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As we begin the 2008
season, I can't help but wonder how this year will compare with
last year. 2007 was my best year ever for hunting. I
saw more deer in one season than I ever have before, and I took
seven of them; a new record for me.
I also went to Africa last
year, and it's strange coming into 2008 having fulfilled that
lifelong dream. We won't be able to top that this year, but
I'm already starting to think about going back sometime in the
near future.
Although we've talked about
predator hunting every year, we've never given it a real serious
effort. This year that will change. My hope is to get
at least three coyotes and one fox before March.
For the deer season, I'm
going to start early and do a lot of preseason scouting this year,
and plan to get back into bowhunting in September. It's been
awhile since I've taken a deer with a bow, and this year I'd like
to get another one that way.
However you look at it,
it's going to be a great season!
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Whitetail Buck |
18 |
2 |
Whitetail Doe |
26 |
5 |
Turkey (Gobbler/Jake) |
0 |
0 |
Turkey (Hen) |
2 |
- |
Wild Boar |
0 |
0 |
Coyote |
1 |
0 |
Fox |
1 |
1 |
Bobcat |
0 |
0 |
Squirrel |
- |
0 |
Dove |
- |
0 |
Crows |
- |
1 |
Ducks / Geese |
0 |
0 |
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Notes: Clicking on any picture will show you a full size image of that picture.
Click here for a "cast of
characters" for my hunting journals |
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With seven deer in the freezer and plans
with Micki for New Year's Eve, I decided just to hunt this
afternoon today. I left home around 10:30, and as I drove
down to the last half mile before the lease gate I had to stop in
the road while a house was moved into position across the street
from our lease. I waited about 20 minutes for them to get it
out of the road, then proceeded on to the sign-in board.
I had hoped to hunt the Family Stand
today, since I'd have a long time in the stand and wanted to be
comfortable. Unfortunately, Jimmy had already checked in for
the stand. Several of my other favorite stands were also
already taken, so I gave up on that and went back to my ground
blind one last time.
I sat there all afternoon without seeing
anything. A half-mile down the road, I could hear the trucks
still moving the house into place, along with the voices of the
workers. I'm not sure if this kept the deer away or not, but
whatever the reason, they didn't show up today.
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Pete was back with me today. We
went over to the new road, with me getting back in my blind one
more time and Pete using a climber that we had put up a week or so
back. My morning started quickly with a four point buck (one
that I've seen before) crossing 100 yards down in front of my
blind. He moved quickly, but conveyed no sense that he had
seen me.
An hour later, I saw movement just past
a hump in the clearing that I was watching. I saw a doe lift
her head, then lower it. She did this several times, and
often she would look off into the woods to the right of her.
I kept looking into those woods myself with my binoculars, but I
couldn't see anything that would have her so alert.
She began to move off, and when I saw a
clear shot opportunity I went ahead and took it. There
wasn't much room for a shot, and the bullet caught her high in the
spine. She collapsed, but began flopping on the ground a
little bit. I chambered another round and tried to get a
lock on her, but she was not still enough, and I missed the second
shot. The third shot did the job, and the deer was down for
good.
After the first shot, I saw the white
tails of four other deer as they scattered in various directions.
It was only 8:00am, so I quickly
retrieved the deer, loaded her into my Jeep, and ran her down the
road to Baker's Deer Processing, which is just 10 minutes from the
lease. I was back in the stand by 8:45am. I stayed
until 11:00, when Pete radioed to tell me he was back on the
ground. He had seen nothing from his stand.
We went over to Riverdeck for a quick
lunch, then came back to the lease. Pete decided to get in
the Family Stand, which was a good choice... there were lots of
tracks in the field that it watches. I went over to the Blue
Top stand, which is a tall tower overlooking a small cutover and
logging road. I saw nothing all afternoon, but did hear one
shot from Pete's direction.
When it was dark, I drove back over to
get Pete. He had, it turned out, taken a shot at a doe but
had missed. He had recovered his bullet from the gouge it
made in the dirt, and there was no blood or tissue on it or on the
ground.
At the sign in board, we met club
members Jerry and Phil. Jerry, it turns out, had gotten
stuck in a mud-filled curve in the lease where Pete and I had
almost gotten stuck ourselves earlier in the day. Looks like
we need to do something about that spot before next season.
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Just a short morning hunt today. I
went back to my blind and stayed until 11:00am, but saw nothing
this morning.
After the hunt, I stopped at Jordan's to
pick up my deer from last week. Took it home and with the
help of Pete and Daniel we processed the deer.
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With the season less than two weeks away
from closing, Pete and I headed out for the lease this morning.
I dropped Pete off at #1#, then headed over to the ground blind on
the new road that I've been hunting for the last two weeks.
After driving past the gate, I turned off my headlights and used
my flashlight to see my way down the road to where I park.
The heavy cloud cover blocked the
moonlight made it difficult to see my way down the trail once I
left my Jeep. I got out my green Streamlight, and soon found
the marker that led me to my stand. However, I couldn't see
my blind anywhere. Sweeping the light this way and that, I
finally saw that it had blown over in a recent windstorm, and was
still attached to the ground with just one tent stake. From
the way the blind was laying, I figured that my chair had
collapsed and was inside it, but when I set the blind back up it
was empty.
Perplexed, I looked around some more and
saw my chair just sitting there beside the clump of downed trees
near my blind. Remember, it was quite dark, and the
Streamlight doesn't give you much visibility. I got
everything set back up, found one more stake still in the ground,
and got into the blind.
By the time I had finished getting
everything set back up and had gotten settled, I only had to wait
about 15 minutes for the sky to begin to lighten. At 7:10am,
I saw the first and only deer of the morning. It was the
tall racked six pointer seen in the bottom picture of my previous
journal entry. He didn't stick around this morning, but
instead crossed the road and disappeared into the woods.
The wind got stronger as the morning
progressed, and I found myself having to hold the blind in place
every time it gusted. Ted had experienced the same thing
last week, and I made a mental note to bring some more tent stakes
with me next time I hunt.
I stayed in the stand until about 11:15,
then drove down to check out the place where Ted had hunted last
week. There were lots of tracks in the area, so I figured
this would be a good place for Pete for the afternoon. Pete
wanted to hunt a climber rather than a blind, so I looked around
to try to find Trey's blind, which Ted and I had moved to this
spot last week. I wanted to put it back where we had found
it... but I couldn't see it anywhere. I finally located it
30 yards from where we had left, blown up under a deadfall.
I loaded it into the Jeep and headed over to the first road to get
Pete.
Pete had jumped a deer on the way out of
his stand, but that was the only one he saw this morning.
Together we went and put Trey's stand back up on the first road
where it had previously been laying, then went over to the grill
by Lake Wateree to get lunch. Finishing that up, it was back
over to the new road.
We drove to the end of the road, and I
showed Pete the corn and deer tracks. He decided to put a
climber in the same tree that Jimmy had been using previously, so
we did that, then added another bag of corn to the existing pile.
Just as I started to pull away, it started to lightly rain.
Pete said he had his rain gear in his pack, so I drove away to my
own spot.
I parked the truck, and as I got out and
got ready to walk to my stand it started pouring rain. I had
to quickly put on my raincoat, grab my backpack, and make a dash
through the woods to my stand. I still got wet, because I
decided to tie the tent blind to various trees or stumps at each
corner to try to prevent it from blowing away. I hoped this
would hold until I could get back with some stakes.
I finally got settled into the blind,
and the rain beating on the roof soon sent me into a snooze.
I slept on and off for about and hour. The ropes that I had
used to secure the blind had pulled one of the walls into an odd
angle, and it was allowing rain to drip in on me. There
wasn't anything I could do about it, so I did my best to ignore
it. Once, just after I had awoken from a brief nap, I looked
up and saw Pete waving his orange cap at me from 200 yards down
the road.
I called him on the radio and he said
that he had not gotten his rain gear on in time and was soaking
wet. He was headed back to the truck to change clothes and
get warm. I met him outside of my blind, and we walked back
to the truck. He said that he would be fine there, and for
me to continue my hunt. With just a couple of hours of
daylight left, I thanked him and walked back to the blind.
The rain and wind continued, often hard,
and fog moved in and out of the area. At 5:00pm, as dusk was
settling in, I saw a deer materialize in the clearing. I
gave it a quick look with my binoculars and saw that it had a good
body size. It may have, I thought, been a spike, or it could
have been a doe. It stood there broadside, and I quickly
considered my options. It was late in the season, I badly
wanted to process a deer at home, and Pete was sitting patiently
in the truck waiting for me to finish my hunt. We'd hunted
hard all day in the rain, and had been rained on at this spot once
before.
The choice was pretty easy. I
slipped off the safety and fired. The deer leapt into the
air, then ran. A solid hit, no doubt. I got out of the
blind and went back to the Jeep. Pete had been napping, and
had not heard my shot. I told him the situation, and we
drove down to where I had shot the deer. We found blood
right away, and in the fading light I handed Pete my flashlight
and asked him to look for the blood trail. Meanwhile, I
would look for the deer itself.
There were two possible paths that the
deer could have taken; one down a steep hill into a deep bottom,
and the other down a less steep hill and into a flatter area.
I walked halfway down the hill, wanting to determine which way the
deer had gone before committing myself to one of the two choices.
The light was fading quickly, and Pete hollered "You know he went
down hill, go on!".
I chuckled, but kept my ground, wanting
to be sure. Instead of going into the gulley, I walked
across the face of the hill, and soon found a spo of ground that
was torn up badly. I looked around, and saw the deer laying
30 more yards down the shallow hill. It blended in well with
the ground, and I wouldn't have been able to see it even five
minutes later on in the evening.
I dragged it partway up the hill by hand
while Pete went back to the truck for the Glenn's Deer Handle (a
dragging tool that makes it easier to pull a deer out of the
woods). We hooked it up (the deer was, in fact, a very large
spike), and I pulled it up the hill some more. I paused to
catch my breath, and Pete dragged it the rest of the way to the
truck. We took a couple of quick pictures, then loaded him
into the truck.
I was glad to have gotten a deer out of
this spot. The picture doesn't reveal the true size of the
deer; he took up most of the basket on the back of my truck.
I had known when I took the shot that it might have been a spike,
but sometimes the circumstances warrant the shot anyway.
This was one of those times, and I'm glad to have a deer to
process next week. We'll post pictures and video of the
butchering process in next week's journal entry.
We dropped the deer off at Randy Jordan's house.
Randy will hang it for me for a week to allow the meat to age, and
he skinned it for me for a small fee.
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It seems like I've been waiting for this
day for a long time. Today I finally got to hunt the orange
gate blind in the morning, when I believe the deer are most
active.
The moon was full and bright when I
arrived at the gate. It was bright enough that I was able to
drive down the logging road with my lights completely off, and
bright enough that I found my way to the blind without even using
a flashlight. It was cold too, but I was relatively
comfortable in my heavy overalls.
I sat quietly in the blind waiting for
sunrise, and soon it came, and with it came the first deer.
It looked to be young deer, and I saw immediately that it was a
buck: a little spike. I watched him feed, and soon
another deer came out. The second one was a young six
pointer; a yearling. I watched these two deer feed for a
little while, and every once in awhile the trail camera would
flash, taking their picture.
The two smallest bucks |
Once, the camera flashed brighter than it normally does.
The deer spooked, and as they ran out of the little clearing
towards the woods, I saw a third, larger buck. His antlers
were easily visible, but he was gone as quickly as the other two
were. I could tell from his body language that he wouldn't
go far though, and I was right. He was soon back, and the
two little bucks came back with him. He was a tall six point
with an ugly rack.
They fed for about a half hour before wandering off into the
woods. I sat back and watched, but saw nothing for an hour.
Once, interestingly, a big bodied, small horned four point trotted
by, not 10 feet in front of my blind. I was quite surprised
to see him. I had heard nothing, and he was gone as quickly
as he had appeared.
The larger buck, with a
smaller one in the background |
I stayed in the stand until 10:45, hoping that the late feeding
does would come out. I had promised Micki that I'd take her
to the Christmas parade in Clover today, and I needed to get on
the road. I hated to leave my stand without seeing the does,
but my time was just about up. I gathered my gear, zipped up
the blind, and walked back up the road to my truck.
I loaded all of my gear into the back of my Jeep, then lowered
the tailgate. From where I had parked, the corn pile was
only 150 yards down the logging road, and I decided to peek down
the road one last time. They were there. One, two, and
then two more does sprang away from the corn. My tailgate
slamming had alerted them, and they had been looking right up my
way when I walked around the bend to look down there. If I
had stayed in the stand for 5 more minutes, I would have seen
them.
That was so frustrating. I won't get a chance to hunt
this week at all; my PTO from work is almost done. My next
chance to get in the woods will be a week from today, and who
knows what will happen between now and then. The deer might
move on to another spot, or they might eat up all of my corn, or
someone else may hunt there and get one of my hard found deer.
I'm going to have to try to get back down here on Wednesday
evening just to put out some fresh corn for Saturday. A
quick trip down right after work just to drop of some corn will
have to do until my next hunt. I can't wait to get back into
that stand.
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I like hunting in the rain. In my
experience, deer (and turkeys) will move in the rain, and they are
often less cautious on rainy days than they would normally be.
That being said, it was raining really hard today.
Hard enough to make it a miserable morning. Ted and I were
hunting together, probably for the last time until our January hog
hunt.
I badly wanted to go to the new blind,
which I'll call the "orange gate blind" for the rest of this
year.. but it's a little Ameristep popup blind, and I wasn't sure
how it would be holding up to all of the rain. So, I put Ted
in
stand 3, and I went to
stand 6. It's mid December, and I had worn my heavy
boots this morning. Once I was in the blind, my feet were
feeling really warm, so I took off my boots and socks and sat
there barefooted, in December, watching for deer.
At 9:10, I looked to my right and saw a
yearling doe, probably 70 pounds or so. I tried to get my
rifle on her, but she didn't linger, and soon was out of sight in
a thicket. I saw nothing else all morning. I left the
stand at 11:00am and walked over to where I had seen the doe.
I found her tracks, and they were indeed from a younger deer.
I drove down and got Ted, and we talked
about where to hunt in the afternoon. I really wanted to put
some more corn out at the "orange gate blind" and check the camera
there, so I suggested that we do that before we ate lunch.
We did, and the corn that I had put out on Saturday was again
demolished. While I swapped out the batteries and card in my
trail camera, Ted walked over to check out the blind. It was
largely dry inside, showing me that those little $50 Ameristep
blinds hold up well in heavy rain.
We had talked about hunting over on the
main lease this afternoon, but I really wanted to hunt here, and
the dry blind would make that possible. We went back and
cooked some lunch over at the corn trailer, having a brief break
from the rain, and talked about what to do. One of the club
members had left another popup blind laying on the ground up near
where I had hunted this morning, so we decided to borrow that for
Ted and go hunt the orange gate road.
We put up the blind in the best spot we
could find for Ted, but that spot is not great for a popup.
It really needs to be hunted from a climber, as Ted found out.
During the hunt, the wind and rain kept pushing his blind around,
and he was not comfortable. As we talked on the radio, I
told him we could move him to a new spot, but he decided to tough
it out where he was. Unfortunately, neither of us saw
anything at all for the entire afternoon.
Here are some of the pictures that I got
from my trail camera. This looks like a great spot to hunt
in the mornings. Click on any picture for a larger view.
As you can see from the timestamps on the camera, a group of does
is feeding daily between 10:15 and 11:00am.
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I left home a little too early this
morning and was sitting at the sign-in board at around 5:30.
I signed in for
stand 3, then waited around a bit to see if anyone else showed
up. No one else had arrived by about 5:55, so I went on into
the woods. I stayed in the stand until 11:00, but saw
nothing all morning.
After leaving the stand, I went and
checked the corn pile; it needed topping off, so I added about 25
pounds of fresh shelled corn, then went up to check out the sign
around
stand 6. I had intended to turn my feeder back on, but
the battery there was too weak, so I left it alone. I poured
another 25 pounds of corn on the ground about 75 yards away from
the stand, then went back over to the sign in board.
Jimmy and Matt were on the board, and
just as I pulled in, they did too. Neither of them had seen
anything this morning. We talked for a bit, and I learned
that Mike (the club president) has the possibility of leasing the
2,200 acres adjacent to our 1,800, giving us a total of 4,000
acres. If he did that, he would also try to add 30 members
to the club, thus reducing our dues to around $1000 per year from
$1500.
Also, Mike is going to ask each of us to
chip in a couple of hundred dollars which he will use to buy a
tractor for the club. It'll be left at the lease, and anyone
who helped pay would have free use of it. Finally, every
spot that can be a food plot will be made into
one. Looks like next year could be a great time to be in the
club!
Once we said our good-byes, I went back
to the new logging road where I had poured corn a few days ago.
The corn pile I had placed there was absolutely demolished by the
deer, with tracks everywhere, so I added another hundred pounds
there. Then I went on down past that spot and picked out a
place for Ted to hunt on Thursday and added more corn there.
Finally, I marked a place for Ted to put his ground blind.
That all done, I went and got lunch at
the Riverdeck, then came back to the newly erected blind. I
sat there all afternoon, but saw nothing. This looks like a
great hunting location though, and I will be back in this stand
for my next few hunts. Unfortunately, the one thing that I
did see once I got in my blind was that the location that I had
picked for Ted was in the direct line of fire of any shot I would
make from my blind. We'll have to pick a different spot in
that area for him on Thursday.
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Just before I left for the lease this
morning I walked down to my workshop and grabbed a few items that
I would need on the lease later that day. There was a little
bit of work that I had been wanting to do on the land, and today
was a good opportunity to take care of some of those things.
I started my hunt in
stand 3 and once again saw my six point buck at around 8:00am.
If this deer makes it through the summer, he should be a nice 8
pointer next year, and if he gets past that, he may ultimately be
a fantastic deer. He was the only deer I saw all morning.
I left the stand at around 10:30, then
walked back to my truck and drove it up to the blind. One of
the problem with this stand is that the sun sets directly behind
it in the evenings and the hunter's silhouette can easily be seen
by any deer out in front of the stand. Using some camouflage
blind material that I had brought with me this morning, I covered
the back of the stand to try to solve this problem. I had
some blind material left over when I was finished, so I went ahead
and stapled that to the front of the stand.
With that being finished, I drove over
to
stand 9 to take care of a problem that I had noticed the last
time I hunted there. The pine trees near the stand have
grown out enough to partially block the view to the left where
deer often cross the logging road. Using my 12 gauge
shotgun, I took care of this problem. I was able to shoot
the branches off of the trees that blocked the view, which will
really help any hunters using this stand.
From there I went to the place we call
the "staging area" and did a little crow hunting. I called
in two separate groups and got shots off both times, but never
managed to bring one down.
Finally, I drove over to the new logging
road that Pete and I had discovered earlier this year. I
opened the gate and drove in, parking my truck about 100 yards
down the road. I then walked as far as the road took me,
finding two wide open areas separated by a quarter mile of logging
road. There were lots of coyote tracks and some deer tracks,
so I decided to give this place a try next time I hunt.
I emptied two bags of corn in the first
open area, then cleared a spot for my ground blind, marking a
nearby tree with some reflective tacks. I then did a little
more crow hunting, finally managing to get one of the black beasts
on the ground.
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Hunting alone again today, I was back in
stand 3 long before dawn. There was a cold, steady rain
falling all morning, but I was pretty comfortable for the first
several hours of the hunt. Although I was paying careful
attention, I didn't see anything all morning. At about 9:00
the cold finally started to get to me, so I walked back to the
truck to put on a Polartec undershirt that I had brought with me.
That was fun; I had to strip down to my bare chest to put the
shirt on, and the cold rain didn't help the way I was feeling!
When I got back to the stand though, I
was much more comfortable. I sat there until about 10:45,
then decided to head into Heath Springs to get a piece of chicken
for lunch. It's about a 45 minute round trip, and I was back
in the blind right around noon. I had barely taken the first
bite of my lunch when a buck walked out into the road about 40
yards from the stand. At first I thought it was the four
pointer that I had seen yesterday.
I got the rifle on him and started to
slip the safety off. I had made the decision to go ahead and
shoot the four pointer the next time I saw him. Now, for the
record, I'm on the side of the argument that culling a scrub buck
doesn't make a whit of difference in the quality of the herd.
The genes are already in the pool. I was going to take him
so that we would stop seeing him in this area, and because he
likely wouldn't amount to anything anyway.
It wasn't him. A careful
inspection through my scope showed that this deer had a wider rack
than my four pointer; he was already outside the ears and had
small brow tines. Definitely not the one I saw yesterday,
although very likely he is the twin to the one that I saw.
He stayed around for about 10 minutes, then disappeared into the
woods.
At around 3:00pm I went back to my truck
again. This time I traded my lightweight rain jacket for my
heavy coat. The mist in the air was making it really cold
out, and I needed something to keep me warm. I was back in
the stand 15 minutes later, and stayed there until dark.
Nothing else appeared all afternoon.
When I got back to the sign-in board,
Phil was already there. He too had hunted all day, but he
had not seen anything. Jimmy and Matt were still in the
woods, and I was anxious to talk to Jimmy about a meeting he had
recently attended. The timber company that we lease our land
from wanted to talk to us, and I was really curious about what
they had to say. He and Matt showed up at around 6:15pm,
Matt having killed a really big doe over at what we call the "Blue
Top Tower" stand.
Jimmy said that the timber company would
like a 3 or 5 year commitment from us on our lease. This is
great news; it means we'd be assured that we would have the club
for at least that long. Further, they want to start
enforcing harvest rules on bucks. Nothing that's not outside
the ears, which is our rule anyway, so no impact there. Next
year they also want us to save the jawbone from each deer that we
kill (this is how they age deer), and also we will need to weigh
each deer. Finally, they will clear off some areas for food
plots for us if we want, but we will be responsible for planting
them.
All in all, I think these are excellent
things. We'll need to start keeping a record of each deer
that's killed, which I've said for years that we need to do
anyway. Jimmy said that he would build a hoist for us over
at the corn shed, and will come up with a way to store our
jawbones. These changes don't go into effect until next
season.
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I was back in
stand 3 this morning at dawn. Having not gotten a deer
on Wednesday, I decided to film Part II of the newest
Wingshooters.net Outdoors episode, so I brought my camera and
tripod into the stand with me. As dawn began to rise, I saw
a couple of squirrels, but no deer. Around 8:00am, I
accidently dropped a hand warmer onto the ground. I leaned
down to pick it up, and as I got back into position I saw a deer
out in the logging road in front of the stand.
It was obviously a buck, and I quickly turned on the camera and
started filming. He was very alert and cautious, and my
binoculars showed me that it was a very tall racked four point.
He had no brow tines, and his antlers were all the way out to his
ears. In fact, he looked more like a mule deer than a
whitetail. I briefly considered shooting him, since at that
size he'll obviously never amount to a great buck, but our club
rules are a little ambiguous about these situations, so I passed
him up.
He stayed around for around 10 minutes before finally heading
off into the woods. I stopped the camera and settled back
into my chair. A half hour later another deer appeared way
out beyond the 100 yard mark. I turned on the camera again
and hit the shutter button, then got my binoculars up. A big
doe, a great shooter! I raised my rifle, fired, and saw the
deer stumble before running across the road into the woods.
Although it was obviously a hit, I wanted to review the shot on
the camera, but to my dismay I saw that it wasn't recording; I
must not have pressed the button all the way down when I saw the
doe.
It was disappointing not to get the shot on film, but I quickly
recovered and went up and found the deer. She had gone about
30 yards, nailed just over the shoulder with very little damage to
the meat. I filmed a couple more segments, then loaded her
up and headed home.
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I had initially planned to hunt all day
today, but we've been pretty busy trying to get everything ready
for our family Thanksgiving gathering, so I ended up heading down
to the lease around 10:00 this morning. There was nobody in
the woods when I got there, so I went over to
stand 13 to refill the feeder there. From there I went
over and removed the bracket for my Bushnell camera from the tree
that it was on. The camera had had some issues, and I sent
it back to the company for repair. They sent me a new one
this week, so I wanted the bracket so that I could move it to
another location.
It it interesting to note that when I
was driving on the public road heading into the lease to get my
bracket, I saw the same little black cat that I've seen twice
during recent hunts at
stand 9. Seems like I'm seeing him all the time!
After that I went back over to
stand 3 and put out a couple of bags of corn in two different
locations, then installed the camera up at the far end of the
viewing distance. That all being finished, I finally went
over to the stand and got ready to hunt.
This past week during a Woot.com
selloff, I bought a new point-and-shoot digital camera. I've
been wanting one that I could carry around easily into the stands
with me, and I got a great deal (over 50% off) of a new Samsung
camera that's capable of HD video. I decided to make a new
episode of Wingshooters.net Outdoors out of today's hunt,
so I prior to getting into the stand I did a bit of filming.
Finally settled into the stand, I spent
the rest of the day watching for deer. A little after 4:00pm
a spike buck came out, but he only stayed around for a couple of
minutes. Nothing else happened all afternoon, so at dark I
packed up and went home.
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On this, the coldest morning of the year
so far, I was again hunting alone. Pete had planned to come,
but had to back out due to a busy afternoon today. It was 14
degrees in the Cold Spot, and only 18 degrees on the top of the
hill. No one else was signed in on the board when I
got there at 5:45am.
I headed to
stand 3, taking a little portable heater with me. I
didn't really need it; I had dressed appropriately and was really
pretty comfortable all morning. I didn't see anything but a
few squirrels, even though I stayed in the stand until 11:30am.
When I exited the stand, I walked down to the corn and saw deer
tracks everywhere; they've really been hitting this spot.
When I come back on Wednesday, I'll hunt this stand all day and
will bring another bag or two of corn to liven things up.
After I left the lease I headed over to
Randy Jordan's place. Randy is my taxidermist, and I wanted
to check in on my African animals. No one was there when I
knocked on the door of his shop, and as I headed back toward my
truck to leave I saw Randy walking across the yard toward me from
his house. He unlocked the shop, and we went in and talked
hunting for a good while.
As I was about to leave, a Greek fellow
came in with a nice doe. I stuck around while Randy skinned
and dressed the animal, then quartered it for the hunter.
That done, I said goodbye to Randy and headed home. He said
that he'd been working on my mounts, and had the ears in place on
two of the mannequins and had muscled them up a bit with clay and
Bond-o. Hopefully it won't be long before the first of the
mounts is ready.
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Although I had the whole day off from
work, an appointment in the afternoon forced me to do another
morning-only hunt today. It was cold when I left the house;
the temperature was in the low 20s, and I was glad that I had
brought my heaviest clothes along on the hunt. On the
highway adjacent to the lease, there is a place that we call the
"Cold Spot". It's a little dip in the road at the base of
Liberty Hill, and you can count on the temperature being ten
degrees cooler there than at the top of the hill. It was 21
in the Cold Spot when I went through it.
I got to the lease and saw that two
other guys were already there.
Stand 9 was open, so I decided to hunt there. I sat in
the stand all morning, chilly but not uncomfortably cold, but saw
no deer. Late in the morning a beautiful red fox ran out of
the woods to my right, crossed the little food plot, and entered
into the pines parallel to my stand. I found myself wishing
fox season was open; I would love to get a red fox mounted to
match my grey one.
Not long after that I saw the little
black cat again, this time headed down the hill and back toward
the main road. I saw nothing else, and got down from the
stand at about 11:00am. I headed over to the first road to
check out the deer sign over there.
Stand 3 was starting to show some activity. In past
years, this has been a great stand, but the logging in the area
last winter really slowed things down there. I was glad to
see tracks in the road there.
I went on up to my feeder a half mile up
the road. I turned the feeder off a month or so ago, but
there still was a bit of corn left in it. I grabbed a
plastic shopping bag out of my truck and filled it with corn from
the feeder, then went back down and poured it out at
stand 3. That being done, my time was up for the day and
I headed back to the house.
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Ted joined me today for an
afternoon-only hunt. We spent a lot of time thinking about
the stands that we'd hunt from, and in the end we decided that Ted
would to go
stand 35 while I went a little further down the trail to
stand 34. We parked my Jeep just up the road from Ted's
stand, then walked to our spots.
I had never hunted from
stand 34 before, and although a lot of deer are seen from this
stand, I didn't know what to expect of the view. The stand
sits near a deep valley, and I could see about 60 yards out in
front of me over a small cutover before the land dropped off into
the ravine.
The afternoon was mostly quiet. As
the sun began to move behind the trees, I saw a flock of six
gobblers come in and drink from a mud puddle created from the ruts
of the logging road. They stayed around for 30 minutes or so
before moving off into the cutover. Shortly after that, a
grey fox went under my stand. I leaned my head out of the
window of the blind and watched him until he disappeared deep into
the woods. Fox season doesn't open for another ten days.
Before long I heard Ted shoot. I
had not brought the radios today, so I had no way to check in with
him to see what he had gotten. Nothing else showed up at my
stand, and at dark I got down and made the long walk back to the
truck.
Ted was waiting for me at his stand,
having already retrieved his deer and loading it onto the truck.
He had seen three; two young does and one larger one. He
couldn't get a shot at the big one, and knowing he'd likely only
get one more hunt in this year he went ahead and took one of the
younger does. We dropped it off at the processor and headed
home.
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I'm participating in a men's ministry
this year, and we are currently studying John Eldredge's book
Wild at Heart, and we meet every Tuesday night in a barn
out in Indian Land, SC. So, although I had the day off of
work for Veteran's Day today, I could only hunt for a half day.
I was by myself again, and I went straight back to
stand 9.
The morning started slowly, but not too
long after sunrise I saw a deer come out into the shooting lane
about 70 yards in front of me. I could see that it was a
buck, and a glance through my binoculars confirmed that it was a
four-pointer. He came out of the woods and fed for about 10
minutes. He didn't seem very spooky, and when he left the
area he wasn't in a big hurry.
I kept watching, and 20 minutes or so
later I saw another deer in the lane, this time about fifty yards
farther out. It was a bigger deer, but was also just a four
pointer. He was much more cautious, heading slowly up the
lane toward our corn pile. He stopped frequently, staring up
at me in the stand, but he never saw me. He didn't stay long
though, and soon all was quiet again.
Before long, I saw something small and
black come over the rise in the road and head my way. It was
a small black domestic cat. He trotted quickly up the road
heading toward the stand, then disappeared into the woods behind
me. Fifteen minutes later he emerged on the other side of
the stand and continued on his way down the road, stopping
occasionally to look for rodents.
Almost immediately after he disappeared,
I saw movement on the edge of the woods to my right, behind club
member Jerry's deer feeder. Another deer! I saw that
it was a small doe. I watched her for 5 minutes or so, when
suddenly another doe leapt past her. In the woods, I saw the
twitch of another deer's tail, then all three were gone. I
was so focused on the first one that I hadn't even noticed the
other two. I wasn't sure what spooked them, and I kept
watch, hoping that a buck had made them nervous, but nothing else
showed up.
I stayed in the stand until late
morning, then climbed down and headed home. It was hard to
leave the lease today; it was a great day to be in the woods, and
I would have liked to have stayed all day.
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Well, a bit of bad luck this morning.
Hunting alone this morning, I went to
stand 9, which is one of the most popular and productive
stands on the lease. As soon as I could see the shooting
lane in front of me, I could see that there were two deer feeding
about 70 yards out from me. I watched them through my
binoculars for some time. It was still to dark to determine
the sex of the deer, but I could see that one was good sized and
one was young.
They stayed out in front of me until it
was light enough to see, and I could tell that both deer were
does. I got my rifle in position and aimed at the bigger
deer. Squeezing the trigger, I felt the recoil of the rifle
and waited for the smoke to clear. Federal Premium
cartridges, while great bullets, are a bit smoky. When I
could see again, I saw both deer still standing there together,
unfazed by the shot. A clean miss.
I chambered another round and fired
again. I saw immediately that something had gone wrong,
because the big deer went one way and the little one went the
other, obviously badly hit. I grabbed my pistol, a .40
Taurus 24/7, out of my backpack and started down the ladder.
Once on the ground, I eased down the trail, going to where the
deer had been standing. In the woods to the left, I
saw the young doe lying on the ground, hit low in the liver area.
She was still moving, but I dispatched her with a quick head shot
from the pistol.
I had, I remembered, bumped my rifle
pretty hard coming down from
stand 1 back on the 27th when I shot my last doe. I
hadn't paid it much thought at the time, but that's the only thing
that I'm aware of that could have thrown my rifle off.
I went and got the rest of my gear down
from the stand, got the truck, and came back to the deer. I
went ahead and field dressed her since she was hit in a bad spot,
then loaded her onto the basket and took her to a deer processor
just down the road from the lease. I was back at the lease
by 8:00am, and I went immediately to the dirt pit, which is where
we have a little rifle range set up.
Sure enough, my rifle was shooting to
the right. Badly. I tightened the screws on my scope,
then sighted it back in. Since it was still early, I got
back into the woods, this time going over to
stand 3 for the first time this year. I sat there for
about an hour and a half, but saw nothing.
Back at the sign in board, several of
the club members were there. We talked for awhile, then
everyone went their separate ways for lunch. In the evening,
I went over to the Family Stand, but saw nothing there.
Billy, one of the club members, shot a nice doe that evening way
back on the lease, but of seven or eight guys hunting, no one else
saw anything.
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Having seen large buck tracks in the
area on Saturday, I decided to give
stand 13 a try this morning. Pete (who didn't oversleep
this morning) would be starting the day in
stand 35. My stand was beautifully located, and the
bright colors of the fall leaves gave me a great setting to hunt
in. The leaves were the only thing I saw though. Pete
also saw nothing.
After the hunt we drove around a little
bit trying to decide where to hunt for the evening. We
settled on me getting into the Salt Lick stand (which I rarely see
deer at) and Pete going for the Family Stand. We ate lunch
at the grille down the road, and then got in the stands a little
after noon. I had to fight wasps for much of the afternoon,
swatting them with my cap whenever they tried to come in the
stand.
Around 5:00pm, I heard the Whap-BOOM
of Pete's .30-30 bullet striking muscle, and I knew that he'd
hit a deer. I had neglected to bring the radios today, so I
wasn't able to call him to see what he'd gotten.
As darkness started to fall, I saw a
deer come into my field from the right. It was heading
straight toward my stand, and looking at it through my binoculars
I saw that it was a little buck with horns just over an inch in
length. As I watched, the deer turned and walked over to the
corn pile in my field. It ate for awhile, and I sat in place
until he left, just as hunting light ended.
When I drove down to the Family Stand,
Pete was nowhere to be seen, nor was his deer. This
concerned me a bit, and I thought maybe the deer had run a long
way away. I locked my truck, then marked the coordinates of
the Jeep into my GPS unit to make it easier to get back to if we
got into thick stuff while tracking the deer.
The blood trail was obvious, and Pete's
marking tape showed the way into the woods. As I headed in,
Pete hollered to me that he was on the trail. I quickly met
up with him, and he explained the situation. It had looked
like a good shot, he said, and he had not been tracking for long.
Leaving Pete to follow the blood trail, I moved out looking for
the deer itself. Correcting course each time Pete found
blood, I quickly came upon the doe laying dead in a tangle of
branches.
It was a good deer, and we broke in my
"Glenn's Deer Handle" dragging her out of the woods. After
taking pictures, we packed her up and headed to the processor with
Pete's lifetime third deer.
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When I opened my garage door this
morning, I was surprised that Pete wasn't there waiting for me.
He's usually early, but today he was nowhere to be seen. I
waited 10 minutes or so, then decided that something must have
happened. Pete only lives a few miles from me, so I headed
in that direction, hoping to pass him on the way. As I
headed down Highway 557 toward his house, I saw a pickup truck
coming my way. Thinking it might be him, I turned onto a
side road, turned around, and watched the vehicle as it passed.
Indeed, it was Pete.
I followed him to a gas station a half
mile from where we had passed each other. He had overslept
this morning, awakening with a start to discover that he was
supposed to have been at my house fifteen minutes ago! It
worked out ok though, and we quickly loaded his gear into my truck
and off we went, me giving him the requisite hard time about
oversleeping.
At the lease, I picked
stand 2 and Pete got in
stand 1. I saw a spike early, and heard coyotes yapping
all morning up to my right. In fact, as I sat quietly, I
heard one turn onto my logging road, headed my way. I turned
in my seat, getting ready for a possible shot opportunity.
As I did, a massive bank of fog started rolling in. It
happened quickly, and within seconds the area had gone completely
grey. The coyotes quit yipping, and the woods grew still.
I couldn't see more than 20 yards in any direction.
Soon, looking again to my right, I saw
that a big doe had appeared suddenly out of the fog not 50 feet
from me. She was looking directly at the stand, and I wasn't
able to get turned to shoot. She decided I was trouble and
disappeared into the woods, tail waving a warning.
Pete and I met up a little while later
and headed over to the big side of the lease. We found a
nice parking spot at an intersection of two logging roads, then
heated up some venison chili that I had brought with me for our
lunch. Chili eaten, we got back into the woods. Pete
went to
stand 13 and I chose
stand 16. It turned out to be a quiet afternoon; neither
of us saw anything.
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It was a great day to be in the woods
today. Neither of my buddies could join me today, so I was
on my own for a late October hunt. I saw two deer on
Singleton Creek Rd. (the road my lease is on) on the way to the
sign in board. We haven't been seeing as many deer as usual
on that road this year, so I was really glad to see even two of
them this morning.
I signed in for
stand 2 since Ted and I had seen as lot of tracks there on
Thursday. Before getting into the stand, I drove on past it
and up to where our corn pile is located, then dumped out a bag of
deer apples that Micki and I had bought in the mountains over the
weekend. That finished, I turned around and parked the Jeep
below the stand, then got settled in for my hunt.
In the early morning mist shortly after
the sun began to rise I saw a deer moving way up to the right of
the stand, about 50 yards beyond where I had put the apples.
There were too many branches from pine trees hanging over the
trail, so I never got a look at the deer's head. I have to
count it as a doe in my yearly tally of deer seen, but the body
language looked more like a buck. As I watched the deer move
away, I remembered that I had forgotten to bring my shotgun today.
My plan had been to use it to shoot down some of the various
branches that are hanging in the way of a couple of our stands.
I'll have to remember that for my next hunt.
Shortly after the deer disappeared, I
heard a noise to my left. Turning slowly, I saw something
moving in the thicket in front of me. I got my binoculars up
and briefly saw a big spike buck. I lowered my binoculars,
but saw nothing with my naked eyes. I waited, and he emerged
from the briars, moving quickly and headed straight for me.
As he approached the logging road, he stopped and stared right at
me, then turned and quickly sprinted into the woods, tail up.
He was the last deer I saw that morning.
I got down from the tree at 10:00am, and
saw the spike's tracks in the logging road. He had crossed
not 10 yards from the stand.
Moving back to the truck, I packed up my
gear and went over to the sign in board, changing my location to
stand 1 for the afternoon. Then, being really sleepy, I
drove over to the old corn trailer, parked, and took a three hour
nap in the back of my Jeep. When I woke up, I was shocked at
the difference in the weather. When I had started my nap, it
was a bright clear morning with no wind at all. Now the sky
was filled with heavy grey clouds, and the wind was blowing
steadily.
I ate the sandwiches that I had brought
for lunch, then drove over to the stand. I dumped more
apples in two different places in view of the stand, then parked
the truck way up past the stand, out of sight of any deer that
might come through the area. I got in the stand, and knowing
it was too early for deer to move I settled in and began to read,
stopping and looking around at the end of each page.
The wind was really heavy, and I was not
confident that I'd see deer since they don't normally move as much
in the wind, but at 5:00pm I looked to my left and saw a big deer
standing in the road to my left down below the apples. I
looked at him in my binoculars and saw that it was a large spike,
bigger than the one that I had seen this morning. He started
moving toward the apples, but stopped suddenly, turned, and
trotted off. The wind must have blown my scent down to him.
More alert now, I went back to my book
but stopped reading to look around at the end of almost every
paragraph. At 5:45 I saw something out in front of me in a
little cut leading down into a gully. I thought it was the
wind blowing brush around, but my binoculars revealed a big grey
doe, then another smaller one, then a brown deer behind them.
Both grey deer were definitely does, but I could never tell what
the brown deer was.
The lead deer stopped and stared
straight into my stand. I stared back through my binoculars,
never moving. We looked at each other for five solid
minutes. My arms were getting quite tired by the time she
put her head down. I dropped my binoculars, then froze,
knowing it was a feint and that she would look up immediately.
She did. She feinted three or four more times, and each time
she did I had quickly moved my own position, grabbing my rifle and
moving it into position every time her head went down.
She finally got comfortable, and I was
able to get in position to shoot. She was still facing
directly my way, and, hating frontal shots, I waited. After
several minutes she finally turned, and a neck shot dropped her
where she stood. The other two deer took off, and I sat
shaking in my stand. I thought about staying in the tree,
but it was pretty early still, and I decided that I could go ahead
and retrieve the deer, get pictures, and head on home and get
there early.
I did this, dropping the deer off at the
processor on the way home.
I've shown this one before, last year,
but I thought it was worth doing again one more time. A dead
deer is heavy. Really heavy. And they can be hard to
get into your truck basket when you're by yourself. I came
up with a handy way to do it, and thought I'd show this idea off.
Once the deer is behind the truck, I tie it's back legs together
with heavy rope, then do the same with the front legs. I
then hook one end of a pair of tow-straps to each rope, then hook
the other end to something secure in the back of my Jeep.
My 2001 Jeep had hooks in the ceiling of
the truck right at the tailgate, and this was a great place to
hook onto. My 2005 Jeep doesn't have this feature, but it
does have little hooks in the floor of the bed area that work
almost as well. Once both ends of each tow strap is hooked
up, I lift one end of the deer while pulling the tow strap tight.
Then I move to the other side and repeat. Going back and
forth like this I can work the deer up into the basket with very
little effort. Here's a picture of this in progress:
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Ted and I had a Thursday off to hunt
together. We started our mornings with me hunting in
stand 1 and Ted in
stand 2. Our plan was to hunt until 10:00, then move one
of my trail cameras and my bucket feeder to new locations before
getting lunch in the area. The morning was quiet, and by the
time the sun was peeking through the trees I hadn't seen any
activity.
With the rut coming on, I decided to do
a little bit of calling, so I used my doe-in-heat bleat call a few
times. After bleating a half dozen times, I watched down the
logging road, looking for deer. Seeing nothing, I turned to
look the other way and saw, very quickly, a small deer out in
front of my. As soon as I saw it, the deer turned and
trotted off, not running, but not lingering either. I
imagine that it was just a young doe curious about the bleat.
That was the only thing I saw that
morning. Ted and I met back at the truck at 10:00, and he
reported that he had seen a nice six point buck out in front of
his stand, and had heard another deer grunting off in the thick
stuff where he couldn't see it.
We proceeded to move my camera from
stand 6 to
stand 15. There were a few tracks there in the road at
15, including one big heavy track. I decided to hunt there
in the evening, and Ted would hunt at
stand 16. The little trail to 16 was covered with
tracks, and it may be a good place to put up a tent blind in the
next week or two.
Neither of us saw anything on our
evening hunts.
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Pete and I did a half day hunt this
morning. We went back to
stand 1 and
stand 2. We stayed in our stands until around
10:00am, with me seeing nothing and Pete seeing one four point
buck. After the hunt we saw that there weren't many tracks
in the area, so it looks like the activity may have shifted to
another part of the lease.
After the hunt we stopped by Randy
Jordan's so that I could give him instructions on mounting the
buck I shot a few weeks ago, then we went over to
Hickory Hills
to pick up the meat from my two deer.
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Today would be my last chance to get
into the woods for the next couple of weeks. Other
activities are going to keep me away from my lease until mid
October, so we had to make today count. And we did!
Pete and I left my house at 4:15am, seeing a doe as soon as we
turned out onto the main road.
We were the first ones to arrive at the
lease, so we had our choice of stands. I went to
stand 1, where I had put some corn on Tuesday, and Pete went
to
stand 2, which was showing signs of activity on Tuesday.
The morning was quiet until a little after 8:00am, when I heard a
shot from Pete's direction. He radioed me to say that he had
hit a doe. It had fallen, then gotten up and run. I
told him to wait a bit, then go look for the deer.
He called me back shortly saying he had
found bone fragments and blood, but the trail had petered out
pretty quickly. I checked the time, then told him to give it
a bit longer and then I would come help him track the deer.
I stayed in my stand until about 9:30, then got down and drove up
to where Pete was waiting.
The bone fragments worried me. In
my experience, bone often means a leg-broke deer, and a leg-broke
deer is one that's going to be hard (if not impossible) to find,
since it would most likely still be alive and moving. I kept
a positive outlook though, and we started looking for the deer.
The blood trail stopped almost immediately after it started, and
there was bone and muscle lying in the dirt where Pete had shot
the deer.
We searched for quite some time, but
never found any more sign of the deer. It looks like my
fears were confirmed, and the deer was hit in the leg. It
will, most likely, survive.
We had a quick lunch on the property,
then I took Pete over to
stand 20, where he wanted to spend the afternoon. I got
back in
stand 1 after swapping cards and batteries in my trail camera
that was watching that area. It was quite early in the
afternoon, so once I got settled back into the stand I plugged the
camera card into my GPS, which has an image view built in. I
was pleasantly surprised to find that out of the 700+ pictures on
the camera, a great many of them showed deer.
In particular, one group of three does
was showing up every evening between 5:30 and 6:30pm. A good
sign. After going through all of the pictures, I got as
comfortable as I could and took a short nap in the stand. By
late afternoon I was feeling refreshed and started paying
attention to the woods around me.
At 5:00pm, I looked to my left and saw a
deer crossing the logging road that my stand was watching. I
saw antlers, and after a quick look through my binoculars I saw
that it was a shootable buck. Not a monster, by any means,
but still a nice deer. I swapped binoculars for rifle, then,
just as the deer was about to enter the woods, I fired.
The buck leapt straight into the air,
then came crashing back down on all fours like an ocean wave.
Its tail was high in the air, and I knew it was a hit. The
deer disappeared into the woods, and only then did I start
shaking. I waited a short while, then grabbed my trail
marking tape from my backpack, climbed down, and walked down the
road to where the buck had been standing. I found blood
immediately, then another spot, then another.
Rather than try to follow the individual
blood marks, I put a piece of tape at the last spot I had seen,
then circled down into the woods to try to find the deer itself.
I'd come back to the trail if necessary, but often just a quick
arc through the woods will reveal your deer's final resting place.
This turned out to be the case for me; my buck was laying at the
bottom of the hill where I had lost my last doe of the season last
year to a pack of coyotes.
I dragged the deer up the hill back to
the road. This sounds like an easy task in print, but in
reality it was a struggle. The hill was steep, the woods
were thick, and I was exhausted and drenched with sweat by the
time I got him back to the road. I left him there, then
staggered back to my stand, climbed back up, and collapsed into
the blind's chair.
I sat there for another hour, knowing
that the does on my camera might still come out, since the buck
had been in a completely different section of woods from where my
camera is. At 6:30, just as I was about to give up and get
down, I saw a young doe come walking up the hill to the corn over
by my camera.
I watched her feed, saw the camera flash
a couple of times, and knew by the way she kept looking back into
the woods that more deer were coming. The second yearling
soon appeared, and before long the biggest doe from my pictures
showed up. I waited until she was broadside, then took the
shot. She was gone when the smoke from my shot cleared.
I got down from the stand, this time
taking all of my gear with me. I left my backpack by
the side of the road, taking only my rifle and some marking tape
up to where the doe had been. It took me about five minutes
to find the first blood mark. It was tiny, but it was
definitely a hit. I found another spot, then began to arc
out in the most likely direction looking for the deer.
I came up empty after making a deep
circle into a valley, so I went back up and began to look for more
blood. I soon found that the deer had gone in a different
direction than I thought she would have. I found a bit of
lung tissue, then more blood. I tracked it for about 30
yards, then, with the sky darkening, decided to go get Pete for
help.
On the way out, I stopped at the sign in
board and left a note saying that we were looking for a deer at
#1, and asking for help if anyone was available. Most of the
guys in the club were in the woods, so I knew we'd have help when
we got back to the area. Pete was waiting for me on the side
of the road when I went to pick him up, and when we got back to my
stand it was getting dark, but we still had the last moments of
daylight left.
We picked back up on the trail, and
found the doe laying not 30 yards from where I had stopped
tracking. Pete put her on his Dead Sled deer drag, and he
pulled her out of the woods while I went back for the truck.
In the end, we had two deer on the rack, and we headed for home,
both dog tired and ready for sleep.
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I took a half day from work today to
hunt, and Pete did the same. He decided to hunt in
stand 35, while I went to
stand 16 hoping to see some of the does that Ted had seen last
week. We sat in the stands until dark, but neither of us saw
a thing. Before getting into the woods, we checked my trail
cameras. Both cameras are watching different areas that you
can see from
stand 6.
My good camera, the Bushnell, had
absolutely nothing on it. The StealthCam had 450 pictures,
and actually did have a few pictures of does. They were all
feeding at 2:30am, but I imagine this is typical deer activity and
not an indication that they are nocturnal. It's far too
early for that to be the case.
On the way out, we moved the StealthCam
to a new location and will check it on Saturday to see if anything
is moving in other areas.
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I only had a half day to hunt today,
since Arnold's 70th birthday party is tonight. I ended up going
to
stand 6 as planned, but saw nothing all morning. I left at
11:00am, then spent an hour or so talking to Jimmy and Matt, who I
ran into at the sign in board.
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Another difficult day in the stand...
I'm just not seeing deer this year. I went up to
stand 15 hoping to get a look at the big buck that Pete saw on
Monday. I sat there all morning and saw nothing. Ted
hunted with me today, and he also saw nothing at
stand 16 that morning. We had taken our four-wheelers
today, since the roads were in really bad shape from the rain on
Monday and Tuesday. We parked way back at the main gate, two
miles from where we were hunting.
At about 11:00, we got down and rode
back to the trucks to eat our lunches, then go check my trail
cameras before getting back in the woods. On the way out we
stopped at the sign-in board to see if anyone else was still in
the woods. There was a note from Trey on the board saying
that he wanted to hunt near the gate this evening, and he wanted
to know if we could move our trucks.
We checked the cameras, only to find
nothing on them. Turns out though that the deer have finally
found some of the corn on the side of the road at
stand 6. One of the three corn piles in that area was
torn up, with many tracks leading to and away from it. Maybe
it's time to reconsider hunting this stand!
We went back to the main lease and moved
our trucks out of the way for Trey's hunt, then got back in our
stands from this morning. At 2:45pm, Ted shot a doe, which
he had to track for 100 yards before retrieving and field dressing
it. He got back in the stand, and I stayed put in mine.
I saw nothing all afternoon. Ted ended up seeing nine deer
in his stand.
When we got out of the woods, Trey was
at the board. He told me that Matt had shot the big
buck on Tuesday that Pete had seen the previous day. It was
a 195 pound twelve pointer, and this explains why I didn't see
anything today. I think on Saturday morning I'll get back in
stand 6 and give that another try.
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Opening day of the general firearms deer
season was challenging from many aspects that you'll soon read
about. Pete and I hunted my lease today, with him going to
stand 2 and me going to
stand 6. Just after sunrise, I saw a fox come out of the
woods about 50 yards down from me. It was the only animal I saw
all morning.
By the time we got out of the stands,
the temperature was climbing and the humidity was rising.
I had parked my truck a couple of hundred yards down the road from
my stand, so after walking down to get it I drove back up to the
blind and walked over to get the memory card out of the trail
camera that I had placed in this area on Saturday.
I had my laptop with me (I'll have it
with me every time I hunt from here out), so I dumped the card to
the computer, but there were no pictures taken over the weekend.
I walked the card back to the camera, changed the batteries, then
drove down to get Pete. I had another camera where he was
hunting, and this one had captured about 50 pictures and a few
videos. Together we reviewed the contents of that memory
card, but there was nothing interesting in any of the captures.
We decided to go down to Camden, SC at
lunch time. Pete needed some wasp spray to take into the
stand, and I wanted to get a few more bags of corn for the
afternoon hunt. We did that, then headed over to the big
part of the lease. Pete and I talked about hunting
stand 15 and
stand 16, but when we got over there I felt like I should
really be back at
stand 6. I didn't have a lot of confidence in seeing a
deer there, but I had invested a good bit of money in the new
feeder and cameras and thought I should be using them. Bad
choice.
Pete decided to stay at
stand 15, so leaving him there I went back over to my original
stand from the morning. I did see three does on the
side of the state road. Back in the stand, I sat there all
afternoon, sweating, getting ant bitten, and still I saw nothing
except turkeys. Pete called me at 2:00 or so to say he had a
small doe under his stand, but that it had walked back into the
woods. Later he called to tell me he had a 10 point buck and
a spike in front of him. As much as I wished he could have
shot that buck, the club rules are pretty firm: guests shoot
does only.
By dusk, rain and thunderstorms were
moving in, so we decided to pack it up. I slogged my way
through the mud back to my truck, exited my section of the lease,
then headed into the big section to get Pete. Driving to
where he was was an absolute nightmare. The red clay roads
were so slick with mud that several times I thought I was going to
slide into the trees. I got as far as I thought I could
safely go, then radioed him and told him he had best walk the rest
of the way to meet me. We made it out of the woods, but I
think from now on when rain is forecast I'll be taking my four
wheeler hunting with me.
So, by the end of the day, I was glad
that Pete had seen deer, but was exhausted with frustration from
my own day. The heat, humidity, ants, mosquitoes, and lack
of deer made it a very difficult day. Everyone else we
talked to had seen deer, but everyone else was hunting in the
large section of the lease. I think I'll concentrate on that
section myself for the next few weeks, getting back over to the
small side once it cools down a little more.
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My intention was to bowhunt the lease
today, but I decided it was just too hot to spend the afternoon
roasting in that vinyl blind again today. A blind like that
is a fine thing for later fall and winter, but it's just too hot
for summer. Instead, I decided that I'd still go down to the
lease -- I needed to do that anyway so that I could reserve a spot
for Monday, the opening day of the general deer season -- but
rather than hunt I would sit at
stand 6 and just watch, hoping to see if anything came into
the feeder that I planned to hunt on the opener.
Arriving at the lease, I went first to
the feeder at
stand 2 to remove the blind since it wouldn't be needed for
rifle hunting. The corn looked fine, so I didn't bother to
add any to the little bucket feeder there. Then I headed
over to my big feeder to check my Stealth Cam and replace it with
a better camera I just bought, a Bushnell 357 infrared camera.
I had tested my new camera out in my back yard the previous night
and captured these pictures of a doe and a fox:
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The Stealth Cam had 377 pictures on it,
and I quickly pulled it off the tree and replaced it with the
Bushnell. The Stealth Cam would be relocated to
stand 2. I brought my laptop along with me, so I used it
to view all 377 pictures that had been captured over the course of
the previous week. In all, I captured numerous squirrels and
small rodents, a raccoon, a skunk, some turkeys, doves, and lots
of bugs and wind. The Stealth Cam, it turns out, is far too
sensitive to small movements of wind and varmints, and I'm only
getting about three days worth of pictures on full batteries.
I can only hope the Bushnell does better.
After reviewing the pictures, I
got into the blind that I planned on hunting on Monday and stayed
there until dark. I saw two flocks of turkeys, but no deer.
I'm hoping it's just the hot weather that's got them staying put.
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Another solo bowhunt today. I had
gone back down to the lease on Thursday to put up a blind to hunt
from today. I put up my Ameristep Doghouse blind at
stand 2 thinking that it would be the best place to get a look
at a deer. There are a lot of tracks going through that
area, and I hid the blind really well back in some trees, giving
me a perfect 20 yard shot at where a deer should appear.
I stayed in the blind until 11:00am,
seeing absolutely nothing. At 11, I walked back to the
truck, enjoying the still-cool morning air. That would
change, but for now, it felt great outside. I headed down to
Camden during lunch to get some hunting supplies at the Wal-Mart
down there, then got back in the blind for the rest of the day.
Though I sat there until dark, I saw no
wildlife at all. By mid-afternoon the humidity was becoming
unbearable, so I think that hunting that blind again is going to
have to wait until it cools off a little bit.
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I had the afternoon free today, so I
decided to go ahead and tackle a difficult job. After my
experience yesterday in the swamp, seeing no deer and showing no
evidence of them on my trail camera, I decided to take the plunge
and move my big feeder. I left home after work, stopping by
the farmer's supply store on my way out to get some corn. I
got to the lease around 5:00pm and checked the board to make sure
I wouldn't be disturbing anyone.
I had the lease to myself, so I headed
on down the road, parking at the permanent stand closest to my
feeder. From there I made the hike back to the feeder,
taking Ted's homemade deer cart along with me. I had to dump
about 75 pounds of corn out; it was just too much to deal with.
Empty now, the feeder was quite light, so I disassembled the legs,
then tied the feeder and legs onto the cart. I took my trail
camera off of the tree and stuffed it into a pouch on my climbing
stand, which was nearby, then removed the stand from it's tree and
hoisted it up onto my back.
Pulling the cart with one hand and
steadying the treestand with the other, I fought my way out of the
woods and back to the truck. I was drenched with sweat when
I emerged from the woods, but at least the hard part was over.
I rested a minute, then walked across the road to another patch of
woods where we had put a small bucket feeder for Pete to hunt
over. I grabbed it too, then returned to the truck.
After another short rest, I drove back
to the sign in board to make sure that the first road was still
clear of hunters. As I stood looking over the board, a truck
pulled up. Jimmy, Matt, and Billy, all members of the club,
got out of the truck and told me they had come to put corn out.
They volunteered to help me with my feeder, so together we all
went up to
stand 6, where I wanted to put the feeder.
Working together we quickly got it all
put back together and full of fresh corn. I thanked them for
their help and we parted ways. Driving back down the road to
stand 2 where I hung the bucket feeder from a nearby pine tree
and filled it full of corn too. Work over, I headed home.
I forgot to mention the wildlife
that I saw today. On the public road that our lease is on,
two deer crossed in front of me. 200 yards further along, a
flock of turkeys crossed in front of me too. On the lease
road, I saw some more turkeys, then a fox on the way out.
The animals were on the move today!
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I knew it was going to be a difficult
day in the woods as soon as I opened my garage door this morning.
The humidity poured into the garage, and although it was only 70°
at the time, I was already sweating when I got in my truck and
left home. As I turned out of my neighborhood onto the main
road, I saw a doe standing in the grass alongside the shoulder of
the country road and hoped that this was a good sign.
I arrived at the sign-in board shortly
before 6:00am and found one of our new members, Phil, standing
there looking at the map. He wanted to make sure that his
hunt wasn't going to interfere with anyone else. As we
talked another member, Brandon, pulled up and signed in. We
chatted for a few minutes, then parted ways and headed into the
woods.
There have been a few changes in the
club this year. We're not using cob corn this year for deer;
it's gotten to be too expensive and our supply got used up too
early last year. This season we're putting out feeders and
are using shelled corn. I bought a Moultrie EZ-Fill feeder,
and Pete and I put it deep in the woods back around the beginning
of August. I also put a trail camera there, and hoped that
this would be the spot where I'd get a big buck.
In the last two weeks leading up to the
season, I've checked the camera several times, but haven't had
much luck with it. I've seen lots of raccoons and squirrels,
but very little deer activity. Two days ago we put my
climbing stand in the woods near the feeder, and that's where I'd
be hunting this morning.
After parking my truck on the logging
road closest to my stand, I made my way slowly and quietly down
the trail toward the feeder. The reflective thumbtacks I had
put on the trees leading to the stand guided my path, and I had no
trouble making it to the stand without making much noise. I
climbed the tree and began the long wait.
As the morning wore on, all I saw were
squirrels. Dozens of them, often ten or fifteen at one time,
chased each other around the woods near my stand. They were
active all morning, and a small game hunter with a .22 would have
no trouble filling his limit in those woods. By 11:00am I
hadn't seen anything, so I climbed down and headed back to the
truck. I drove back to the sign-in board and found Phil
there again, this time chatting with Jimmy White.
Phil had seen a few does; Jimmy doesn't
bow hunt but was just there to do some scouting. We talked
for awhile, then I left to get some lunch at the Riverside Grill,
our usual lunch spot. I had planned to take my lunch, but
got too busy yesterday to bother with making a sandwich for today.
After lunch I drove back to my stand,
catching up with Jimmy as he drove slowly along the roads looking
for sign. Together we checked out a couple of spots for
tracks, but found nothing worth getting excited over.
Parting ways, I started to get my gear out to head back toward my
stand. I was on the head of the trail about to make the trek
back to my stand when I stopped suddenly and asked myself what I
was doing.
My camera had shown very little evidence
of deer activity back in those woods. The squirrels back
there were driving me crazy, and although it's a great looking
spot for deer, there's not much of a view. Did I really want
to spend five more hours looking at that swamp bottom? No, I
decided, I didn't.
Stand 13
was right there beside me on the trailhead; a nice ladder that
gets very little use. I climbed it quickly without my gear
and admired the view for a second. Why not hunt right there?
I had tagged in for that stand anyway, since it was the closest
one to my deep-woods spot, so I wouldn't have to go back to the
board or anything.
I climbed down, moved my truck a hundred
yards or so away, then went back to the stand. I got to the
top, sat down, and started to pull my backpack up when a half
dozen wasps flew out from their nest, which was hidden by the
fabric that camouflaged the stand. It's amazing how fast you
can go down a ladder that you would normally take your time with,
but I was on the ground within seconds. I hadn't been stung,
but I definitely wasn't going back up there.
I decided to just go over to the first
road and hunt
stand 2, which used to be a box blind but was now a beautiful
ladder stand looking over our newly thinned pine woods. I
spent the rest of the afternoon there. At about 6:30pm, I
saw a splash of brown as a deer moved through the woods 100 yards
up from me. I kept watching, and through a small patch of
trees I saw the deer again for just an instant, followed closely
by a second one. I never got a good look at them, so I'll
count them as does.
At dark I headed home, wet from
sweat, chigger bitten, and worn out from a hard day in the woods.
I can't wait to do it again.
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Pete and I wrapped up turkey season
today, hunting together on my deer lease. We split up again
for the first hour and a half, but neither of us heard any
gobbling. Getting back together for a few minutes, we
decided to try a couple of different areas, so we split up again
but yet again heard nothing.
At lunch time, we decided to say the
heck with turkey hunting for this year. Turkey hunting can
be a wonderfully fun thing to do, but when the birds aren't making
any noise, it can also be extremely frustrating. For the
third year in a row, I've heard almost no gobbling on my lease,
and although we know the birds are there, it was just time to give
it up.
We each did, on one of our walks, find a
couple of turkey eggs. Mine was broken, probably by a fox,
and Pete's was intact but not in a nest.
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I went down to the lease today for an
unplanned afternoon hunt. I spent the whole afternoon on the
second road, and saw and heard nothing. Got quite a workout
walking around the lease, but still no sign of any birds.
I found a nice arrowhead over by one of
our deer stands; the first that I've found on this lease.
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Pete and I hunted together again on this
rainy day. We split up completely, both of us having places
that we wanted to try to hunt. The weather was absolutely
miserable, which can make for a fun but frustrating time. We
saw no turkeys for most of the day. I did find a fantastic
spot for deer hunting, and if the loggers don't touch the place I
found this will become my "secret spot" for deer season.
On the way out, three gobblers crossed
the muddy lease road in front of the truck. Pete hollered
out "Stop the truck!", and I laughed, showing him that my foot was
fully down on the brake pedal. The mud was so thick that we
were still sliding along as the turkeys ran into the woods.
We got out and chased them for a few minutes, but we never saw
them again.
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Pete and I hunted together again today.
We split up, with him going down into the swamp and me deciding to
walk the length of the first road from pretty much one end to the
other. As we started to part ways, Trey drove up in his
truck. He and I walked up to the top of the hill, but
hearing no gobbles we also split up and went separate directions.
I did get a few answering gobbles from
time to time on the first road, but never had any luck getting the
attention of any of the turkeys that I tried calling to.
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Pete and I went down to Gerald's house
today to hunt on his land. Gerald (Micki's father) owns
around 100 acres just twenty minutes from my house. We
flushed a quartet of wood ducks off of his pond when we crossed
the dam heading to the house, and saw a ringneck duck as well.
The land was very thick and difficult to
turkey hunt on, and though we found some scratching where turkeys
had been, neither Pete nor I saw or heard any birds.
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It was opening day of turkey season in
my part of South Carolina today. I got to my lease just
before sunrise and parked my truck in front of
stand 9. I was about to walk down the long road in front
of the stand to start my hunt when club member Brandon drove up
and parked beside me. We chatted for a minute or two,
telling each other where we planned to hunt, then said our "good
lucks" and parted ways.
I walked on down the road heading toward
a small food plot that is hidden down in the woods near where I
parked. I paused to owl hoot a couple of times, hoping to
hear a gobble, but I got no response. I walked on down to
the field, then found a brush pile that offered me plenty of cover
to hide in. I sat in the makeshift blind for an hour or so,
occasionally calling but mostly just listening.
Hearing nothing, I finally got up and
gathered my gear. Looking around, I spotted what looked like
a deer skull about 30 yards away, so I walked over to take a look.
Before I got there I saw the tip of an antler sticking out of a
pile of pine needles off to the left of the skull, so I picked it
up and was surprised to find the intact skull of a beautiful 8
point buck. The original skull turned out to be a small doe,
so I left that one where it was but kept the 8 pointer.
I then made a wide circle back to my
truck so that I wouldn't have to carry the skull around with me
all morning. Moving on to the next area, I ran into Brandon,
who had heard one gobble but had not gotten a look at the turkey
that made it.
I made several more stands throughout
the course of the day, but never saw any gobblers. I did see
two hens over on the first lease road, but that was it.
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I decided
to do things a little bit differently today. I got to the lease
just as it was getting light enough to shoot, so rather than put
out the caller I climbed up in
stand 9 and bleated a few times with my old fawn-in-distress
mouth caller. I did a one minute series, waited five minutes,
then did another short series. Just after the second series, I
saw a fox trot out of the woods to my right, heading straight for
my stand. I stood up and got him in the scope just as he sat down
on his haunches and started looking around. When he sat, I
slipped off the safety and fired, then saw him collapse in a heap.
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Not bad, I thought.
In the stand for less than 10 minutes and already got one!
I got down and walked over to my fox. It was a good
sized grey, and the 7mm magnum really opened him up good. He
was gutted from brisket to pelvis; I couldn't have done a better
job with a knife. Perfect shot to have him pelted out.
I got my pocket knife and finished the job of gutting him, leaving
the innards in a steaming pile on the ground. I put him on a
trash bag in the back of my truck, then moved on to the next
stand.
Rather than hunt the lease in a liner
fashion today, I had decided to bounce around from location to
location throughout the main lease, so I headed over to the tall
cedar tower next. On the way, I saw that Jimmy and Matt had
been hard at work. There was a new ladder stand around the
corner past
stand 10 replacing an old ground blind that used to be there.
I didn't stop at the stand, but moved on to the cedar tower where
I called for 30 minutes with no response.
From there I went to
stand 15 and saw again that Jimmy and Matt had been at work.
They had removed the old tower stand and replaced it with a new
ladder in a better location. The new stand sat right in the
middle of a sharp turn in the road, allowing you to look in two
directions for deer hunting. It was a beautiful spot, and I
can't wait to hunt it this deer season. I put out my caller,
then climbed up in the new stand. Ugh. No bench, and
no carpet yet. I knelt on the floor of the stand and called
for 10 minutes, but was just too uncomfortable without a seat, so
I moved on.
At
stand 16 I found the old tower that Jimmy had moved from my
last spot. The tower made this area a much better place to
hunt; the old ground blind that used to be here sat too low to
offer a good look at this small field. I called for a half
hour from here but again, no response. I moved back to the
second lease road and found yet another new stand that they had
put up. This was a ground blind that offered a great view up
one of our logging roads, so I sat here for awhile, but still no
predators appeared.
Leaving this stand, I turned out onto
the main lease road and saw Jimmy and Matt headed my way in their
trucks. We stopped and chatted for awhile. They were
on their way to
stand 15 to install the carpet and bench and do a little brush
cutting. I laughed and told them that I had just hunted in
the new stand, but couldn't stay due to the missing bench.
Anyway, they headed on their way and I went mine, moving over to
another area to hunt.
I made three more stands, but saw
nothing else all day. Still, happy to have gotten even one
predator, I headed over to Randy Jordan's place to drop off the
fox to have him pelt it out for me. While there we talked
about my African trophies a bit, which are due to show up at the
tannery in North Carolina in a week or so. I told him that
I'd like to have him do them in this order: warthog, impala,
blesbok, and kudu. Of all of my African animals, the warthog
would be the hardest trophy to replace, so I wanted him done first
so that I could have him safely on my wall. I'd save the
kudu for last since he would be the most expensive mount.
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My third predator hunt of the year was
pretty much a repeat performance of the previous one. I
started the morning off in
stand 9, then moved on to the long road near
stand 10, then continued on through the lease hitting various
deer stands in a linear fashion. I got in a couple of
different stands than I did on the previous hunt, but my luck was
the same: nothing.
After making a half dozen stands on the
main part of the lease, I moved over to the smaller section where
the loggers have been working. I made a couple of stands in
there without seeing anything, so I went over to the dirt pit and
put my caller out near the edge of the woods that border the pit.
There's a huge cliff here, towering 70 feet above the pit with a
stand on top looking out over the whole area. Leaving my
caller in place, I drove back out onto the main road to get to
where you can access the stand on top of the cliff.
Rather than get in the stand itself, I
sat with my back against a pine tree near the edge of the cliff.
The caller and decoy looked tiny below me, but when I activated
them with the remote control I could hear the sound of the caller
pretty well. I stayed here for about an hour, just enjoying
the view, thinking that I would have to deer hunt from here one
time next season.
I got no response, so I drove back
around and packed up my gear. Hiding my truck in a little
dip in the dirt pit, I locked it up tightly and decided to take a
long walk into the swamp to look for antlers. I made a huge
circle through the area and found lots of buck sign, but no sheds.
I was drenched with sweat by the time I got back to my truck, so I
decided at that point to call it a day and head home.
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It was a long day of predator hunting
for me today. I went down to the lease alone today,
determined to learn how to hunt predators. I started off on
the second lease road since they are doing a bunch of logging over
on the first road. My first setup was made where we saw the
coyote two weeks ago. I put my caller and decoy out up on
the road to the right of
stand 9, then got in the stand and began to call.
I did a 45 minute sequence at that stand
with no answer, so I moved on. My next stand was on the long
road just past the first stand, where you have about a 200 yard
view. I put the caller and decoy way down the road, then got
back in the young pines and did another 45 minutes of calling.
Still no response.
Next I moved to the third road and
called from an old cedar tower stand that I don't hunt very often.
I didn't like the setup very well here, so I only stayed for about
20 minutes before moving on. The next stand after that was
another cedar tower; it's one that I don't like to get up in
because the steps on the ladder are so far apart that it's hard to
climb. I got in it anyway, and found that the shooting
window was way too high as compared to the seat. Again, 20
minutes here and I moved on again.
I got in the tallest cedar tower on the
lease next just as some snow and sleet began to move in. I
really liked this setup a lot, and I believe I called something in
here. I heard something trot up real close to my stand, but
I never got a look at it. After 45 minutes at this stand, it
was time to move on yet again.
I couldn't really decide where to go
next, but I finally decided to take a little break from the
predators and look around a little bit. I drove to
stand 16, which is a little field that I don't hunt very
often. Parking the truck on the far side of the field, I got
my pistol out of my backpack and shoved it into my pocket.
Then I took a walk deep into the woods behind an old box blind on
the edge of the field. As I moved further and further into
the woods I started to see a few buck rubs, then a couple of
scrapes. I was obviously in the home territory of a big
buck; and I may have even gotten a glimpse of him. A deer
snorted at me and crashed through the woods to my left. All
I saw was his rear end, but a big rear end it was.
I looked around a bit more, then walked
back to the truck. It was lunch time, so I drove up to the
highest hill I could find and called in an order for take-out from
the Riverdeck. On the way over to the restaurant I stopped
and opened the gate at the dirt pit. I wanted to put my
caller out, pick up my lunch, then go sit in the cliff blind and
eat while calling for more predators. The cliff blind sits
high.. very high... atop a cliff that looks down over the dirt
pit. Unfortunately, it was starting to rain, and my caller
is not waterproof, so I had to abandon that plan.
I went on and picked up my lunch, then
came back and sat on a bench at our target range in the dirt pit
and ate my meal. After that I decided to go look for shed
antlers for awhile, so I moved my truck down into a dip to hide
it, then walked into the swamp behind the dirt pit. Many of
the trees in the swamp were torn up with buck rubs; this was
obviously still a great habitat for the big monsters. I
walked from one end of the swamp to the other, but all I found was
the skull, pelvis, and one leg bone from a small doe. Oh, I
found a turtle shell too; seems like I find them all the time.
I was tired out from my walk through the
swamp by the time I got back to my truck, so I decided just to
drive around a bit before doing any more predator hunting. I
took a trip up the first lease road to see how the loggers were
doing. Turns out that they had been busy; the woods have
been thinned from one end of the road to the other. We have
a couple of potential new food plots, but the road is a total mess
right now, and I worried about getting stuck. I managed to
drive the entire distance without any problems, but I sure was
relieved to get back to the main road.
Next up, I did a 30 minute sequence of
calls at the salt lick stand followed by 30 minutes at the family
stand. As usual, nothing responded.
There wasn't a lot of daylight left, so
I decided to make one more stand for predators. I went back
to the long stretch of road between
stand 9 and
stand 10 and got set up just like I had done earlier this
morning. I waited for about 30 minutes before doing any
calling, then tried a series of male coyote challenge calls and
finally some female invitation calls, but yet again I got no
response.
These predators are amazingly difficult
to hunt. Although it was great fun to be back in the woods
today, it was frustrating not getting any responses. Well,
there was that one potential response earlier today, but I would
have liked to have gotten a look at the animal. Anyway,
we'll keep at it and one day will know how to hunt these jokers.
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Ted and I opened up the 2008 hunting
year today by heading down to the lease for some predator hunting.
Ted only had a half-day to hunt, so we took separate vehicles and
met up at a gas station outside of Great Falls, SC. On the
road to the lease we saw a small herd of deer and two grey foxes.
We started off the morning at
stand 9. I walked down the road in front of the stand
and put out my electronic caller and decoy while Ted set up his
Ameristep ground blind. He put the blind beside the ladder
stand and got in. I climbed up the stand. Our
agreement was that Ted would take anything that came into view on
the long road in front of the stand, while I would shoot anything
to either side.
As daylight approached, I heard the
sound of a predator coming directly in towards us. I hadn't
even started calling yet, but the sound was unmistakable. It
was still fairly dark, but I caught a glimpse of a coyote coming
out of the woods directly in front of me. He saw Ted's blind
and turned and trotted off along the road leading deeper into the
lease. I raised my rifle, but couldn't find him in the
scope. My impression was that he had darted off the road to
the right, into some young pines, but try as I might I never saw
him.
After that, I turned on the caller and
let it go for awhile, but nothing else came in. Getting down
from the stand, we found the coyote's tracks in the road and saw
that he had actually branched off to the left, staying on the
road, rather than heading right as I thought he had.
We moved toward the next deer stand,
hoping to call along a 300 yard section of logging road bordered
by young pines. I was walking down the road to set up the
caller when suddenly I saw a beagle standing in the road. He
looked lost, and I tried to get him to come to me, but he was
scared and ran off. Knowing that this stand was ruined, we
decided to move on.
We gathered the gear then went and made
another stand in a deep valley a quarter mile down the road.
The wind was picking up, and nothing at all responded, so we
decided to head even deeper into the woods. We drove over to
what we call "Rattlesnake Road", jumping two deer on the way, then
parked the truck and moved into a swamp bottom where we again
called for a half hour or so. Still no response.
Deciding to move toward where we had
seen the two foxes on the way in this morning, we moved over to
the first lease road and went down into another deep valley to
call. We put the caller out on a hill on the opposite side
of the valley from us in what looked to be a beautiful setup.
Again though we got no response.
It was getting pretty late and Ted would
need to go home soon, and he still wanted to try to sight in his
Ruger .44 Magnum revolver. We drove over to the "dirt pit",
which is a place on our lease that's set up for target shooting.
After a quick lunch, we tried to sight in the Ruger but had no
luck. The recoil is so heavy that the scope mount would not
stay in place. We gave up and Ted headed on home.
I drove back over to the main lease and
parked my truck in what we call the "staging area", which is a big
field that we use to assemble our stands. I took a short nap, then
went back to the dirt pit. There is a pine tree that was
starting to block the road into the pit, so I took a few minutes
to cut off some of the larger branches. After that, I took a
walk back into the swamp behind the shooting area.
I found a couple of large rubs, and I
found a nice trail camera that one of the guys had put out in
front of a corn pile. Looks like a great place to deer hunt.
I tried to stand in front of the camera so it would take a picture
of me so that the owner would know that I had found his secret
spot, but it never went off. Must have been out of film.
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