The last night out for the season was action packed. Of coarse, I forgot my camera. We started the night of with rats (muskrats that is). Cat, our huntress, calls them olympic rats.
They are tuff little critters. I was up when we saw the first one. For the first time I anchored one on the first shot. One rat in the boat! Cat's turn was next. She was very excited about mine because she said it was the first one she had seen up close. Well, what do you know but another one came swimming by. She made a good first shot on it. I told you they were tuff. It made a bee line toward the shore. The chase was on! It made it to the shore and got into the edge of the Tullies. Cat made a very good second shot and anchored it to the spot. Two for Two on Rats!
Now it was beaver time. I was up once more and the beaver were out and about. We caught up with one up against the shore line. I took the shot and it was a good one, right behind the front leg. The beaver took off. It stayed near the shore and tried to beach itself. I took a follow up shot to the base of the skull. Back into the water it went! All the while we were trying to net the darn thing. Mud and water was splashing every where! It finally beached for the last time. It was trying to get to a den hole just past the edge of the beach. One last shot put it down for good. One beaver in the boat. We all were very pumped after that action.
Cat was up next and the rush of the action was starting to wear off when round two started to gear up. We had another beaver near the shore. Cat made a good shot and the beaver was off into the river. We could see it just under the surface of the water. It headed for shore. When it beached itself Chuck tried to put an anchoring shot into it but it continued up the shore and dropped into a den hole. We were all let down. That's when the real action began! We could hear it spashing around deep in the tullies. Chuck beached the boat and Cat jumped to shore. We were about to give up on it when I heard her yelling "I can see it!". I had my trusty tomahawk in my quiver so onto the shore I went. It was circling back through another den hole deep in the tullies farther up the shore. I started toward it and all of a sudden was up to my thigh in the mud. I had dropped through the ground! Finally I freed myself and was facing down a very alive and p'ed off beaver. Tomahawk to the rescue. I tried to hit it's skull but the blow just glanced off. The next blow landed just behind the skull and sent it to the happy hunting grounds. It also served as a great handle to drag the beaver out of it's hole. Whew!!!!!!!!! after making it back to the boat it was high fives all around. The action continued throuh out the rest of the night but no other game was put in the boat. It didn't matter. I'm not so sure we could have handled much more adrenalin in our systems anyway.
What a great way to close the season out! Thanks Chuck for including me in one of the most exciting hunting adventures I think I've ever had.
Topic: Out with a bang!!!!! pics added (Read 1517 times)
