Last year was a strange one for hunting

It was what it was, nothing more and nothing less. It’s over now and it was a weird year.

I haven’t hunted as much in the rain since the late 90’s. Back then I was on venison duty, spending most hunting days chasing deer, putting venison in the freezer for a growing family. You get used to a rhythm of how the fall season goes. Then came a weird year that just didn’t go the same as the others.

That early fall rolled in rainy and warm. So much so that I broke down and bought a waterproof jacket after spending two weeks drying gear every day. After the waterproof shell arrived, the weather changed from warm and wet to cold, clear days requiring full battle dress in the middle of October. Then it got warm and wet in November. Another weird year.

After a dry summer this year, especially August, the rains came in September. October rolled in hot with a weekend of temps reaching up into the 90’s. October left with a bitter cold snowstorm. It looked like another tough winter with lots of early snow, but it melted and provided us a very seasonal Gun Deer Season that lacked tracking snow. November left us with snow and dropping temps that froze lakes and got folks thinking about ice fishing or snowmobiling. But December took all that away. After a brown Christmas, the temps rose into the 50’s and lakes opened up again. Like I said, a weird year. Meteorologists tell us this comes from an El Nino year. I saw some articles about a fall and early winter like this one in 1877. Apparently, El Nino came around in 1877 too, or at least the articles said so. The articles said that winter cold and snow came in February. If I recall the winter in the late 90’s, winter hit in earnest in February too. However we look at it, all are weird years.

The fall rains hit in time for my first big weekend of grouse hunting, the weekend of opening weekend of duck season. I spent that weekend guiding novice grouse hunters wearing rain gear. Normally in the rain you find grouse in conifers off the ground trying to stay dry. But that weekend they were on the ground and holding for points - weird.

When those October high 90’s pushed in, we fished that weekend – the fish didn’t bite. I didn’t see a single duck the entire time on the water and only heard two shots at ducks - weird.

We saw a lot of grouse at grouse camp. I moved over 20 grouse one day and didn’t get a shot at any of them. The first grouse wasn’t bagged in camp until Thursday afternoon – weird.

We noticed strikingly few scrapes in October. In some areas we didn’t find a single buck rub and very little droppings. We saw few archery hunters at a time of the year we normally see a lot – weird.

After the rains quit in late October, the wind switch to out of the north, the temperatures fell, and the ducks came down. We slayed ducks after the fronts passed. But a week after that we never took the guns off of safe and we found the woodcock flew south – weird.

Oak trees dropped acorns everywhere this fall. Happens every so many years – nature’s way to protect oaks. We found a lot of grouse in the acorns. By November we heard the bear harvest fell off quite a bit from the previous year. Happens when the acorns produce a bumper crop.

The surprising lack of deer sign in the northwoods in October played out when the Gun Deer Season harvest fell by more than 17% from the year before.

I expected it. I don’t go by the winter severity index anymore. I go by what the winter feels like to me and by the time the snow finally melted for the last time, I know how I felt and I know I’m not the only one that felt that way. It felt like a long hard weird winter. Hard winters kill deer.

Every year brings up and downs with it. Every year brings challenges. Every year plays out differently. We hunt the weather and the conditions. The book closed for 2023 a little bit after sunset last Sunday. 2023 was a weird year. It was what it was, nothing more and nothing less.

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