Real Hunting Field Blog

I had planned on heading out on Thursday the 29th but I got the Tenasion Flu on Wednesday and headed straight for the Doc on Thursday morning.  I told him I had to have some good @@#$ cause I had to hunt this week.  He told me he gave me some strong pills so I went home took my pills and slept til 2:00a.m and headed South to give it one last go in the bowstand.  I arrived to my hunting area at 4:20a.m. on Friday morning and right off the bat I filled my antlerless tag.  Nothing else presented itself the rest of the windy blustery frigid morning.  Later that evening I debated on going out cause I was feeling like @$$.  My judgement wasn't very good and I went out anyhow and sat in what Steve calls the waffle stand.  I picked this stand cause I figured they would be staging here before going to feed and I didn't see a deer all night until 4:30 and had a big fat doe come in and come right to my doe tarsals that I had out and it kept her there for 15 minutes when I heard another deer grunting.  I looked up through the timber and seen a shooter start on a trot right for the doe that was at the base of my tree.  The nice buck slowed to a steady walk as he aproached the doe and then got to her and bumped her off the tarsal gland and he stood there and got his fill of the tarsal all the while not offering a shot.  The buck then decided to take a hard right and walk perfectly broadside through my shooting lane.  I managed to get the camera on him and place the shot perfect, he ran about 125 yards and I heard him crash up in the timber.   I felt like I had just won a huge fight.  I called up my cousin Cory and good buddy James who were out driving around cause they had just gotten there for the gun hunting the next day and they came and helped me retrieve my deer and take pics.  Thanks guys.

Now for Dec 1.  This morning I was really feeling like @$$ after being in the cold wind all day friday so I went and sat in the truck at my spot and didn't even make it out to sit cause I had no blind and was not going to sit in that crap when I am sick.   We did manage to make one small push that morning with no luck.  So we go sit in the camper for the rest of the day until about 3:00 we could not handle sitting in the camper anymore, I almost stayed in the camper though.  As soon as we all got our gear on the freezing rain stopped and it wasn't so bad outside.  About that time everyone was hurrying to get out there, it didn't matter as I walked into my sitting spot I busted 60 deer out of the field that had been feeding already.  I thought for sure I blew my whole night.  I decided to make my stand anyhow and comfortable and stick the rest of the evening out.  I no more than got settled in and the deer started filtering right back into the field about 150 yards away.  About 4:20 I caught something out of the corner of my left eye and I slowly turned to look and there he stood 12yds away looking right at me.  It was a beautiful eight point.  I was for sure he was going to turn tail and run but he never did.  He just turned down the fence towards the crossing and that is when I turned my head back and see that the does were already coming through the crossing at 60 yds, so I got my gun on my sticks and just waited.  I shortly noticed a buck cross the fence but it was not the eight it was a seven that was almost the same caliber of buck, not even a minute later the eight point step out right behind him and they both start heading towards the field but I managed to stop them after the 3rd bleat and simultaneously they both put their heads up and look directly at me.  My buck is standing severly quartered away so I really take aim and make it count as when the smoke cleared my buck was dead in his tracks.  He never took one step.  The bullet went through 3 ribs on entry, the heart lungs and stuck just under hide on opposite side infront of shoulder.  Lets just say it was a very action packed two days for me as I had two great buck encounters and got to be part of a third with my cousin cory and cameraman James.  We decided to give james the gun on a doe or three and he finally connected on the third, with two of them being on video.  Cory also had an outstanding doe kill on video.  We had the cameras rolling.  I am sure I forgot some good parts but you get the idea.  Good luck to the rest of the crew for the remainder of the season.   Keep on keepin on!

Well fellas, I hunted Nov 9-18 all day everyday occationally switching stands about 10:00 a.m. hoping to hit the big chase, well I hit the big chase everyday just couldn't get the big fellas in.  I seen tons of action best year ever for me just couldn't get any of the big uns close enough.  The one day that we had an incredible encounter with an incredible deer neither of our cameras would work cause of the moisture in the air.  They kept saying condensation shutdown right when we would turn them on and that was it.  That day was Sunday the 11th.  My cousin Cory was hunting and had a magazine cover deer bust out of the corn chasing a doe and zipped right past him and out of site, then he seen the buck five minutes later chasing the doe again and got to watch from 100 yards or so then they were gone again.  In the blink of an eye he sees them both coming right at him and the doe runs right through the shooting lane.  The buck stops short of the shooting lane not offering a shot but fully visable at 20 yards.  The doe then darts right under his stand and the buck takes a few steps right into the shooting lane and stands there looking at the doe.  Everything was going perfect until the shot.  The buck flinched and he hit the deer high under the backbone and passed through sticking in the ground.  We agreed to back out and not come back for 24 hours hoping he caught the opposite lung.  We did just that and tracked the deer for 1/2 mile with sparse dark red blood, the trail was very sporadic going up and down and not showing signs of being hurt at all, the deer never layed down at all.  Cory was sick, said he was gonna hang it up for the year, but I told him to hang in there.  We lost blood and decided to just comb the whole area, not finding anything.  So I talked him into hunting but he said he needed some alone time and wanted to hunt by himself, so he did.  I can't imagine how many times he replayed the situation on that deer.  Well as luck would have it we were driving to our evening hunt locations and drive right up on that same deer only 20 yards off the road coming or going from that very same area.  The deer bounded off and could not even tell he had been hurt, so this gave Cory and I a new look at things hoping to get a crack at him again sometime soon.  I can't even begin to tell you the emotions that took place on these last ten days of hunting for me.  I just know some were good and some were bad.  All in all I seen a lot of bruisers and have all the eye candy I need to get right back out there for four days during thanksgiving.  Good luck to all!  If you want to hear more gonna have to get some beer and sit for awhile cause I could go on forever.  Happy Thanksgiving!