The seasons changed literally overnight last week across Sunset Country when we got hit with a strong winter storm, which knocked out power for several days in some areas.
Heavy snow, combined with strong winds, knocked down thousands of trees–wreaking havoc on power lines, roads, and property.
For me, this storm pretty well signalled the end of the fishing season for me. I have a few friends who still are chasing muskies around and there is a good chance I’ll get out on Lake of the Woods one last time to try and catch one.
They stay fairly active right up until freeze-up and this late fall period is a great time to catch a trophy-sized fish.
Beyond musky fishing, though, I think I am done with fishing in the boat for 2017. I’m actually looking forward to ice-fishing at this point.
Looking at the long-range forecast, it does not look like this snow is going to melt, which is quite different from last year when we did not get our first lasting snow until late November.
Sure, there’s a chance we could see a warming trend in November but it also just as easily could stay cold, as well.
For me, this weather means it’s time to move on to deer hunting. I do a little bit of guiding for a couple of weeks every fall and actually have some friends from Minnesota here with me this week.
I have been scouting around in the woods and preparing for them for the past couple of weeks, and have had some nice bucks showing up on some of my trail cameras. So hopefully my hunters will see a couple of them.
This cooler weather certainly seems to have the deer kicked into gear for their annual rut activities. Over the past few days, I’ve captured several photos of bucks fighting with each other, there have been scraps showing up on the ground (which deer use to mark their territory),and I even have seen a couple of bucks pursing female deer.
For those of us who enjoy deer hunting, it is prime time to be in the woods.
While the population outside of our communities has been hurting for the past four or five years, the deer numbers seem to rebounding somewhat this year, at least in some areas.
I’ve been seeing a few more deer in my travels than I have the past few years, but it still is nothing close to what it was like six or eight years ago. Hopefully, we get a couple of more easy winters to help them out.
The Hydro One workers across Northwestern Ontario deserve a big thank you for getting us all hooked back up with power over the past weekend. Where I live, west of Kenora, we were without power for four days and it was not very fun.
These guys were working hard in rough and dangerous conditions to get power restored across the region.
There always are folks who question our electricity rates, but these guys went above and beyond last weekend to get everybody restored. It was quite impressive.
I was out in woods getting my hunters set up so I know what they were going through. There were a bunch of roads where trees were down every 20 metres so you can imagine what it was like on the power lines.
There were thousands of trees that went down.
So if you see a hydro worker this week, tell them thank you!
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
