I’ve been now hunting for three seasons, and yet still consider myself as a inexperienced – even though an incredible lot has happened in an incredibly short amount of time.
One of my first game hunting happened with beaver. It is a perfect hunting experience for beginners – one can sit for a very long time appreciating and observing the patterns of behavior of these fascinating animals, granted you learn to be totally quiet and to position yourself according to the adequate wind direction, as these animals are – naturally – very much aware of whatever happens on their surroundings; do not be fooled by the beaver’s poor eyesight, as their hearing and sense of smell compensate vastly for the visual acuity’s shortcomings.
Beavers are important in the Norwegian nature, but without hunters to control their population they will crowd their ecosystem, deplete their food source and die off from food shortage. They are a typical hunting favorite as their meat is excellent and their fur valued. Additionally, many land-owners consider them a pest, as while shaping the waterways where they live they can destroy very large areas of woods in a very short time frame. A beaver will feed on the newer trees in a forest, removing their bark, will deeply reshape the water-ways and will dig tunnels under roads and on agricultural land, with destructive results.
Personally, I hunt beaver once the fox-hunting season is over, by the streams of the melted ice that run down the Norwegian mountains. I find it uniquely remarkable to start a day - or end it - by a Nordic wild lake or river to observe and hunt these animals. Both times of the day are good for the hunt, at dawn when the large rodents come out to start their work, or at dusk when they’re lounging about near their wooden lairs. My hunting rifles is a Tikka T3 6.5x55, with a GRS Berserk Riflestock, Zeiss binoculars and A-Tec silencer, and am incredibly pleased with this setup for every type of hunting I do. I also use this setup for deer hunting in the fall.
Elisabeth Idland,
GRS Ambassador
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