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So now you have a gun and you think you are ready ta rock and roll. Actually you aren’t. Not until you get acquainted with the rules first.

Hunting is strictly controlled in Canada and if you are a serious hunter, before you even entertain the thought of going out on a hunt, you have to read the bible on Quebec hunting laws, Sport hunting – General Regulations, cover to cover. It clearly lays down the law.

You start by getting acquainted with the definition of ‘prey’ – what you are allowed ta hunt. And those are – Caribou, whitetail (common spotted deer), moose, black bear, bearded wild turkey and the last category, defined as ‘other small game’ – rabbits, partridge, duck, ptarmigan and other wild fowl.

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Once you are clear about what you can kill, you move on to where you can hunt – ie:the ‘zone’, the region where you are allowed ta hunt. Quebec is divided into 29 hunting zones and the guide comes with a map of those 29 zones. You have to pick a zone and go buy a one-season license, that will allow you ta hunt only in that zone. You also need a “hunter’s certificate” for the weapons you’ll use.

If you are an experienced hunter, you’ll know the zones where the chances of a kill are the maximum. But remember, the more the game in one particular zone, the more the zone will be crawling with hunters.

Take for instance Anticosti Island, the spit of land that looks like a traffic island at the mouth of the St Lawrence. It has more deer than humans – in fact so many that it might as well elect a whitetail for mayor instead of a human being. You could kill a whitetail there even if your gun went off by accident.

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But I won’t advise you to hunt in Anticosti. I know I could get my kill but I don’t venture there because I’m smart. Places like Anticosti attract huge hordes of hunters in season, most of whom are stupid schmucks who are nothing but drunks with loaded guns. I don’t like the odds that some pissed drunk son of a bitch will mistake me for a whitetail and put a bullet in me. Stories of accidental shooting deaths while hunting in Quebec are legion and more often than not, the perp is able to get away with a suspended sentence for involuntary manslaughter.

M

It isn’t even about the meat harvested from a hunt, which can be sizeable. I mean, a 250kg whitetail can easily yield around 100lbs of prime meat and that’s a lot. But if a hunter tells you he does it for the meat, to put food on the table, trust me that’s BS, he’s lying. He does it for the adrenaline.

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One other thing about hunting zones – every zone has privately-owned and public land. You needn’t seek permission to hunt on public land, your permit takes care of that. But if you wish ta hunt on privately owned property, it has to be an understanding between you and the landowner, whereby he allows you to hunt on his land in exchange for a certain amount of cash as rent. $500 per head for letting you hunt is normal, a nice spot of change.

Like I told you in Part-4, I hunt at my dear friend, Cedric’s prime 100-acre spread that abuts a massive wild life reserve known as Parc Omega, in Montebello, just over an hour’s drive from where I live. I don’t pay Cedric anything for the privilege, for reasons explained in Part-4, if you have cared ta read it. To Cedric, I’m family.

In general you are safer if you hunt on privately owned land since it is expensive and therefore less crowded and consequently the chances of your catching a misdirected .306 slug between your shoulder blades are minimal.

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Let’s say you got yourself a hunting license for a particular zone. Now you got ta sit down and read the rules for that zone, which tell you when you can kill a certain species, what kind of weapon you are allowed ta use, whether you can kill a male, a female or a calf of that species and just how many you can shoot – the bag limits.

Oh yes, the bag limits – very very important stuff. Here are some numbers you can bag per season, in a very general sense, since they vary, zone ta zone – Caribou (two per hunter), Moose (one per two hunters), Black Bear (two per hunter), Bearded wild turkey (two per hunter), Whitetail (one per hunter) and so on. For whitetail, in order to make life interesting, they have lucky draws and if you win, you can have an extra whitetail or say, in a doe-only season, you are allowed ta bag a buck too, over and above the doe that you are already eligible for.

There are bag limits even in the ‘other small game’ category. For partridge, it is 5 per day and you mustn’t be caught in possession of more than 15 at any given time, even in your basement freezer back home. Likewise, for ptarmigan it is 10 and 30 respectively and so on.

Check out season dates as they depend upon the zone you are going ta hunt in. Just as a rough ball park, moose season is September->October, whitetail : September->November, black bear : May->June and September->October, bearded wild turkey : April->May and so on. The longest season is for caribou : August->October and then December->January. The extended season is partly because no one wants to hunt them for meat (the taste sucks) and also because the -50℃ Canadian Tundra, where you usually find caribou herds, is too hostile an environment to enjoy a hunt in.

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Always be aware of when the season has ended in your zone. Get caught post-season with a dead whitetail in the back of your pick-up truck and you are looking at a serious fine, north of five grand, plus the confiscation of your hunting permit and gun. And if you are dumb enough to be sitting having a beer inside your truck or a skidoo or ATV, celebrating your kill when the rangers catch you, your vehicle is gone too.

All confiscations are permanent and confiscated stuff are auctioned off in public auctions.

Canadian forest rangers are very different from their counterparts in my country of birth, India, where a twenty rupee bill will allow you to go on a massacre and swagger around like Roy Rogers and no one will bat an eyelid. If you’re a rich movie star in India, they might harass you a bit, slap a case on you just to soften you up for the eventual palm greasing and then let you walk away. Hey, the ranger in India will even recommend for you a taxidermist, who just happens to be his bro-in-law.

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Okay, so now you really are ready ta rock and roll. If you’re going after large game, don’t begin with black bear or moose – things can get nasty with those. So start with the harmless whitetail.

Well before the season begins, find yourself a good spot, preferably a clearing in a copse of trees. I did and it was easy. I fixed six SpyPoint Castorama internet-ready infra-red motion sensing cameras at various points on Cedric’s land. I found that the camera north of the Parc Omega Reserve clicked the maximum shots of whitetail and chose that one.

That weekend, still two weeks ahead of season, I took my tree-stand in my F150 and had Cedric help me erect it at that spot, taking care to remain downwind of the little clearing where the SpyPoint had caught whitetail milling around. The whitetail must have watched me setting up the tree stand but whitetail are whitetail – dumb as ever.

A tree-stand is a camouflaged perch, around fifteen feet up on a tree and it looks like a chair with armrests and a bar in front to rest your rifle for the shot. The camouflage, while essential, isn’t enough. Whitetail have a strong sense of smell. Your camouflage might fool ‘em, but your smell won’t. They can smell you from a hundred yards and if they do, you might as well pack up and go home.

Besides a strong sense of smell, whitetail also have a very keen eyesight that can detect motion easily. So, before you climb up onto the tree stand, you have ta make sure you won’t need ta go pee or poop or eat/drink or anything else, because you have ta remain stock-still for hours at a stretch, if you want a kill.

And for heaven’s sake, make damn sure the stand is sturdy and can take your weight. A hunter pal of Cedric’s is now a paraplegic, after crashing to the ground when his tree stand came loose. (pic courtesy:sportsmanguide.com)

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So, now you have your tree stand ready, at a carefully chosen location that you know to be thick with whitetail. Here’s what I do just before the actual hunt. Still two weeks from season, I drive down to Cedric’s and launch a ‘hearts and minds’ exercise – the lure.

In the middle of the clearing where I had erected my tree stand, I leave a large lump of salt on top of a tree stump for the whitetail ta lick on and they love licking salt.

Before the season is done, I’ll have burned through 300lbs of salt.

Next, I pay 60 bucks for eight plus eight 25-lb sacks of apples and carrots I leave a pile here and a pile there, on every one of those pre-season days. My trips to Cedric’s farm are essential. I replace the SpyPoint batteries and leave fresh piles of apples and carrots behind. Soon the SpyPoint begins going off feverishly every ten minutes and that spot where I fixed my tree stand starts looking like New Delhi’s Connaught Place in rush hour. Whitetail of all sizes converge on the clearing ta gorge on all them yummy apples. Variety is the spice of life, so I get a few bags of carrots too, just for a change of taste. I pamper them.

Important – those fifteen days, I come and go in broad daylight and even if I cannot actually see them when I enter the clearing, I know they are there, just outside my line of sight. I let ‘em see me and grow accustomed to the sight of me entering the clearing every day and leaving all that yummy stuff out for them. They are so dumb they think I’m Santa.

Here, I’d like ta qualify my statement – the females are the dumb ones. They get trusting and friendly real fast. Last fall, after I had been laying the piles of apples for a few days, one just walked up to me while I was arranging a pile of carrots and began merrily chomping on them just a few feet away. I held out a carrot in my hand and she unhesitatingly came over, sniffed at the carrot for a micro-second, before pulling it out of my hand with her teeth. As she came real close, I had the chance to gaze into those mesmerizingly serene, guileless and trusting doe eyes. It wasn’t season yet and so I couldn’t touch her, but I’m not sure if I would be able ta, even if it was season.

Hunting females is a cinch, but a word of caution here – we are all emotional beings, we humans. If you want ta be a hunter, don’t let your prey get too friendly and pull at your heart strings. You’ll find it impossible to put a bullet in her. Remember what you’re there for – to kill her and shrink-wrap and freeze her in little chunks in your basement freezer and BBQ her through the year over beer. You’re not here ta cuddle her.

The males are another thing. Whitetail bucks are mean and suspicious and won’t venture into the clearing unless they are absolutely sure you aren’t around. Or unless they are horny and think they’ll find a doe there.

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Whitetail hunting season coincides with whitetail mating season, which makes it a lot easier ta lure them. I only use lures as a fall-back, if the season is about ta get over and I still haven’t got my whitetail.

There are two kinds of lures I have zeroed in on. Foremost is the call – if you can imitate the sound of a doe in heat, trust me, any bucks within a mile will come charging, their richards long and distended. Here’s what I did – I checked out hunting call apps and found some interesting ones in the ITunes app store. I chose the IHunt app since it sounded the most natural to me. It has the calls of every kind of wildlife on the planet. Next, I got myself a WiFi-ready speaker with a tiny 20W amp. I fixed the speaker in a wedge formed by two tree trunks at the edge of the clearing and I was ready ta roll.

If the IHunt app doesn’t fool a whitetail, I go to Phase:2 – doe’s pee. Yeah, the urine of a doe in heat. You get it in any hunting store and the best I found is a brand named just that – Doe in heat. It comes in a tiny $15 bottle and it is real doe’s pee. I sprinkle a few drops on a rag and tie the rag to a low slung branch as close to my tree stand as possible. Doe’s pee has a very pungent stench and if I’m lucky with the wind direction, it won’t be long before a horny buck pays a reccy visit.

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The first time I set eyes on Zorba was just after I had fixed the SpyPoint cameras this August, with still two weeks to go for the season ta begin. Zorba was magnificent, his ten-point antlers rising above his head majestically, like a crown. During those fifteen days, as I watched him come and go, he usually appeared well after midnight. He came and went with heavy deliberate steps and when he entered the clearing, the first thing he did was ta raise his head and sniff at the air imperiously. Then he made his way toward the apple piles and the does and lesser bucks kinda scattered and let him have his fill first.

I named him Zorba because he seemed ta have that gruff, rugged Anthony Quinn persona. One time, he ambled right up to the camera and sitting in my basement 50kms away, I watched as he raised his nostrils ta sniff at it. I had fixed the SpyPoint just above his reach, on a sturdy branch and after a moment of sniffing he lost interest and began sniffing the butts of the does who had gathered there, sending them scurrying this way and that, in blushing embarrassment.

In two weeks, Zorba wasn’t going ta stop at just sniffing butts – he would be looking to put his richard in some serious pussy. That is when I’d get him……

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You want ta know what happened to Zorba, don’t you? So, watch this space for Part-6.