Fishing and Hunting Tips and Places

You know you’re a true outdoors man if you lie awake at night anticipating for weeks ahead the hunting season or the upcoming fishing trip you planned with your buddies. And lest anyone try to convince you otherwise, hunting and fishing aren’t for just the granola, outdoorsy types. John James Audubon, a famous scientist and artist in the 1800s once said, “Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.”

If this echoes your own sentiment, it’s important to follow some of the following hunting and fishing tips to not only enhance your experience in the great outdoors, but to preserve yours and others’ safety.

If you’re determined to catch the fattest, juiciest goose to surprise your wife by pulling it out of the freezer for Christmas dinner, using decoys is more effective than most people realize. It might seem old fashioned, but just remember that geese can’t tell the difference between wood and flesh from a distance, and so using larger decoys will often help in attracting geese from further distances.

If your wife is constantly complaining about the state you leave her cutting boards in after bringing home a fresh catch of trout from the river, instead of wishing she could forget about the fishy smell emanating from her dishware and focus on your amazing abilities to bring home dinner, she’ll be a lot happier if you squeeze a little lemon juice onto the cutting boards periodically. This will keep the smell fresh and keep her from relegating you to the couch at night.

When you arrive at your hunting destination, you’ll be more successful if you start hunting as soon as you step out of your car. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that deer will somehow magically only be in places where you aren’t making camp. If you do things right—not talking too loudly, closing car doors gently—chances are likely that you’ll snag a buck not 20 yards from where you’ve parked.

To find some pristine fishing territory, Idaho has some fertile ground, such as Little Salmon River in Orohno, Hells Canyon on the Snake River in Salmon, and Upper Salmon River in White Bird. If the names don’t encourage you, try it out for yourself to see if they’re merited.

There are great hunting grounds all across the country—not only in the west with the Utah Uintas and California Sierras, but also in the east where Pennsylvania offers some great game land, such as Raccoon Creek State Park, where some new area has just been made available for hunting and Washington and Greene Counties actually have an overpopulation of deer this year, so you can have your pick.