In last week’s column I wrote about how my wife Shelby and I, along with a few friends took a trip north of Kenora last week to enjoy some moose hunting. We stayed at a resort, ate well and spent a good chunk of the week in the outdoors. It was great.
We were lucky with the weather early in the trip – well the temperatures at least. It was warm for the first few days but by later in the week, we got to experience some proper Canadian cold, with nighttime temperatures pushing 30 below. That takes the fun out of the outdoor activities pretty quick.
It became a battle just to stay warm out there, you just fight it all day. Add the that, the large accumulation of snow up north – up to my waist nearly in some of the clearcut and low, boggy areas. It was tough going.
We always find a way to have fun however and this trip was no different. We spent more time on our snowmobiles than we normally do, just because it was too hard to cover any ground on foot. I did a decent amount of walking, just not as much as I normally would. After ten minutes, it was making me sweat.
Over the years, doing this annual late season moose hunting trip, we have come across plenty of grouse. I enjoy eating them and they are usually not too difficult to find. While I have never seen a sharp-tailed grouse around the Lake of the Woods area, when you head farther north, they are quite plentiful, especially around some of the clear-cut areas where we find moose.
I have seen large groups of them in trees together and have come across flocks borrowed in the snow that will explode out of the ground when you get close to them. This has always happened while I’ve been on a snowmobile, they’ll just start blowing up out of the snow, the first one or two will startle you every time.
This year we spent a little more time, usually at the end of the day, looking for grouse and it added some fun to the trip. The plentiful ruffed grouse are really good to eat, one of my favourites of all time, but I had never eaten sharp-tail before. My friend Matt Rydberg was the first of our group to harvest a sharpie. They have a darker meat than a ruffed grouse, but it was still pretty good.
We did end up tagging a moose on the trip, so that was exciting. I understand that hunting is not for everybody. It’s an activity that I grew up participating in and I love that it gets me outside, in nature and it’s something I get to do with friends and family. We eat everything we harvest and feel lucky to do so.
Northwestern Ontario offers some excellent hunting opportunities because of all the public land available and the variety of wildlife that we have. In addition to the moose and three different species of grouse, we also saw deer, a couple of owls, a pine marten and several otters on the trip.
Hunting season is wrapped up for another year but I’m already looking forward to more time in the wilderness next year. In the meantime, there are plenty of fish to catch between now and then. Have a great holiday season and have some fun in the outdoors.
