Product Review - No Sweat Lotion

I decided to give the No Sweat product a try. When I am out hunting waterfowl, in field layouts, we work hard for an hour in the early morning to get the decoys set up, then we sit on the cold ground waiting for the birds. The hard work can build up a sweat and often times we are working either in the rain, snow, or morning dew conditions with moisture. Gloves are on and gloves are of depending on what we are doing. Wet sweaty hands make it difficult to get the gloves on and off and then they get cold when we get inactive. 

I tried No Sweat during our spring snow goose hunting season with Prairie Rose Outfitters and I was immediately impressed. My hands stayed dry and it was easier to take my gloves on and off. It worked well on my hands so I passed it around to the other hunters and they liked it as well. A couple of our hunters, doctors from California, even applied it to their feet so that they wouldn’t get sweaty feet then cold feet and said their feet stayed drier as well.

Since using it hunting I have had my sons try it out at baseball practice and it has eliminated sweaty hand problems with gripping the bat.

Product Review - Hawx Gun Dog E-collar

I have been trailling the Hawx Outdoors Gun Dog e-collar system for the past month on a couple of dogs.  I have put the system (the Pro DG-Hunter/Trainer) through a variety of conditions and situations ranging from a simple walk of the dog out in the fields to some pretty wet and nasty spring snow goose field hunting.  I tried the system on two separate dogs.  Jager, a professionally training black lab, and Maddux, a lab/spaniel mix dog trained by myself.  Both dogs are familiar with e-collars and have been wearing them in the field during hunting for 3 or 4 years.  Used as a training system it was as good as any other e-collar I have used.  The controls were fairly straight forward, from pulse stimulation to continuous to the bell notifier.  All of the functions performed as expected.

When we moved into our spring snow goose hunting season with Prairie Rose Outfitters, the new found convenience of the Dog and Gun System began to really separate it from other e-collars.  With this system from Hawx Outdoors, you pair a gun mounted button with a button on the transceiver and notify the dog without removing your hands from the gun, even without losing sight of the birds in the sky that you are tracking.  The gun mounted push button, mounted on the barrel, provided easy access for my left hand, away from the trigger.  A quick click of the button sent a signal to the transceiver I left laying on the top of my field bag beside my blind, which relayed the signal to the dog.

When I was hunting, I used the system in Dog and Gun mode, with the barrel mounted button.  When I was guiding, and not carrying a gun, I switched the system to Training mode where all the control was with the transceiver unit.  Switching between Dog and Gun and Training mode was a simple turn of the dial on the back of the unit.

Convenience is extremely  important for a guide.  In a typical spring snow goose set up we put out approximately 800 decoys, 2 sets of electronic calls, and 3 decoy rotators.  Along with the e-collar, that can be 4 or more remotes.  With the convenience of the remote mounted button, we can eliminate the need to fumble around with one remote (see below for mounting options).

We put the Hawx e-collar system through some pretty harsh conditions, wet, cold, wind, rain, snow, mud and it stood up to the challenge.  One hunt it survived 5 hours in the rain, laying in the mud, and showed no signs of damage.  We were hunting the barley stubble fields around Quill Lakes, Saskatchewan where the land is flat and you watch your dog run for miles.  On a couple occasions, we tested the range of the unit.  With me standing in the decoys, we sent the collar on a ride across the field with a hunter on a quad and tested the range up to nearly the full reported one mile.  Although we didn't officially measure the distance, it will certainly work over the range we need for any of our dogs, even on long distance retrieves.

One change I would like to see is less of a difference between the stimulus level 3 and 4.  At level 1 and 2 neither dog noticed the unit and neither responded.  Testing on myself, I could barely feel the stimulus of these setting as well.  Level 3 was a little stronger, I could certainly feel the electronic pulse on my own hand, but the dogs responded less than half the time to this setting.  Then I tried level 4, on myself first, and it was substantially more powerful than level 3.  Enough that I wasn't too keen on zapping myself a second time (did anyway).  The dogs certainly responded to level 4 as well.  Based on my testing and these two dogs, I would turn up the power on Levels 1, 2, and 3 so they were more effective.  Then, level 4 (unit went up to level 6) would only be needed in an extreme situations such as when my dog takes off after a coyote.  (Note: Gary Rossiter of Hawx Outdoors has informed me that there is an option within the system to adjust the stimulus levels of the collar, had I read the manual I would have known this).

I did try bringing the gun mount button along on a walking in the field day, more as a trial than anything else, and found carrying the small button to be a pain, constantly worried I would drop it in the long grass.  The belt loop accessory for the transceiver unit was much better suited for a walk out in the field. Switching between dog and gun mode and handheld mode, based on being a hunter or being a field guide made a real world setting and the unit performed well in both modes.

In conversations with Gary Rossiter, Marketing Manager, Hawx Outdoors Inc, he gave me a few more options on using the button including the great idea of mounting the button on the shaft of the call the guide is using (see the picture below).

My end conclusion is that this is an excellent e-collar unit.  It performs all functions that you would expect and performs as well as any other high end unit, then pulls ahead of the pack with the gun mount button.  If you are shopping for an e-collar, go buy the Hawx Outdoors Pro DG-Hunter/Trainer.

Galen Sonntag
Guide/Outfitter
Prairie Rose Outfitters, Inc.
www.prairieroseoutfitters.com

Spring Snow Goose Hunting - David Rudkin Group

While the Saskatchewan Spring Snow Goose season officially begins April 1, we don't usually get going until the later half of April.  An early spring this year combined with a lower than normal snow fall over the winter brought the birds northward early.  We started to see large numbers of Snow Geese April 2nd and 3rd and northward migration built up the concentrations all during the early part of April.

Our first group of hunters arrived in camp on April 18th.  Both were first time snow goose hunters and definitely were brave enough to take on the challenging Spring Snow Goose season.

The days start early, with wake up calls at 3:00 and on the road by 3:30.  Snow Geese travel in large flocks and gather up in even larger groups when feeding in the fields.  While some small groups of 100 or 200 birds may scatter around, it is more common to find 3,000 to 5,000 birds gathered up in a field at one time.  Because of these large flocks, it is important to look like a flock of snow geese on the ground, and that means a large number of decoys, upwards of 800, were deployed.  The first day set up always takes the longest, especially with hunters who are not experience snow goose hunters.  This crew caught on quickly though and day 2 and day 3 set up were quite smooth.

Thursday morning the hunting began and the conditions, and birds, proved to be very challenging.  The only species of waterfowl that are to be hunted are Snow Geese.  This means everything else that came within range had to be ignored, including the many Canada Geese and Specklebelly Geese that were constantly setting up on the decoys. 

The Snows were mch more decoy educated than the dark geese.  To shoot a limit of dark geese, on any of the three days would have been an easy task.  The came in low and slow and frequently made 3 or 4 passes over the decoys, sometimes landing in the decoys briefly, sometimes setting down only a few hundred yards away.

This gave us confidence that our hunters were well concealed in the their blinds.  The Snow Geese were much more wary and bringing them into range was not as easy as the dark geese.  The Snow Geese are legal to hunt all the way up the flyway so many birds have been seeing decoy spreads for thousands of miles.  Combined with flying often in large groups, with many pairs of eyes, makes them especially tough to decoy in the spring.  We had many flights of Snow Geese hit the wall at 100 yards and flare off, seeing something they disliked.  Meanwhile, the Canada's and Specks kept up their low level fly by practices, almost close enough to hit them with a stick.  We were successful with some smaller groups of birds and some singles so through the course of the day some 20 birds were shot.

Friday was a new field with a promise of new opportunity again.  With the decoys set, we waited for first light and it didn't take long until we had the first 3 birds on the ground.  A single came early followed by a paid shortly behind and all three birds lined up reasonably well for us.  As the light improved, the wind diminished and other than the decoy rotators behind us, there was no movement in the spread and birds were very reluctant to fly down the decoy alley and we only managed to lure in a few more singles for the next few hours, and those were killed with good long range shooting.  Then we were fortunate and the wind picked up, they decoys had some wiggle and wobble, and the Snow Geese began to cooperate, coming lower, closer and in small groups.  The morning produced a good tally of 26 birds.  If we had the wind earlier in the morning, we may have been able to push the limit of 20 birds per hunter.

On Saturday morning we had a field lined up in the middle of their flight path between the roost pond and the feed field.  The evening before the birds had been bouncing between the field across the road the field we set up in.  The highlight of the morning shoot was a banded snow goose shot by one of the hunters.  This one almost got away.  We had hit the bird and it was wounded but managed to fly at least a quarter mile into the next field.  We took the dog and went on a search and recovery mission.  The dog found the bird hiding in some tall grass next to a pond and chased it down.  The goose appeared to be ready to fly away again when the dog caught it's tail feathers and finished the retrieve.

For a brief moment, we thought we had shot a Blue Phase Ross Goose, almost.  A Blue Phase Ross Goose is a one in a million bird.  We shot one 5 years ago and the guy who shot it was actually a Ducks Unlimited biologist and he made the determination that it was a Blue Phase Ross.  The bird we shot on this outing had the same body size as a Ross Goose, with the coloring of a Blue Phase Snow Goose.  However, the head and bead were of Snow Goose size and shape.  Our end conclusion was a young Blue Phase Snow Goose. 

Agassiz-Waterhen River Lodge & Outfitters

S3 Outdoors Marketing has just taken over the website for Agassiz-Waterhen River Lodge & Outfitters.  The site is located at www.agassizoutfitters.com. This is a WordPress site so the transfer from their old web hosting company to us was an interesting adventure.  They were having difficulty getting their website needs taken care of so they came to us for better service and better results.

Initially this looked like a rather simple move, as it should be, when everything is done correctly.  Of course, working with a Word Press site and moving to another server can have it's problems.  We started by backing up everything form the old site, all content, all database records, all theme files, and even performed the Word Press export routine.  Then we started with a fresh install of WordPress on the new server.  Imported all the content and we should be off and running.  We modified the domain name server setting on their domain name account to point to the files location on the new server and we should have been done.  Then came the technical challenges.  Somehow, someway, on the old site, they had created a redirect loop, two files in the system that pointed at each other, and prevented the website home page from displaying, instead causing an error message to appear.  Not what I wanted to see after I though I had completed the move.  With a little technical help from my buddies at the help desk for my web hosting company, we were able fix the redirect loop and get the website 100% functional.

Now that we are back in business, we will be applying our SEO Evolution plan to the website and work to improve the visibility of the site in the search engines and help more people find this outstanding Manitoba Outfitter.

Agassiz Outfitters is a top outfitter for Black Bear, Whitetail Deer, Wolf and Coyote, Waterfowl, and Walleye, Northern Pike.  We recommend you check out their site at: www.agassizoutfitters.com

Is Spring 2012 Here, Early?

It seems a long fall and a mild winter this year was just going to be mother nature playing tricks us and then hammering us with a late winter season from hell.  But that doesn't seem to be the case.  The winter was the 3rd mildest on record (so I have heard).  It was so mild we had a flock of Canada Geese spend the winter on the open water of the Saskatchewan river here in Saskatoon.  Some birds will wait until either there is no open water and no food to eat before they migrate.  This year they had almost no snow to worry about,

So now with milder weather, the pairs of birds are starting to turn into flocks.  The rare sighting of 2 Canada Geese in a day is turning back to the familiar sounds of 20 or 30 geese honking overhead as the pass my house on their way to the river on one side and the fields of grain on the other.  A few more weeks and we can likely add the quacks of Mallard, often the last ducks to leave and the first to return.  It may be longer, but the high pitched sound of snow goose flocks, often in the several hundred birds, will not be far behind.  In the midst of the spring migration, it is not uncommon to look up on a mid morning and spot a few thousand birds passing over.  The Canada's are in flocks of 30 to 50 birds, honking their way to feed and back to rest.  The snow geese with their white wings visible when the sun hits the right angle may pass in groups of 100's to thousands as the migration route fills up and often on a moonlit night the migration continues well past midnight.  The ducks seem to arrive in stealth mode.  I just don't see them moving in large flocks then suddenly, there are a few hundred to a few thousand back on their paddling pools or feeding in the fields.

The birds seem to know Spring is early this year and we are all thankful.

New Site: ClassifiedOutdoors.com

We all tend to accumulate more gear than we need.  Sometimes we buy a specialized piece of equipment for a specific hunting trip then long after the hunt is over it sits in our closet or our garage, never to be used again.  At S3 Outdoors and Netnotic Marketing we have launched a new website to help you pass on your used gear to the next hunter, angler, or camper who is looking for what you don't need.  The new site is ClassifiedOutdoors.com and is bound to become the new marketplace for outdoors gear.

In addition to the gear and equipment marketplace, we have set up sections where hunting outfitters and fishing guides can add their profiles and images including links to their website, Facebook and Twitter accounts.

We invite you check out ClassifiedOutdoors.com.

www.classifiedoutdoors.com

Early Canada Geese

I was driving through Estevan, SK, today and I saw 2 Canada geese flying overhead.  That seems a little unusual for February 19th.  But then this has been an unusual weather year in Saskatchewan and in fact much of the prairies from Alberta to Manitoba and down into the norther U.S. states.  We have had unusually warm weather and a very low amount of snow fall.  Normally there are a few things that "turn on" the migration instinct in migratory birds.  This includes both the time of year and local conditions.  With fall approaching, a cold snap that freezes water or a heavy snow fall will send birds south in search of open water and easy to find food.  However, there are often a select number of hearty Canada geese that ignore the "timing" signals and will stay in their summer homes as long as they can find open water and a source of food. In Saskatoon every year I notice a few flocks that use the open water of the North Saskatchewan river and make their daily journey to the fields searching for food.  This can continue long into December.  This winter it wasn't until we had a 6 inch snowfall and temperatures dipping into the minus 30's that the birds left.  However, reports are that they went as far south as Regina area, when the weather turned back to balmy winter conditions with temperatures rising above freezing, and the birds have turned back.

I am currently on a trip to South Dakota and I am keeping my eyes out for open water and signs of waterfowl.  Between Estevan, where they have the Shand Power Station keeping water open, and Great Falls, North Dakota, there have been no sightings yet.  The fields are largely clear of snow so food would be available but I haven't seen any open water.  Off to South Dakota tomorrow so we will see what the rest of the journey turns up.

Update: The drive to South Dakota was a snow and slush filled adventure as several inches of snow were falling between the south east of North Dakota and the north east of South Dakota.  We finished the journal southward in Aberdeen, South Dakota, which is the self proclaimed pheasant capital.  We did spot a number of pheasants both in the fields as well as in the air.  But, back to the topic of waterfowl.  With mild temperatures and sunshine there were small amounts of open water, a few small streams, but nothing that would attract and hold geese.

From Aberdeen, SD, we drove northwestward to Calgary, Alberta.  In that roughly 1700 km of driving we did not spot anymore waterfowl.  All of the visible water was frozen over.  Upon reaching Calgary, did find some open water on the Bow River and there we spotted a few pairs of Great Canada Geese flying around.  always in pairs.

The last leg of our journey was Calgary back to Saskatoon and even though the fields were largely snow free (source of food) the water was all frozen and the geese were no where to be seen.