we went back in after that, my cousin and I, because it all froze up then, too. So what we did was uh my cousin came back in with me. Uh uh, it was like four days later, and all the all the water had froze. But it was it was gonna uh we I knew we could get get through there. We were taking the canoe, pushing up on the ice and breaking the ice until we broke a trail through so we could get the canoe back, because we had another canoe back in there, right? So anyhow, the weather got nice. The weather turned around. Even where we put the canoe through and broke all the ice, it all had melted away, and we went back in there, and my cousin shot an ice ball back in there, you know. So basically I said, hey, it took us a day of prepping and breaking that ice and getting back in here so we could come back here later and kill that moose, right? Yeah. I shot my first moose from seven steps. With a gun? Yeah. Seven steps. I th I I was inexperienced. Uh I had the bull tags my first year, and uh I heard the thing coming down through this bush. There's kind of a trail there, and it was there was there was moss in there that was so thick in this bush that it was like walking on marshmallows. So that's where I found the bull after I shot it. So I just kind of laid down on the ground behind this tree and it was walking down a path. And I'm going, holy shit, man, goddamn bear walking right at me. I'm gonna have to shoot this freaking bear. It's walking right to me. And it's it's snorting as it's walking. I'm going, it's a goddamn bear, but then I could hear ch ching, ch-ching. I could hear the antler hit some branches and went, oh no, that's a moose. Oh, that's this towers. Here's this tree, and I'm behind it. And it walked right in, right beside me, right here. And I just got up on one knee and just I I couldn't see it through the sights because it was too close. And pow, I just shot it. It went up and went and fell down. So I went looking for it, didn't find it. It was getting later, you know, it was later in the day now, right? And I forget what time, 4 30 or something, right? And uh of course in the north it gets was getting darker a little earlier back and then. So uh we go back in the next day. The four of us were going back in to find this moose. Well, we said, let's do a hunt. There's a little island, my cousin sat there. My one cousin sat where we had the first first went in with a canoe. And I went in by the other side where the this creek came down. Because the creek that went by this pothole joined up with another section, okay? And I'm looking across and there's this giant, giant freaking bull comes down. He's about maybe 60 yards from me. Top. And this thing was a monster rack, and it was as gray as could be, and it wasn't black and tall and thin, it was like a big roly barrel. Just a great big old bull. Like and gray. I couldn't believe it. Now I've seen cows with full faces that are gray and stuff, right? But I I this is you know, and I'm like, oh my god, do I shoot this thing? You know, and and it stepped down into the creek and paused down and in, and it I it was sucking water, and I could hear it sucking up water. And now I'm thinking, do I shoot it? Do I shoot it? And it backed up and it turned, and I watched it wander off, wobbling its head as it was walking. Turns out where he went in was the only place that had any gravel on the creek there. It knew it was there. It was the only friggin' spot. So, and on the other side there was a rut pit. So, anyhow, bang, we're done shooting. I told the boys a short story, and my cousin should have shot them, you know, because my uncle still had a tag in his camp, which was right there. So anyhow, well, let's find my moose. So it didn't take us long. I I was almost right at it. You know, it didn't go that far, and I was real close to it. It was just when you're inside the bush, it's dark.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:35

You know, it's harder to see. You get out into the open on the water, you can see, right? Yep. So that's kind of that how that's just like when you're deer hunting, too. If you're hunting in the bush or in thick or in hardwoods, you get you lose light real fast, man. Your deer hunt ends quicker. Yeah if you're out on the edge of the field, you got a little extra light time to shoot.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:55

And I can't tell you how many times I've been on in stands where deer have come out in the alfalfa around me or something, right? And I can't leave. I gotta stay in my freaking stand. You know, I've been in my stand till 8:30, quarter to nine, waiting for the deer to clear the field. Just so you can leave or without bumping the freaking things. But I've had times where I I've counted 18 deer in the field. They start coming out here, they come out the corner, and you can sort of hear them coming, you know, and that when especially when they're walking the dry leaves and the hardwood, you can hear them for quite a ways, man. You know, other it's it's you wonder how, because other times, you know, when they come in from behind you in the bushes and all of a sudden, it's like, oh, where'd you come from? You know, or I'm sitting in my stand there, you know, I've got an apple in my hand, and I turn my head, and there's some deer over to my left. I go, Jesus, where'd you know, same thing? Where'd you come from? I didn't hear you. Other times you'll hear them as clear as a bell, right? You know, you hear them walking, shh.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:50

Yeah, those frosty mornings, they don't have any, they don't have any stealth to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:54

I shot quite a few deer in the late season, okay? So I'd be sitting up in my stand, and I had a couple of them, one in the corner, one in the hardwoods, one in the I different stands for different winds. So I'd be sitting there and all of a sudden I hear some ice break. They're they're coming out of the swamp in the bush area, and you get those little old little spots that get that little shale ice. You just hear the ice. You go, oh, here they come. And I just be quiet and listen. Oh, there's another one. Okay, they're coming. And then I that's when I get up. I'm sitting down, I get up, and I'd stand up and kind of lean into the tree and have my bow ready, right? And just look through trees because you can now there's no leaves on. You go, oh, there they are, here they come, and you watch them all of a sudden you can hear them. Now you can hear them, and you see them all start to come out. That's when you start looking, okay, which one am I gonna eat?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:53

Jeez, that's awesome. Like, I I stayed silent for almost that whole time. From your moose story there, where he's slurp slurping out of the water and out in that dense bush. Like you just you're so good at telling everything you've done.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:11

I want cuts in that, right? So, I mean, last year when I was up there, I was up early season shooting birds and trapping beavers with my buddy, right? He traps nuisance beavers from Hearst and Nippagon, okay? And uh uh whether it's for outfitters or CN or MTO, and uh he traps beavers, that's his thing. He's a 22-year military man, and that's his PTSD thing, man. He kills beavers. And we've eaten lots of them too, by the way. Yeah, so but I like hunting water. How is that? Well, I'll get to that in a second. I like hunting moose on water. I really like hunting, and I like getting back in. You know, there's a lot of guys that that'd be in camps. Where we go, there's no nobody hunts where we hunt. Nobody. And uh, you know, we see a camp here and there, you know, we know where they where where guys are at, but uh nobody comes into where we go. But a lot of places with our camps, guys, they they're on a holiday. I get it. They're on holidays, but they spend more time driving the roads because it's bad weather, or running around on their ATVs. You know, guy will sit on the edge of a cut sitting on his ATV to hunt, stuff like that. I like getting right back in. We always put canoes on water, and I'm getting back in. I want to, I'll find sign, do my little scout, find out what's going on. As soon as I find feed, whether it's whether it's water turnip or whatever, okay, they're here, you know, or red willow. As soon as they start eating red willow, you can go one day and find where they're eating it. You come back the next day, they've been there that night eating it again. You bingo, right? And uh I just love calling moose. Love calling moose out, you know. And I get the water pocket going and the paddle and the water, like I'm walking and I trash up a tree and I call and I make I get make a real racket and I I I kind of go right at it. I'm just making a little cow call. I got my whole routine. Yeah, yeah. You think I was gonna die or something, but it works. They come. You know, I've called a lot of moose out. It's pretty cool. That's it's and it's a different different world when you're sitting up there on a one of these lakes. That's especially if it's uh if it's clear out and the lake's flat, you can't tell where the where the trees start and the and the water ends because the reflection. It's like a mirror. You're seeing everything. And it's just uh it's a different world sitting up there in a boreal forest, and you never know what you're gonna see.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:48

No, you have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:49

No, I've seen wolves walking along the shore, bears, you know, uh great big owls, those big gray fluffy owls, see them land up in trees.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:59

They I don't know if they they don't call them the great grays. I think they just call them the gray owl, or they might call them the great gray owls.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:05

They're big men, they look like giant fluffy maws, you know, but the stuff you see. And you leave a gut pile for moot for moose men, you would not believe. I mean, the the ravens are all over it, right? But you wouldn't believe the bald eagles they get on your gut piles.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:20

Seen that too. Yeah when we were in Red Lake. Yeah. We did that first, we did that first day of grouse hunting, waiting to start moose hunting. Drove by some guys that had a small bull down, and uh, you know, we just said, oh, nice bowl, guys. Like, thanks, you know. We leave, we go do our grouse hunting, we come back that same road. There was like six bald eagles and a hundred ravens just sitting on that gut pile.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:43

In the early days we ran ATVs, okay? And we used ATVs to get into where we got to go and then we get off them, okay? Walk into where we go. I had a couple real cool spots in the back of the lakes there where I go and I pick wild cranberries. You know, they're all over the moss, eh? It's pretty cool. Yeah, nothing nothing nicer than eating some uh a uh a few baked ruffies with wild cranberries. You know, just make up a little cranberry sauce with them. It's fantastic. But uh yeah, it's it's it's it's pretty cool. Pretty cool. And the stuff you see is unbelievable. Yeah. But what we run now is we run side by side. So my buddy's got a new one now. He's got he's got uh he's got a new Polaris. He had a general, he got rid of that. This one's got the North Star, so it's all GPS stuff and whatnot. But we carry the traps with us and and whatnot. So that's what we run through the bush now. And a lot of walking. We go through a lot of water holes and stuff like that. But it doesn't matter where we stop, we got different spots. Uh the big thing about him for killing beavers is keeping the culverts clean. And because we lose roads and a lot of roads over the last 20 years if we weren't taking the beavers out and cleaning out the culverts. It's a lot of freaking work, man. I'm wearing we're both wearing waders all the time when we're touring around the buggy and shooting birds, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:09

Yeah, you know, so but they'll just jam up, they'll just start jamming that culvert full of crap, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:15

Well, I just saw watched one of uh Amanda Lynn Mayhew's that hunting girl show there two weeks ago. And she's born and raised in uh Manitouage. So we have an industrial road that goes from where we are in Caramat. Caramat is 29k into the bush. Manitouage is in the bush. So they've been in the people at Manitouage have been encroaching on the areas that we hunt up, you know, like the Northbrook and the CAG, but she uh they they went into the Cagliano. Uh they were afraid to go in because of the roads, I think, because it's rough getting, it's really rough getting in there. But my buddy and a couple other people, they haul their their lungs in there and they leave them in there because the walleye is like walleye, walleye, walleye. You know, if you don't want to catch a fish, take a break. Don't hold a fishing rod.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:07

Well, we are sitting at one hour and sixteen. I want to be respectful of your time, and you are uh, you know, if you got one last thing you want to say, or like we got one more story you want to get out, you can go right ahead. Or if you think you know what, if you want to save it for another time, you are more than welcome back on any time you want.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

Right on, buddy.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:31

Because I know but before we go, do you got anything, any words of wisdom to any hunters that are having a lot of uh issues with their seasons?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:41

Well, well, you know what? I can talk fishing and hunting all day long because that's my life. But uh just get out there and do it, man. Yeah, get out there and do it and be safe. Put the time. Time, take the time. You have to put the time in. You get out of it what you put into it. You know, and even if you're not even doing the hunting part, you just want to go out and sit and stand and watch critters or get outside. Get into the bush.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:08

Perfect. That's all we need. Well, Norm, thank you very much for coming on the show. This has been amazing. Right on, brother. Thank you. Well, everybody, I hope you enjoyed the show. Norm was absolutely amazing. Um if you like what you heard and you want to be on the show, you can follow me on Instagram at uh Ian Anderson123, that's I A I N A N D E R S O N 123, and you can message me there, or you can follow the podcast Instagram. That is Game and Gun Podcast. That's Game A N D Gun Podcast. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. Take care, give away.