Sunday 14 September 2008

Hunting in Eastern Finland



What a great trip. I just returned from a four-day hunting trip from eastern Finland. Up at 5 am each morning, coffee break at 11 am, dinner at 4 pm, and bed at 10 pm. We ate well, had good conversation, and walked for miles. We saw a lot of wild game, birds mostly, and I was able to bring one home. Jarmo and Jukka were, by far, the more experienced hunters and trekkers, and excellent company. The trip was a success -- in fact, we decided to re-do it before the season ends: we'll be heading back to eastern Finland October 17th.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

glad you had a good time and even glader that ur back

Jason Lepojärvi said...

Thanks, Emil. We drove towards Savonlinna, like last time. And with the same car too. But the hunting lands - government owned - were in Jäppilä, near Varkaus.

Jason Lepojärvi said...

Someone commented that the place we were at, Jäppilä, is central Finland, not eastern Finland. I guess they're right.

Anonymous said...

An what game were you able to bring back home?

We just got back from Tazengwa. 14 hours and 950km of road behind us. Good to be home. D

Jason Lepojärvi said...

From one hunter to another, I knew you'd ask Danny. A shot a teeri, ukko teeri. It flew right at me, didn't see me.

I was walking on a path with Jarmo. He saw trees up ahead (lehtikuusia) which metsos love. We were about 25 meters from the trees. We made a battle-plan: he'd swing deeper into the forest, I'd slowly continue on the path.

I took one step.

A huge ukkometso took of, slowly, from the upper branches. We would've spotted it if we'd been smarter and carefully studied the trees. Jarmo and I both unloaded our barrels, both of them. All, all missed. Un-freakin-believable.

Then I made the second mistake. I took another step before reloading. My gun was still open, I was exchanging empty shells to new ones, when another ukkometso took off and then a koppelo. The koppelo I could've dropped easily, it flew right in front of me.

I want to believe the upper branches were just too thick for enough pellets to fly through. Another experienced hunter said very many rear-end shots at metsos don't have an effect.

We're returning in October to retrieve the ukkometso we left there... ;-)

Good to hear all went well with you. I can't wait to come over.

Jason