Rifle Season 2012 - Sits # 22, 23, & 24

Thursday, the 8th of November set me up in the swamp in the ground blind. I sat from about 2:30pm to dark. I haven't seen a deer in either time I've sat there. Odd. When I left I pulled my Bushnell camera and brought it further south because as you just get into the tamarack swamp, there's tons of fresh sign, so I'm thinking the bucks just aren't going that far north. Two major things have changed that has dictated a switch in doe concentrations: 1) Rice's pasture plot is now only a green grass with a hedge of corn that has long been picked over. 2) Larson's have standing soybeans to the south and they're drawing deer in from everywhere. I may leave the swamp alone until late season, or until I see that there's a good reason to be heading in there. I've only had two different two year olds pass by the west camera and before I took the east camera down, I only had Gnarly two times. Everything else was yearlings. Dad saw lots of deer that afternoon. This weather front moved in at about noon and from about 3pm on, dad saw several different bucks. One of which he could have/should have shot.

Friday, the 9th brought me south of the landing as it was supposed to be a NE wind. Once I had sat there for about 30 minutes or so, the weatherman changed his mind and sent the wind from the NNE. Not ideal for that stand. The night before it began this freezing rain episode and after I sat for an hour or two, I got down to find that my camera was not covered in a sheet of ice like another one was, thankfully. When I checked it, I found that the batteries were dead, but the photos showed that on the night of the 8th, Gnarly made it all the way over there.

I later learned after we finally checked mom and dad's camera, that he was all the way to the shack field that afternoon! That may not sound that amazing, but if you had been keeping tabs on this deer, you might be impressed to know that from July to August, Gnarly made a move of almost 2 miles up the creek to the NNW. As if that wasn't enough, after he shed his velvet, he moved another 1.75 miles to the ENE and showed up on my camera. The ironic part of Gnarly's story is that last year, in summer and early fall, he was Pencil's sidekick. So he was probably born up in the NE. More on Gnarly in a second.
So I sat until about 10am. My feet were wet and getting cold. The only explanation for wet feet was sweat that didn't dry in the boot. So I left as much in the tree as I could and walked with just my bow back to my truck. Once I got to my truck I realized that the keys were in my backpack, which was not about 600 yards away. So I texted Zach and he came and picked me up. We took his deer down and got some more pictures of it, scored it, weighed it, and basically did more of an examination of the deer. Kind of a research and educational portion of the hunt. I had a bite to eat and then headed back down to the stand and still could not get fresh batteries for the camera, because they were locked in my truck. I sat from about 1:30 until dark and saw zero deer all day long. Very few deer were seen by anyone on friday. After I got back to my truck, I got batteries and hiked all the way back in there in the dark to change them. You just can't have cameras out there that are not working perfectly.
Saturday the 10th was spent at home in the morning. I texted dad and asked if he had seen any deer. Here's the conversation:

So I texted mom:

Right after I texted her to be "On your toes.", she shot one. Gnarly.
I left home in a hurry to try to get some good photos of the buck for her before they hung it up on the meat pole. The roads were absolutely horrible because of all the freezing rain. I was driving pretty slow and when I slowed way down to turn east at the dead end corner, my truck didn't want to turn. It wanted to park in the ditch. I was able to dodge the sign, thankfully. I eventually made it up there after dad came to pull me out. We snapped some nice pictures of mom's buck and then I was off to finish my errands in town.

Steph had a "scrimmage-fest" and so I brought her money to buy lunch. I was off to the cabin again to hunt that evening. I only sat for probably two hours until dark. As I was getting set up I had yearling 6 sneak up behind me. I'm sure he heard me walk in to my stand but couldn't smell me. He eventually tore out of there. Then as I was packing things up, I had another deer slip into close range.  A little two year old 8. I'm pretty sure it was this buck:

Finally, on Sunday, the 11th of November, we were supposed to have church so we stayed in town and I woke up as normal for church. While eating my cereal, Sheldon called to say that they cancelled church. Side-note - I was trying to make up my mind whether or not to go to the cities for my licensure interview that was set up for monday morning. I would have to leave right after church and drive down.  After Sheldon called to cancel church, that basically made up my mind as to me traveling across the state. I would not be going. Then I was anxious to get up to the hill. But, as seems to happen quite often. We think of a hundred things to do before we can actually get out of the house. We finally got up the cabin and I went out to sit overlooking the spring. I hung that stand in the second half of September and hadn't been back since. I kicked up a nice buck on the way in. That was super. After I crawled in the tree, it wasn't 20 minutes when I had a doe and two fawns come in and get downwind of me. They took off. Then I had a yearling buck (the thick spork) come in and make a scrape and circle around me and I grunted at him and he just hung around. He really wanted to know what was going on.  Then near the end, I had 4 deer come right under my tree. There were 3 adult does and one yearling. I was certain there would be a buck with them. Nothing. I still have high hopes for that spot. It needs more of a south wind to be most effective. There's another tree over about 25 yards that would be another good spot with a southwest or west wind. The other tree was used a few years ago as a hunting spot and has a shooting lane or two already trimmed. Mom took a shot at a fawn at about 10 after 5 on Sunday evening. Dad also shot at a buck just before lunch that he neglected to tell me about. He said it was limping pretty bad. I might go look for birds in a couple days.

So that wraps up the 2012 Zone 2 Rifle Season. Not much to say. I think Pencil survived (as far as I know), I think PegLeg and Blacknose survived. Chippy did not. I figured out that Warren shot Chippy. It took a few minutes of staring at his buck for it to click, but it's definitely him. What a jump he made.

Pitchfork got shot, but there still should be several middle aged bucks that made it through the season. As far as we know, Crab 10 lives on.
My hunting is not over. I would like to kill something - and fairly soon. It'd be nice to just concentrate on wolf hunting.