They re-opened the outdoors in Washington on May 5th and after a week of letting the crowds thin out I decided to start getting back out there.   Lira and I have been hitting the lakes early in the morning to avoid the crowds and the boat ramp backups.  It has been fun getting out on the water but our freezer isn’t filling up too fast, I’m in a streak of losing fish and bringing home one per day out when I hook two or three more.   I need about 8-10 trout to get the trout supply in decent shape for the rest of the year so I’ll keep at it while I can over the next few weeks.

Yesterday I went turkey hunting for the day over in the Teanaway.  Tough to do in a day trip with no scouting but it was great getting out into the woods for a full day.   I covered a range of spots in the DNR land over there and put in about 8 miles of walking with a lot of calling and sitting in good looking spots.   The highlight of the day was when a mule deer walked out into one of my spots.  The deer knew something was up but wasn’t quite sure what to make of me and it finally just walked off after looking in my direction a few times but not really spooking.  Of course the only turkey I saw was walking across Red Bridge Road as I was driving back home.   I may try to get in one more day before the season ends just because it was so nice being outside all day and not having to deal with running into other people at all.

I have no idea what this is all going to mean for fall so I’m hoping to take advantage of as many local opportunities as possible to get a deer in the freezer and do a bunch of bird hunting.   All I know is that I’m glad we have a fairly well stocked freezer at the moment from last year and between that, our garden and CSA we don’t even need to go to the grocery store too often.