Dec 26th

Merry Christmas everyone, hope you all had a great holiday, and if that offends you i absolutely make no apologies.
We had a terrific Christmas, we took the kids snowmobiling and ice fishing, it was Lily's first time fishing on the ice so she was excited. Santa was good to everyone again, guess we've been good. The weather has been very pleasant with a few flurries here and there. My trapline is a bit smaller this year due to lack of time to get out. We have been busy with marketing our hunts, which is paying off. Bookings are coming in now for all the seasons. We are getting ready to do our big mail out, getting the brochures of the press and envelopes addressed. That's going to take some ink!
January will find us preparing our bait for spring and hauling it out with sleighs and snowmobiles. It takes some work to haul 1000lbs of bait behind a snowmobile but we do it. We will do it probably 20- 30 times before spring. Those bears are hungry come May and we need to feed them. This weekend is another family weekend with outdoors fun on the menu again. Once i figure out how to post pictures on this blog i will add some. I also have a few topics that i would like to discuss come 2008, so check back, it might be interesting.
Speaking of that, post up a topic and get me started.

Winter fishing

Well the fellas caught a few Walleye and Pike this weekend. Fried them up and i don't know if any made it to the freezer. "Ice water Jacks" is what i call Northern Pike caught through the ice, and they are mighty fine once you learn how to fillet them boneless. Another tip for handling Pike is to wrap them in newspaper to soak up some of the slime and a piece of paper wrapped around it helps to hold them while you fillet them. Getting all the bones out is hard to explain but practice and a few tricks will have you enjoying them like we do. Hint, don't be scared to lose a bit of meat around the Y bones. On large pike you can cut out the meat in the Y and cook it too.
It is finally getting back to normal for temps, beautiful actually. Here's hoping it stays warm till Christmas.
We picked up the tree stands from our fall whitetail hunting season last week and we found Wolf tracks on the river and in the bush right here by the lodge. That is the closest i have ever seen them to the lodge, they must be getting hungry or brave. They are a very cautious, coward of an animal which makes them hard to trap and hunt. To have them right close is not normal, fox and coyote sure but wolves, not normal. I lined up some guys to come and help me reduce some numbers soon. I have a plan to surprise them, i'll let you know how we do with pictures i hope.

That's all for now, if you want to come kill a wolf now is the time, give us a call.
204-524-2472 or riversidelodge@explornet.com
www.huntriverside.com

Fridays news at the lodge

This week at the lodge has been interesting. I found myself learning more about internet protocols than i would like to know, with our new sattelite inet connection doors have been opened to so many great options but it also has presented some hiccups. I want everyone to know who has an AOL account that if you request information from us please be patient as our xplornet server is being targeted as spam and we are having trouble replying to some emails since they hold my email account. The problem is being rectified as i write this so please be patient with us, we are trying to reply.

On a more relative note to the lodge, we are planning on doing some ice fishing this weekend with the temps dropping back to more comfortable ranges. I will let everyone know how we did. can't wait to fire up the auger and stretch some line on some walleyes. It will be nice to get away from this desk for awhile.

We have grown! New Hunting Territory

Big Game allocation is aprox.1200 sq.miles (700,000 acres) of Deer hunting country and 600 sq.mi (350,000 acres) as our exclusive Bear hunting allocation. We are re-opening 2 famous Outcamp allocations to offer exciting hunts and more equipment to hunt with. More options for our fantastic waterfowl hunts are available also, contact us for details.

We finally could wait no longer and bit the bullet. We now have High Speed Satellite internet so our web site will be updated more often and our phone won't be tied up for hours while working on the internet.

Hunting Trips End In November

Well our hunting trips are coming to an end, with winter cold on it's heels blowing cold northerly winds that cut through parkas and freeze your bones.

The bear hunting this fall was fantastic with some large color phases. All of our hunters had shot their bear and each one was a trophy beyond expectation of the hunter. We are very pleased with how our bear hunts are getting recognition as they deserve. Manitoba bear hunting has been great and is actually the only province/place in North America which has kept records of samples from bear kills. This information is key to provide evidence that baiting bears allows selective harvest, which in turn reduces wounded animals and killing of sows with cubs. We have more on this topic on our bear hunting page

Our Manitoba bird hunting, like the rest of the province, had it's ups and downs. When it is warmer 600 miles up north, why would the birds fly down? They don't. We had several stalls in the migration this year and at the end of Oct. they came down in mass. Quite the contrary to what we are used to seeing for a migration. At times, we and the hunters had to hunt hard (something the Lodge hasn't experienced for 25 years), and pulled off some great hunts, but we spent a lot of time looking for the birds. Another aspect i believe was a factor, was the incredible fast rising water levels we experienced. Our lake is at 50 year high, 1 meter above normal water levels! This had changed the entire plant structure and feed beds which resulted in birds feeding in places we couldn't get to and out in big rafts on the big lake. Rafts of 1000 - 2000 birds were staging in the bays but unlike most years they didn't have the food source to get them to come "inside". We learned that in such a case we did better with more boats hunting which kept the birds moving.

It just goes to show you that in nature, nothing is a given, especially the weather. We learned many things from year to year but we really learned to appreciate our hunters who are sportsman, and good duck hunting weather.

Our deer hunting was subjected to abnormal weather also but that is November in Manitoba. It was warm for the early part which made some of our travel longer than normal, to get around the thin ice, but we had snow for tracking, and then from that extreme it turned to -25C and froze each hunter solid in the stand. The rut peeked at the start of the second week which is somewhat normal but deer were plentiful throughout the season. Some hunters passed on shootable bucks and wished they hadn't but, we all do, that's deer hunting. They can try for them again next year when they are bigger

Wolves! Did I say we we have Wolves, timber wolves, big ones and lots of them. We plan to lessen the numbers this winter but i hope more hunters come and help us out next fall. They are increasing in numbers each year and our Moose population is catching heck from it. We had only one hunter shoot a wolf this fall but it was female so that helps keep the population in check. We found a nice 140ish size buck that was killed by the wolves and i don't like to think about how many more are going to fall victim this winter. If we don't get lots of snow that will really help the Deer stay ahead of them. Regardless we are going to do some predation management this winter. Anyone want a wolf rug?

The work isn't over for us, lots of stands to take down, camp gear to get ready for spring, our new 25ft boat needs a few little improvements, bear baiting is set to go when the ice is thick, trap line is waiting with hungry wolves, wood to split, all fun stuff.

That is all for now, another good season behind us, nobody got hurt.