Duck hunt, and bear, begins on 20.August and nearly every year I leave for a ten day trip into the woods at that time and hunt ducks and look for the animal population – or with course participants for a shorter one, see survival expedition for hunters.
The moose hunting, and snow hare, begins on 1.September, but the time before that is a good chance to check tracks and signs that I get the knowledge before where moose moves as it can change from year to year. The moose hunt in the wilderness is pretty difficult and it helps a lot to gather some knowledge before as it is never for sure to get a moose during season.
I do not take a lot of food with, just some basic supply. Hunting and berry/mushroom picking will give me extra supplies often helping me to even extend the trip over the planned duration. At this time of the year the nature is so rich that it is easy to get additional calories.
It is also a good time to check the forest bird population (capercaillie, black grouse, willow grouse, hazel grouse). The hunt on them begins on 10.September but with that I’m more focused to check how successful the breeding was to prepare for winter trapping on willow grouse. Last year the breeding was a catastrophe as a lot of chicks died during the rainy start of the summer.
The predator hunting starts already on 01.August. I’m normally doing that also right from the start, but often I’m still very busy with other things going on. The last years the pine marten population was really low in my area. About 50km further it is much better. But the fox population is very high and the hunt with acoustic lure is a very exciting one.
This year I did not managed to do everything I wanted to so far so there’s still some work left for the time when the first snow comes, but not high enough for trapping. During that time the snow in the forest makes the moving hard as it is too low for skis and hunting gets less. And for trapping the dwarf birch should be covered. Every year the length of that period differs a lot so it is hard to plan and estimate the workload.
Hunting seasons in Finland: Riista.fi: Metsästysajat
