My first opportunity on the Wisconsin 40 - Heart Broken

After getting in way too early, I was sitting with about 45 minutes before legal shooting light. I did have a buck chase a doe about 75 yards from me up and over the ridge, so I couldn't see them. Then at about 7:45am, two deer ran up behind me about 60-70 yards away, with their tails up, like they were spooked. I thought, "they couldn't have gotten my wind. Is there a coyote chasing them? Is the neighbor's wife out walking her dogs?" Then it dawned on me that it could be a buck bumping/chasing them. No later than thinking that thought, did I hear some more leaves crunching further below me to the S-SW. I waited to spot movement. There it was - a little doe. I still don't know if it was a fawn or a yearling doe, but once I saw the buck step out behind her, I saw how badly he dwarfed her! Either this deer was an easy 220 dressed, or this was a tiny doe. Maybe both!
As soon as he came out from behind a big maple tree, I could see that it was the big 8 point. What a stud! They skirted behind the scrape that was 38 yards below me to the south. They came up and over that little rise and were heading down and below me, but not on the right trail. I was sitting above a trail that would have taken them to about 20-25 yards, but instead, they took their own. By the time they were perpendicular to the tree, they were at 43 yards. I ranged the doe as she entered into the open gap. I dropped my rangefinder and drew back. I had to mouth bleat twice to stop him. When I punched my release it seemed to take forever to get to him. It was arching and going to hit low, but at the last second, he ducked and ducked right into the arrow. I probably would've missed him cleanly had he not ducked.
I hit him, but it seemed about 3-4 inches behind the shoulder and about 4-5 inches lower than I'd want it, given my severe angle from above. The arrow stuck and he took off running. It all happened so fast (as it always does) that it was hard to see how much penetration the arrow got and whether the shaft made it up into the chest cavity, or if it lodged between the belly hide and the rib cage. I was on cloud 9 for about 25-30 minutes. I climbed down and tried to gather my thoughts. I texted Jena, dad, Mitch, and Dan. Everything was picture-perfect until I started to try to find blood.
I eventually found blood by just trailing him. He started bleeding after about 30 yards and it seemed to increase with each bound. He worked his way up another ridge and as he ascended the hill, the blood trail got to be less and less. He crossed a four-wheeler trail and that was the neighbor's property line, so I backed out.

New Property

After losing permission on the 240 acre farm from two years ago, it has taken me a while to find some places that can even compare to the potential that I experienced out there. I started cutting wood for a guy who lived out near that same area and he gave me permission on one of his 40 acre parcels. After I worked with him over time, he recently granted me permission on another, more secluded 160 acre piece that is really far off the beaten path. These two properties have the right ingredients for some tremendous deer. So that's two pieces.
About a year ago, I asked and was granted permission on a small 10 acre piece of property that normally, I wouldn't have thought twice about, but after studying the maps, it became clear that it could function in two ways: 1) an easy doe-in-the-freezer spot, or 2) a great rut spot because the 10 acres slope from a small ag field down to a popple/brush run into a swampy creek drainage. This slough really acts as a travel corridor between 2-3 larger blocks of timber, so you never really know what might come through there.
Then in September, as I was shooting photos for a high schooler, I asked about permission to bow hunt on a 100 acre property up in Sand Creek (a fair drive north). They said yes to 40 of the 100. I hiked out there and saw that it had some serious potential, as it connects to a much larger ridge system and again, once the third week of October rolled around, anything could walk across the ridge! So I hung a stand and two cameras out there and am eager to check them soon.
Lastly, two weeks ago I got into a conversation with a friend who though they had invited me to hunt a 40 of theirs previously and I had no idea that they had acreage of any kind. After hearing more about it and looking it up on the map, it seemed to get better and better. That same day I drove out there and met the neighbor. We chatted in his driveway for a goo 15 minutes and I headed back home. The following day, I brought two cameras and a junky stand out there, in case the place looked decent. Well, it didn't take 20 minutes to find some really nice buck sign and to hang the first camera over a fresh scrape. The second camera ended up in the northwest corner of the property, on the edge of an alfalfa field. I liked the stand placement, but the tree was not the straightest. I made it work.
I let the cameras sit for 7 days and decided to zip out there and see if anything reworked the scrape.. I'D SAY SO! in 7 days I had 4 bucks that were 3 years old or older come through! Jackpot. I waited a bit to collect my thoughts and eventually sat the property on the morning of Monday, October 28th - two days ago.

On Wisconsin!

Well, I'm back on here! Keeping up with a blog is not easy and I probably have less time than Ive ever had. But I love to look back and see how each season unfolded, look for patterns of dates and activity, and hopefully put those pieces together to aid in a successful hunt this year.
This summer, I picked up on a buck that had me drooling. He came through only one time on July 14th and I'm 80% sure it's a buck I got a few pictures of last season. In the 2018 season, I acquired permission somewhat late in the game, so I didn't really have a good idea of what this property could do, as it's only 10 acres. I'm learning now that it acts as a definite transition area for cruising bucks during the rut. So I hung single camera and ran it all summer and in walks this dude - Hercules.

The day I checked that camera was the 16th of July and I actually saw him about 3/8 of a mile away in a bean field. After I learned that I had pictures of him too, I was pumped! However, week after week of checking the camera came up with ZERO additional pics. That is until today:

 I knew that if nobody shot him early season, he would make a trip back through the area in this third and fourth weeks of October - just before the rut kicked off. I knew that this transition area would bring bucks through it, but it's not a place that they want to stay, so I'm hoping to remain patient until the conditions are perfect and the does are just about ready. I think he'll be moving in daylight around November 4-6, but I need to move a stand so I can stay completely downwind of the line that these deer seem to be traveling. Right now, the only stand there is in a really goofy spot, but I didn't put it there. 

My last tough decision is whether to put a flash camera there to get a really beautiful picture of him, or if that's just pressing my luck, and possibly alerting the neighbors. Maybe I'll switch to video mode instead. Stay tuned!

Cameras are hung!

I got my first official permission here in Wisconsin last week, on 240 acres, and I was able to get three cameras hung on Saturday, the 26th. So although the bachelor groups will be breaking up in the next week or two, I'm able to have eyes out there for a short while, while I try to decide where to hang a stand or two.
The primary strategy for the early season is hunting the field edges in observation-stand locations. I know there are plenty of deer using this farm - as there's beans, corn, alfalfa, oaks, and even apple trees for even the pickiest of deer! It's all custom farmed, and of the 240, I would guess that about 160-180 are tillable, leaving about 80-60 acres of timber (mostly along the north edge) that runs up the ridge. I think it's very possible to kill a doe before the end of September on the field edge, and maybe even a buck. I'd like to hang two stands and as we approach the third week in October, I'll move my cameras over licking branches on field edges. I want to find a scrape or two in a staging area up in the woods/pasture that might produce at last light. I'm learning that I don't have enough stands with me!
Stay tuned for some pics and videos next week!

Back to Blogging! Here I Come Wisconsin!

It has been nearly three and a half years since my last blog post - that's INSANE! I remember it being such a therapeutic way to catalogue my thoughts and findings (all in one place) and it must have taken something fairly gargantuan to put a halt to it. Well over three years later, I've married the love of my life, I've inherited two beautiful daughters, and I graduated from North Park Seminary!
The reason that I have decided to bring this blog back from the dead is that we've moved to Wisconsin! I took an Associate Pastor position in Menomonie and no doubt will be chasing after these hill country monsters this fall. I moved to town not knowing one landowner, not one piece of public land, and not having a clue where to start - so this truly will be an adventure from the ground up. I really only had a handful of people that I knew who lived here, one of which was and is an avid hunter/fisherman from back home out of Warroad, MN. His name is also Mitch! Mitch Thortson has a few of his own hunting connections around here, but I trust that my networking and door-knocking will eventually find myself some private land to hunt on. Until then, I'm determined to scope out a few public pieces before August ends. After driving 90 minutes one-way, to hunt in Illinois, I'm prepared to drive 30 miles to get into a good spot here.
This type of hunting will be entirely different. There's actually topological features that I need to learn how to interpret, which will help me understand how and why and how deer (more importantly bucks) choose to use them. This area has it all: corn, beans, alfalfa, acorns, corn, corn, corn and beans! The city of Menomonie is only 19 miles from Buffalo County, which is the county with the highest number of Boone and Crockett bucks recorded out of the entire United States. So either these folks like to record their bucks more than others, or there truly are some giants in this country. These southwestern counties of Wisconsin have the perfect storm: TERRAIN (topographical features), FOOD (corn, beans, alfalfa and acorns), SOIL (quality food), and WATER (rivers, creeks, swamps).

2017 should be a learning year for sure! Hopefully the trail cameras will be out in the next two weeks. I'm hoping to put together a small Hitlist by the end of summer - stay tuned!

Chicago Style Sheddin'!

Man, it's fairly clear that a person could make a haul living in Chicago. If a person planned it out right, you could pick up quite a bit of bone in a weeks time with good boots, and a little preseason scouting. The tough parts are that some parks have people visiting every single day feeding deer and picking up fresh antlers. It takes some work to find the herds of deer that are tucked away, let alone bucks worth chasing. Luckily, on my first morning, after eating a meatball sub and warming my toes up, I stumbled upon a place several deer had been hitting pretty hard. I dropped off this little ledge toward the river bank and as I was scanning the areas these deer had been digging, I spotted a couple good beds I figured I better investigate more closely. As I walked up to the beds, my eyes rose back up the ridge and BINGO. The old familiar curve of a mainbeam. It was a nice 4 point shed.

After I pulled it out, I knew I had at least one bigger buck in this woods and I hadn't encountered any people tracks. On top of that, this shed was mostly covered in snow, telling me he dropped it about a week or more earlier. I slowed my pace way down and scoured the area. I went back up the ridge and back down. I walked all the way back out to the river bank. Thankfully I did, because when I turned around, there was number two! The match to the first one. This one was also a big four point that was no more than 40 yards from the where the first one was laying. It was tucked behind a big tree so I couldn't see it until I got out a ways. In the snow, this one looked a little bit smaller than the first, but it actually turned out to be the better side.

The first side, the deer's right, measured 57 2/8" and the second side, the deer's left, measured 59 3/8". With a 16" inside spread, that puts the buck at 132 5/8" gross. I figured he would net 129"or so.

On my walk back to the hotel, as I was about to walk out of the woods, I saw a city police car parked in the park's visitor lot, right where I was headed! My mind was racing as to the city having an ordinance about removing any items from the forest preserve areas. I know they banned metal detecting last year, so I panicked. I hid the sheds at the base of a tree and walked out of the woods right towards the cop, not knowing if he wanted to talk to me or not. I walked right past his car and just kept walking as to not seem suspicious. Had he already seen me in the woods carrying antlers? Was he going to get out and steal my sheds? I just kept walking. At this point I'm about a block away and I have no plan. My mind is racing about a mile a minute when I figure it out: I'll go into this gas station as  if it were my original destination. I'll buy something, ask for a bag and walk back past the cop. Maybe he'd be gone. So far so good, except the cop is still sitting there. Phase two of the plan was to just walk past him again pretending like I'm headed home and once I make it out of sight, cross the road and dive back into the woods. So far so good. What a rush! I felt like a 13 year old again. Haha. I made it to the antlers without him seeing me. I put the antlers in the grocery bag and started inching my way back to the cop. By the time I got to where I should've been able to see him, he was gone! I headed straight back to the hotel with a grin from ear to ear.
That was day one.
The second trip out was on a warm morning and I decided to try look on the other side of the river - a place I had never been. After having my mind blown as to why there were so many deer right by the road/bus stop, I figured out that people were feeding them there. Since it was close to residential areas, people could watch the deer from their homes and leave corn around. The bus stop was literally trampled with tracks. I started a grid and the tracks got to be less and less. The further north I went, the more the tracks picked back up. I didn't bump that many deer so I wasn't really looking for them that diligently, when all of a sudden there's a full racked buck staring right at me at about 15 yards! He scared me. I was frozen. The hilarious part that I eventually learned was that I didn't need to respond to these deer like I would an encounter back home. These deer saw me coming too, except that meant for them, the possibility of food, so they approached me! We had a staredown for probably about 5 minutes before he took off walking. My next experiment was to sprint after him seeing if I could get him to jump high and maybe jolt an antler off as he ran away. So I took off running through the brush with no luck. I crossed an opening with a long driveway into the park. I ignored it and kept going north until I got closer to the river. Finally I jumped two deer. One had a decent 9 point rack (130?) and the other was a busted up 8 point. They seemed less tolerant of people. Anyway, as I worked my way around, I came to an area where the deer had again trampled the forest snow. Sure enough, I pop out onto this hiking trail and its all starting to make sense. This is an area that people frequent to watch the deer. They feed them and talk to them. They even can park their cars, lay down some feed and get back in their cars to watch them! It's literally like a zoo with wild animals. So now I knew I would have some competition when it came to antlers. At this point I was starting to see more bucks, too. I walked back in the brush where these deer had come from. I was bumping more and more deer. I would say that in total I found 10 different bucks and probably 25 antlerless deer. Eventually, when I got back into my grid system, I found an antler. It was hard to tell what it was, but that's half the excitement. I pulled it out and although I was a bit disappointed, it was another shed on the year! Here's where the story gets good. So now I'm carrying around an antler as I'm gridding these deer infested woods. I've already had 4 or more good bucks within 20 ft or so. Now I have a weapon. I ran into a big old buck and threw my antler at his rack. Miss. He didn't seem too bothered so I picked it up and followed him around until he let me get back into range. I hit him in the back! He didn't like that too much. I got on the tail of another 3 year old 8 point and threw the antler underhand quite a ways and hit him square in the side of the head! He wasn't having that. He shook his head pretty hard. Finally I was about to give up on this strategy, when a little yearling 6 point walked up really close, thinking I had food. Boy was he wrong! I tossed the antler at about 10 ft and Bullseye! I knocked one of his antlers right off his head! I could hardly stop laughing. I wish I could've gotten that on video! Maybe next time. It was hilarious. So I ended the day with two more sheds and that made 4 for the year! I look forward to my next journey to the land of the trapped Auschwitz deer.

Still Holding

Today is January 22nd and very few bucks have shed yet. I would guess that by the end of the month, that would change pretty significantly. There have been a few yearlings and maybe some unidentified two year olds that have shed, but besides Pencil, the only buck that has shed is a young buck we're calling TurkeyFoot. He just has a common base G2. Odds are, he won't have it next year. Anyway, he dropped his normal side. A person should be able to see lots of new bucks drop in the next week or so.
The deer are still heading out to the Soybeans. I really should check out some of the other spots that I've seen lots of deer tracks. Depending on the other people, there may be an antler or two just laying out in the open.
The prized antlers remaining are really the three year old 9 point, and a few two year olds. Not much too be thrilled about.