Horses - Off the Grid care and maintainence for Equines

Honestly if you are keeping horses it is going to get expensive. Expect to be spending about $2,000 per year on each horse.

Part of that annual cost will be veternarian bills, shots, etc. Without regular vet visits you increase the chances your horse gets sick and dies from an illness (horses are like 5 year old humans, they get sick easily).

Another part will be whether you are shoeing your horses. Horse shoes are mandatory if you are riding your horse over any hard surfaces (pavement, rocks, etc). Without horse shoes the horse will hurt their feet on the hard surfaces, become lame, and it will cost you way more in veterinarian bills.

If on the other hand there are no hard roads, no rocky surfaces then you will be fine. This means you will need to think ahead when it comes to where you can ride your horse.

So yes, if you have lots of soft dirt for your horse to roam around on - large grassy fields, soft riding trails, etc - then absolutely, skipping horse shoes will be a possibility.

Which will save you time and money because horses need to be fitted for new horse shoes every couple of months.

Feeding your horse is not quite so onerous. You just need adequate foods that horses can eat - and you need to avoid anything that is potentially poisonous. Because otherwise your horse will eat it, get sick and die.

Basically the long and short of it is that caring for a horse is going to be a long and difficult process - which is why most horse owners choose to hire someone else to do it for them and have their horses stabled on a farm explicitly made for horse lovers. (Such horse farms are pricey however, just a warning. But at least they reduce stress.)

So before you think you can just go out there and buy an horse and use it for transportation or as a pet, think again. Do your research. Talk to horse owners. They are way more expensive to take care of than the actual cost of the animal.

Bow Hunting Laws in Ontario

Here is a list of laws for bow hunting in Ontario.

#1. You must be over 16 years of age and have a valid Ontario Outdoors Card.

#2. You must have the appropriate tags for what you are hunting (eg. buck deer tags if you want to hunt male deer).

#3. You must complete a hunting training course and written test (the test is really easy to pass) to obtain your hunting license.

#4. You must use the minimum poundage on your bow for what you are hunting. For deer it is 39.7 lbs. For elk, moose or black bear the minimum is 48.5 lbs. Note: Most deer hunters use 45 lbs and most elk or moose hunters use 50 lbs. Bear hunters often want a little more power, typically using anywhere from 55 to 75 lbs.

#5. You can only hunt during designated bow hunting seasons. (The exact dates vary on the type of animal.)

#6. You cannot hunt in Ontario cities or near towns / you can only hunt in areas that are designated safe to hunt.

#7. Observe and adhere to "no trespassing" signs. Failure to do so can result in both trespassing and poaching if you are caught. If hunting on a farm or someone else's property you should obtain permission from the owner before going on their property. This is also a safety concern as some people might have dangerous terrain and don't want people on their land if they fall and hurt themselves. In some cases they might even have bear traps out there, so you really don't want to lose a leg by trespassing on an area with random bear traps.

#8. No hunting on Crown land where hunting has been strictly prohibited.

For recurve, longbow or compound bow archery lessons in the GTA contact CardioTrek.ca.

Traditional Archery Roving in Norway

Roving is a traditional practice of archery dating back centuries whereby you go for a nature walk and shoot targets along the way. There is even songs about it...

A Roving We Will Go, We Will Go No More A Roving, etc. There is a lot of old songs about roving.

In the olden days groups of men (usually young unmarried men) would grab their archery equipment and go for nature walks, roving as they went along - sometimes with alcohol - and have a really fun time walking along and shooting things in the distance.

Back then and even now roving was a good way to practice your hunting skills without actually injuring anything.

In the video below is a Norwegian couple who demonstrate roving in the woods.

As archery oriented sports go it looks pretty fun. Very good practice for hunting too.


Not to be confused with another archery sport, which is Clout Shooting. Clout shooting your goal is to shoot for distance, but still manage to hit within a radius of a flagpole. It is a bit like lawn darts for distance shooters. For men the clout distance is 180 yards, for women 140 yards. (These rules sometimes vary by country. The distances mentioned here are British GNAS.)

Scoring for clout shooting is as follows:

18 inches	5
3 feet	4
6 feet	3
9 feet	2
12 feet	1
> 12 feet (3.7 m)	0

Clout Archery traditionally used rope to mark the boundaries of each radius.

As archery sports go there is also Popinjay - which involves shooting at a fake bird on top of a pole.