Hunting Products that are on my Wish List for 2011 3

After a long and successful charter fishing season in Southeast Alaska you’d think my mind would still be awash with visions of salmon, halibut, ling cod, and every other saltwater critter that’ll bite a cut plug herring. Oh contraire mon frere!

The sight of a small Sitka blacktail buck on a beach in early August was all it took to jump start the hunting bug and it all came rushing back. The memories of last years epic fail were saved conveniently on my minds desk top. Like it or not, the visual’s played of the big mule deer buck that I just couldn’t pull the trigger on, the legal bucks I passed up, and the three point blacktail that I missed in the torrential monsoon rain in the closing moments of the Washington late hunt.

“Hey Rob? What kind of deer is that over there on the beach?”, one of my guests inquired. “That’s a Sitka blacktail. Small, but man are they tastey,” I responded as I snapped back from Okanogan County to the wheel of the charter boat.

I’ve always been an old school, lunch-pale type deer hunter, choosing to keep my gear simple and rely on extremely hard work, some strategic planning, and extended time in the field to bag my Washington buck. My approach has always been fine-and-dandy until I glassed that mule deer with a drop tine last fall that was juuuuust out of my comfortable shooting range.

He stared at me from his perch 400 to 500 yards away for not less than five minutes and then vanished. Rolling onto my back and gazing into the sky I raised the white flag. It was time for me to come out of the dark ages of hunting and at least purchase a range finder. A raven flew overhead and laughed at me. Yes, it was time!

My summer long search for a combination binocular/rangefinder led me to the Bushnell Fusion 1600 ARC. These binoc’s seem to possess every feature that I’m looking for and at a reasonable price of around $800. The Fusion ARC’s come in both 10X42 and 12X50 field of view and are equipped with anti-fog lenses and a fully waterproof housing for those soggy days in the blacktail woods of western Washington. A simple push of a button activates the range finder, which effectively displays target range from 10 to 1,600 yards. The Fusion ARC’s can be programmed for rifle sight-in of 100, 150, 200, and 300 yards and come pre-programmed with 19 different ballistic charts. They are a long ways from my twenty plus years of stubborn-ness, but with all these features I’m not sure I can resist this product.

I’ve also done some digging around on the interwebs and found some very positive reviews of the Bushnell Fusion ARC’s, including this one over at LongRangeHunting.com.

Next on my wish list are some trail cam’s to help root out the blacktails that live in the Amazon-like jungle of tangled-up underbrush here in western Washington. There’s something alluring about these creatures. Perhaps it’s because they’re so hard to hunt that I’m drawn to them. If they aren’t fouled up by the rut when they seem to appear under every rhododendron bush in the Seattle suburbs they simply don’t exist. At least not the big ones anways. Ah, but with a trail camera I can tune into your sneaky ways Mr. Blacktail!

My search for a trail camera led me to the guys at TrailCamPro.com and eventually to the new Moultrie GameSpy M80. If you’re searching for a trail camera this website has a plethora of information.

In terms of field testing the Moultrie GameSpy M80 ended up somewhere in the middle of the pack. It was the price point of $139 that attracted me, which is a solid price for a trail cam with this many features.  It features 3 different operational modes including infrared, a time lapse plot cam, and infrared by night and time lapse plot cam by night.

It’s night camera has been rated best-in-class, which is exactly what I want for nocturnal blacktails. It’s powered by 8 rechargable AA batteries and while battery life is only 2-4 weeks I don’t want to pay another $100 at this time for a camera with extended battery life. My blacktail haunts are relatively close to home and this will give me yet another excuse to keep a close eye on these areas.

Last but not least is the new Scent-A-Way aerosol spray from Hunter’s Specialties. Scent-A-Way’s been on the market for a while, but the aerosol spray is a new delivery system that provides a much finer mist and better coverage than the previous pump bottle. I’ve used Scent-A-Away products for several years now and also acquired the new TEK-4 odor control clothing last winter for an additional leg up in the field. With a short, very short, modern firearm deer hunting season here in Washington I think it’s critical to give yourself every advantage you can possibly get in the field. I’m a big guy, not exactly sneaky in the woods, and I need all the help I can get. A friend was kind of enough to point this out.

There’s a lot more hunting products that I’d sure like to have for this fall, but with baby Endsley on the way the likelihood of going hog-wild aquiring a mess of new hunting gear is highly unlikely. Unless, of course, I could do it without the wife finding out!

Rob Endsley
The Outdoor Line
710 ESPN Seattle
www.theoutdoorline.com