First year hunting and nothing to show for it? Don't be discouraged.

So the joke at the dinner table when we all got together with our wives for Christmas dinner was if they if had to rely on us to bring home the meat, we would all be starving!

Our first year hunting together was a rough one to say the least. Lots of fun, lots of potential, lots of stories but not a lot of meat. 2 ducks, 0 turkey and 0 deer. ouch!

Hmm not as easy as we newbies thought.

Poor Shane, we Greeners were bad luck for him.

Our first hunt was the spring turkey hunt. Steve had a friend that told him a good place to go in a Simcoe County Forest. So we bought our tags, got our OFAH pass, I practised on my Knight & Hale Wet Willy box and away we went. Shane, Steve and I met before dawn. As soon as we started to walk the trail we see and hear #turkeys fly through the trees. This is gonna be a great day! We set up. Me in a blind at the end of a hollow, Steve up one side and Shane up the other. I get to calling and almost immediately gobbles come back. I see some walking around the far tree line. Too far. Then all of a sudden up pops a big Tom. Head back and tail fanned out. It's coming down the hollow to the decoy! The #Gobbler looks left then right and all of a sudden a shot rings out. The Tom spins and runs off under the trees. Too far of a shot and not enough patience. Thing is another 5 feet or so and the Gobbler would have been 15 feet away from Shane for a good clean shot.

Next came the #duck hunt season. My newly acquired home and a perfect pond for duck #hunting. Ducks were there every morning for 2 weeks before season started. Walking my dog, @Jaxsonthewolfdog in the morning I could count anywhere between 10 and 20 of them. We practised clay shooting the weekend before and build blinds. We shot a lot of shells that day!! We were ready. Merv finally joins us for our hunting adventures. We gather before dawn and head out to the blinds. 2 ducks come that morning and I think out of sheer excitement I blast away with my #Winchester SXP from my hip at the ducks. They fly away. Merv on his first hunt was the only one that got a duck that day. A Wood Duck. Well that didn't go as planned.

#Deer season. Controlled Hunt 5 days. We draw first week of December. Well trail cams all year showed lots of deer out back of the property that borders on Simcoe County Forest. We head out and start in blinds. Day 1: Cold and silent except for some gun shot out in the distance. Day: 2 Cold and silent. Day 3: Colder and the coyotes were yipping from sunrise for 2 hrs and Steve was snoring. Could hear the coyotes moving all around us. Creepy. No deer.

Day 4: We head out and try to find deer tracks see if we can do a drive. Nothing but old home made tree stands

Day 5: I only went out for 3 hrs and could not stand the cold. And with no tracks spotted yesterday....packed it in. Shane hanged in there for most the day.

So after a little research I found that in 2017, 203,073 deer tags were bought and only 61,552 were filled in Ontario. Thats only 30% got a deer! Turkey 53,411 tags bought and only 7364 roughly 19%. And some of them hunters have been hunting for years.

All was not lost that first year of hunting. We saw some of the best of Gods Country that is out there. Spent time with great friends. We have a ton of stories to tell. And I dived into how to videos on youtube, shows and books. What I learned is you must in the off season scout out areas. Get out hiking and find your spots. Be patient when hunting. And the "Trophy Hunt" is not always what you catch but the experience of nature during the Hunt itself.

Doug Taylor