Sylus
10-02-2014, 09:48 PM
Hello All,
Well the title is about as accurate as a description for my hunting efforts last weekend as I could think of.
Me and my buddy departed the lower mainland last Friday afternoon with the plan of hunting the south side of the coquihala so as to take advantage of the any-buck season in region 2. We got around 20 km down an fsr which we had picked out on google earth to find that the road had been wiped out by a slide and is only passable to quads now. Queue plan B. We hopped back on the coquihalla and headed up to the next exit (portia), only to find that the road serviced from that exit (old coqihalla road) is gated due to that pipeline twinning project, groovy. Queue plan C, or perhaps plan I cause it was all improvised from this point on! We hopped back on the coq and took the coquihalla lakes exit with the plan of hunting the tulameen area. We camped the night at murphy lake but not before a dinner of cambell's chunky, cooked in the can because the pot was forgot at home.
Up the next morning at 5 we hiked in to a older cut-block and sat ourselves down at the base of a big doug fur and sat the morning in complete silence as the sun rose. We stayed like that until 8:30 ish until another hunter showed up and had a coughing fit violent enough to register on the Richter scale. After that we departed from the cut-block and explored the surrounding area on foot. As the day wore on we found another older cut block and a very old road servicing it that was just rife with deer tracks. One set seemed like they were made earlier that morning (the ground around the track was dry but inside the track the dirt was still wet). This set of tracks was especially interesting as the lobes of the hoof were very splayed, giving the track a 'V' like shape. According to field and stream that can be indicative of a buck's track, so we were interested. We decided that would be the spot we would sit on Sunday morning.
We shifted gears in the afternoon and i spent most of it wailing on a rabbit-in-distress call as we both had bear tags (far away from where we saw the buck track). This produced no bears, only some bloodshot eyes for me due to the unacceptable cranial pressure produced by running one of those things for any amount of time.
We then set off in my buddies truck in search of a promising spot to sit for the afternoon as dusk settled. We ended up on this seriously overgrown road and were in the process of giving his truck a great set of BC pinstripes when disaster struck. A very large tree had fallen on the side of the road and was perfectly camouflaged by the alders crowding the roadway. We impacted the tree square on with the right front tire and stopped the truck dead. Once the dust had settled and the damage had been assessed we determined that the right sway bar link had been severed in the collision the wheels had been knocked out of alignment. So badly so that the steering wheel had to be a full quarter turn to the left to make the truck drive straight. We decided it would be best just to drive the truck home immediately and headed back to town the Saturday night.
So this trip left me with a few questions i was hoping somebody on here could help me out with. They are as follows:
What are the chances that track was actually that of bucks and was my method of determining it's freshness sound?
How effective is using a rabbit in distress call on black bears?
Was that 'old coquihalla road' ever open for public travel?
And finally, why don't some of you share your best stories of backroads damage to you or your friends vehicles? I figure there has to be some good ones out there. :cool:
Hope you guys got some laughs out of my story, and any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers, Sylus
Well the title is about as accurate as a description for my hunting efforts last weekend as I could think of.
Me and my buddy departed the lower mainland last Friday afternoon with the plan of hunting the south side of the coquihala so as to take advantage of the any-buck season in region 2. We got around 20 km down an fsr which we had picked out on google earth to find that the road had been wiped out by a slide and is only passable to quads now. Queue plan B. We hopped back on the coquihalla and headed up to the next exit (portia), only to find that the road serviced from that exit (old coqihalla road) is gated due to that pipeline twinning project, groovy. Queue plan C, or perhaps plan I cause it was all improvised from this point on! We hopped back on the coq and took the coquihalla lakes exit with the plan of hunting the tulameen area. We camped the night at murphy lake but not before a dinner of cambell's chunky, cooked in the can because the pot was forgot at home.
Up the next morning at 5 we hiked in to a older cut-block and sat ourselves down at the base of a big doug fur and sat the morning in complete silence as the sun rose. We stayed like that until 8:30 ish until another hunter showed up and had a coughing fit violent enough to register on the Richter scale. After that we departed from the cut-block and explored the surrounding area on foot. As the day wore on we found another older cut block and a very old road servicing it that was just rife with deer tracks. One set seemed like they were made earlier that morning (the ground around the track was dry but inside the track the dirt was still wet). This set of tracks was especially interesting as the lobes of the hoof were very splayed, giving the track a 'V' like shape. According to field and stream that can be indicative of a buck's track, so we were interested. We decided that would be the spot we would sit on Sunday morning.
We shifted gears in the afternoon and i spent most of it wailing on a rabbit-in-distress call as we both had bear tags (far away from where we saw the buck track). This produced no bears, only some bloodshot eyes for me due to the unacceptable cranial pressure produced by running one of those things for any amount of time.
We then set off in my buddies truck in search of a promising spot to sit for the afternoon as dusk settled. We ended up on this seriously overgrown road and were in the process of giving his truck a great set of BC pinstripes when disaster struck. A very large tree had fallen on the side of the road and was perfectly camouflaged by the alders crowding the roadway. We impacted the tree square on with the right front tire and stopped the truck dead. Once the dust had settled and the damage had been assessed we determined that the right sway bar link had been severed in the collision the wheels had been knocked out of alignment. So badly so that the steering wheel had to be a full quarter turn to the left to make the truck drive straight. We decided it would be best just to drive the truck home immediately and headed back to town the Saturday night.
So this trip left me with a few questions i was hoping somebody on here could help me out with. They are as follows:
What are the chances that track was actually that of bucks and was my method of determining it's freshness sound?
How effective is using a rabbit in distress call on black bears?
Was that 'old coquihalla road' ever open for public travel?
And finally, why don't some of you share your best stories of backroads damage to you or your friends vehicles? I figure there has to be some good ones out there. :cool:
Hope you guys got some laughs out of my story, and any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers, Sylus