New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
No it's winter. No it's spring. Hey it's fall again.
Thursday 11/21/2013
What a roller coaster ride the last couple of weeks. For the opening day of the regular firearms deer season in NH a week ago it sure seemed like winter was at hand. It was in the teens for the early morning hunt with my son, son-in-law, his brother and my son's best friend. Ice had skimmed over the local small ponds for a couple days and the ground was beginning to freeze. Winter it seemed was only days away with maybe early ice for ice fishing. How quickly things turned around over this past weekend with my thermometer punching over the 60 degree mark both days. Our skim ice and hopes of some early ice fishing quickly melted away. I'm not sure if there is any snow to speak of statewide at this point. Although we have a little skim ice again today on the smallest of ponds.
This lack of snow is bad for our moose. It is the month of November that the winter tick young "quest" for moose. Bare ground means tens of thousands of baby ticks will have easy access to our moose. Snow dramatically hampers their success at climbing on to a moose. And do they climb in bunches. Winter ticks babies hang together in a group and all hang on to each other as they grab on to a moose en mass. This could spell trouble for our moose this winter and spring.
My son-in-law Derek and I got away for a few days of deer hunting in Maine the first week of the month. Derek shot a nice eight point buck as he stood right next to me. I gave him first dibs on any buck we might see as we hunted from a makeshift blind I built years ago with some dead limbs. I had a doe tag and had dibs on a none antlered deer who might step out of the cover into an opening. His luck was better than mine.
Yesterday I passed on three does locally. I tagged out in my mind as I drew my rifle scope to my eye and squeezed the trigger on a nice doe. I just didn't take the safety off so the gun wouldn't fire. I still have quite a bit of last year's deer left to eat and with Derek's buck tucked away in his freezer this family doesn't need more meat. But I'll still go out deer hunting. And maybe I'll change my mind, especially if it is a buck I'm holding on. I do enjoy figuring the deer out and figuring a way to kill a deer if I want to. I've never been an ardent deer hunter or killer compared to many. Put a tranquilizer gun in my hands and everything changes. I have "shot" lots of deer, over 40 moose and plenty of bears with a tranquilizer gun. That's the biologist in me. I'd rather ear tag it although I do enjoy eat deer and moose. One fall I shot 17 moose while we were collaring them. Kind of hard to beat that in my mind.
