Winter hare hunting
Contributors to this thread:Small Game
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
Thought I would post some pictures of areas I hunt. This is the entrance of the 27,000 acre, gated grant I hunt, a lot.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
This is my beagle, ziggy, ready to go.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
This is a huge heath. The ridge in the background is where I logged with horses one summer. I have killed a lot of deer and a couple bear up there. Did a lynx project there and got 2 pictures of lynx.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
This is the Diamond River. Good fishing if you hit it right.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
This is what we locals call the Gorge. Deep pools about 20 feet deep. In May, I have caught some nice salmon and squaretail there. Three years ago, on Dec 7, 8 migrating deer tried to cross on thin ice. I was bowhunting and found them. Two bucks were still alive but drowned before my eyes.
From: Panther Bone
10-Feb-18
I hunted this morning with a fella in my church. He's from NH and apparently a well known beagler. Dana Robinson is his name, and his kennel is Shady Grove Beagles. He's been in TN for around thirty years now. Just wondered if you might know him.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
This is an old skidder trail I hare hunt. It is 2 miles from the gate.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
This is an old skidder trail I hare hunt. It is 2 miles from the gate.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
If you walk 3 miles up this logging road, go to the end of an old wood yard, you will find an old abandoned culvert. In that culvert is a plastic sled. Five years ago me and a buck slid down that road after dark. I bet we were doing 40 when we damn near got launched off a logging bridge.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
This picture is the type of cover we have up here. No hare today, I just let ziggy run while I tried to get a picture of a hare. Too fast for me plus we had over a foot of new snow. Hard snowshoeing
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
Panther, I don't know him. I bet though that we crossed paths if he hunted up here.
From: lawdy
10-Feb-18
One of our local residents. Caught her on a trail cam as she walked off after I released her from a foothold on my land.
From: t-roy
10-Feb-18
Some nice pics, lawdy.
From: ben yehuda
10-Feb-18
Thanks for sharing!
From: HUNT MAN
10-Feb-18
Amazing country
From: The last savage
11-Feb-18
Beautiful area ,thx for posting...
From: buc i 313
11-Feb-18
Thanks for sharing
From: T Mac
11-Feb-18
NH is a beautiful state thx for sharing
From: Paul@thefort
11-Feb-18
beagle, bow and bunnies. Nice
From: wild1
11-Feb-18
Cool area - thanks for sharing.
From: krieger
11-Feb-18
Very cool lawdy !!
From: White Falcon
11-Feb-18
How did you get that close to release? But your coat over her?
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
White Falcon, I stepped on her with a snowshoe, released the trap, checked her foot which was fine and stepped back. She sat there giving me hell, and when she realized she was free, walked off. The big males are really exciting to release and sometimes I have to use a catchpole. Fishers can be downright dangerous. A friend of mine released a big male and it went for his neck. If his trapping partner hadn't been there, he could have been killed.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Today I went in through Maine and crossed into NH three miles up on the Parmachenee Road.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
A CB is a lifesaver up here as logging trucks do not move for you. You announce where you are and the truckers do likewise. Hear a truck coming a mile away, you pull over to let them by. Two snowmobilers riding illegally on a plowed logging road found out the hard way. They saw the truck coming as they were parked in the middle of a hill, realized he couldn't stop, and they bailed. He ran right over the machines. This is the unplowed road at the 4 mile mark I snowshoed up
From: t-roy
11-Feb-18
Why are you releasing them, lawdy? Season closed, quota filled? Also, what animals were you targeting when you caught the bobs as well as the fishers?
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
After one mile I reached the Eastside Road. My brother got a moose permit and I found a big bull scouting. He too is a tracker, tracked it on an early snow for a couple miles and shot it bedded with a cow a good mile up on a ridge. I got it out with a draft horse. Worked like a charm because atv's are not legal there.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Eastside road
Eastside road
Oops, here is the picture
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Abbot Brook
Abbot Brook
This is Abbot Brook, take my granddaughter fishing here. Full of native trout. We cook them right there.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Bye bye Ziggy, I'm screwed.
Bye bye Ziggy, I'm screwed.
The hare got by me as I looked the other way. Got a picture of Ziggy running him. I never saw Ziggy again until I caught him three hours later. The hare lined out on me off that ridge, crossed a brook, and went up another ridge into Maine. I caught Zig as he came down his backtrack. I let the hare go by as I was over a half mile from a trail in 5 feet of soft snow.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Hard snowshoeing for a 71 yearold.
Hard snowshoeing for a 71 yearold.
This is the track I made climbing that ridge and going back after I intercepted Ziggy. I still had over a mile to go to reach the plowed road and another mile to my pickup. I was beat.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Here is a piece of equipment you logging guys will recognize. I spent a summer in a logging camp 30 miles up in the woods before these came. I was a yard cutter.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Deer feeding
Deer feeding
Driving home I snapped a picture of a deer in the Wilsons Mills feeding yard.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Deer crossing the road
Deer crossing the road
I am going back tomorrow. Still trying to get a picture of a hare. The bobcat I released because in NH they are protected. I was targeting coyote. It has been a nasty winter for trapping.
From: lawdy
11-Feb-18
Azisscoos Mtn
Azisscoos Mtn
Aziscoos Mountain. I shot a buck up there and didn't get out of the woods with it until 5 AM the next morning. That was when I was a lot younger.
From: LKH
11-Feb-18
In AK we had quite a long stretch with large numbers. Hunted them with .22 pistol. In MN it's been a very long time since we have had a hare "explosion". Might be our 3,000 wolves.
How about where you are?
From: lawdy
12-Feb-18
Our hare population goes through cycles. Right now it is in a downturn. We don't have wolves here and I doubt that with a low deer population, moose rapidly disappearing, we will see them. As far as wolves and hare, with 5 feet of soft snow, predators are starting to hurt up here. Up in Newfoundland I visit with Fish and Wildlife every summer. Their position is firm, no wolves in Newfoundland, moose are too big an economic factor plus sustenance. They think that we are nuts to wish wolves on a state. Any wolf released there will be killed by any means necessary. I love how people that don't live in a state want the locals to live by their standards. We get that attitude all the time from the feds and flatlanders that move up here. They try to turn this place into the hellholes they escaped from. If you love wolves, bring them to your own state. Leave us alone.
From: lawdy
12-Feb-18
I finally had a hare stop to check me out. He is between the t yellow birches
From: lawdy
12-Feb-18
Here comes Ziggy. I let my last arrow go on that hare, never found it and the hare lives. That wipes out my culled arrows until I make some more. Have a bunch of birch shafts. The flinter goes tomorrow.
From: lawdy
12-Feb-18
Here is the deer kill report for the past seasons on this 27,000 acres. Only 2 deer killed in 2017. This also includes part of the Atkinson Grant as all deer kills pass through this gate.
From: lawdy
12-Feb-18
Two that didn't migrate to the feeding yards. 15 miles in off an active logging site. I survey this remote deer yard every year and was overjoyed to find 5 or 6 deer there. The coyotes left for easy pickings around the feeding yards. These guys will survive. Hopefully their kids will stay next winter along with them. It is a nice deer yard with great cover and forage.
From: Mark Watkins
13-Feb-18
Looks like a phenomenal place Lawdy....thanks for sharing your adventure!
Mark
From: JTreeman
13-Feb-18
Looks like fun, love that beagle!
—jim
From: TrapperKayak
13-Feb-18
Extraordinary photos, stories, and land, Lawdy. Thanks for sharing it.
From: lawdy
13-Feb-18
Just got in from running the begle. The hares are running crazy this year. They line out for parts unknown and by the time you get there they whiz by and you get to snowshoe all the way back. At least the coyotes are gone from the remote areas as they have followed the deer to the feeding yards. The bobcats are still around but they don't bother hounds.
From: lawdy
13-Feb-18
This is a maple sugaring operation near us. Over 200 acres of maples, 20,000 feet of lines. They boil 20,000 gallons of sap per day with 30,000 gallons of storage so they can go 24/7. I have been there when they open the spigot in the morning. It's a gusher. The equipment cost 1.5 million dollars. One guys job is to cruise the orchard repairing lines that moose take out. They sell maple syrup in their plant, but most of it goes in 55 gallon barrels and is sold overseas.
From: t-roy
13-Feb-18
Can you explain about the maple sugaring operation a little, lawdy? 20,000’ of lines? Are there lines run to each tree tapped and then they run to a central point? Just curious.
From: lawdy
13-Feb-18
The lines from several trees merge into one line. They ultimately end up with about a dozen big lines coming in to the sugar house. They can't all go to one line because the pressure would be too much. It is a gravity feed. When the sap runs I will try to get pictures. I tap trees on my land and a neighbor collects it and I trade it for a few gallons of syrup. Those lines and spigots stay there all year.
