Last week started off with a friendly little bass tournament set up by the Wolf River Bass Club out of New London . We had 10 boats participating and the fish were biting. I learned that you can drag a tube jig along, the bottom, right in the middle of the river, and catch fish. I ended up catching about 35 Small Mouth Bass and took second place in the tournament. All the fisherman in the tournament had to miss watching the Packer/ Redskin game but that was a small price to pay for a fishing opportunity this good. Monday morning Chad , Lee, and I went duck hunting and we did a lot of shooting but mostly missing. We did get a teal and a beautiful male wood duck.

Wednesday and Thursday was a grouse hunt by Winter WI. Jeff and I hooked up with a group of hard core grouse hunters from Kentucky . Those good ol boys brought about 10 dogs and worked 3 to 4 dogs each day. There choice of dog was setters. A small white dog that when hunting covers about six miles to your one. Because the grouse country is so thick, you often can not see the dogs, which also allows the grouse to bust out ahead of the hunter with no chance for a shot. To compensate for this, these dogs were fitted with special beepers on there collars. When the dogs were running their collars made an intermittent beep, however when the dog smelled a bird they would freeze on point. When the dogs did not move, this special collar would emit a constant high pitched sound. That sound warned us about a possible flushing bird and the hunters would move to that sound on the ready. We harvested 8 grouse the first day and 12 the second. By far the most grouse I had ever seen harvested at one time. We had a grouse cook out and I still believe that grouse is the best tasting wild game there is.

Saturday morning was deer hunting with my son Chad at Tigerton. That was the first cool day in a while and I think that helped make for a good deer movement. I saw two does and a nice buck that was to far away for a shot with an arrow. Chad saw 14 deer and three of those were bucks. Chad past up a shot at a smaller buck because he was waiting for a bigger Quality Management buck to show. Chad got a pheasant at noon from the public hunting grounds at Mukwa. Then, to finish the week, Chad and I went deer hunting one last time Saturday evening. We were in the Maple Creek area and saw two deer each, all does. One of these does was the biggest doe I have ever seen. It walked within 10 yards of my stand. It dwarfed a decent doe that was standing close to it. Sunday was finally a day to rest but alas no Packer game. Can’t wait to see what next week in Wisconsin will bring.

-Randy Williams