Sunday, November 10th - I chose to sit in the Fleet Farm Stand, which is north of the road between John's and Pete's. I don't think I saw a single deer, but the wind was howling at about 20 mph.
Monday, November 11th - My single most favorite day to be in the woods, this year we had a westerly wind and I chose to sit in the ladder stand that is straight south of the corner. I knew that deer choose to skirt the corner and I was hoping to catch one doing just that coming off the ridge. It was also pretty bitter that morning. I think I only lasted until about 9am. I warmed up a bit and then sat in dad's permanent stand for the evening and saw about 4 deer two times each, including one spork. Nothing too exciting. As the season was just beginning, it was becoming apparent that the deer were really only using the south end of the property. There is probably a band about 200 yards wide that deer were spending the most time and that was south of steve's stand and hooking to the west around the old cutover. This is all logic because of the crop rotation. I can't wait until there's beans to the north again!
Tuesday, November 12th - I was only able to sit the morning and so I chose to sit over the Spring. I believe I had a SW wind. It was a good practice sit since moving the stand from one tree to another a few weeks ago. I had a doe and two fawns work their way behind me in the cedars. It wasn't until afterwards that I figured out why they were skirting behind me - There was a fresh scrape directly under my tree! The doe was coming to check it out and maybe make a deposit. That was it, but luckily I brought a camera with me that morning, so I set up my Bushnell over the scrape. The next day, I had Pencil under my stand at about 7 yards!! Too bad that was a Wednesday and I didn't take a vacation day. 3:06 in the afternoon!! Sick.
Skip a few days.
I drove up thursday night for friday.
Friday, November 15th - I hiked down SE of the landing to the Crazy 8 stand as I'm calling it. I sat until about noon and saw one spike buck. Things were fairly uneventful for me on stand. We plastered our main hunting areas with cameras and we were picking up lots of young bucks and even a few decent 3 year olds, but nothing exciting. So far it looks like a rebuilding year. Friday morning was another frigid one. I think it was an overnight of about 15 degrees. Saturday, however, was worse.
Saturday, November 16th - I wanted to give the new stand some more attention and so I walked a little slower, dressed a little lighter and made my way out there again SSW of the little hill. I thought I heard a deer coming my way right at first light but as the sound got to about 60 yards, it just stopped and I never saw or heard anything more. Then at about 7:30, I heard one lone shot south of me - it sounded like it was from the road or Rice's thicket. I tried to shrug it off and go about my morning sitting there. At about 10am, I heard voices out on the road. Over the next hour the voices were getting louder and more and more clear. Finally I heard a snapped log. There were people coming through the jungle and they were headed right for me! I was trying to make out what they were saying, but I really couldn't.
They got to within about 200 yards. I couldn't take it anymore. I has sat for 5.5 hours, not seen a deer, and now I had yahoos mixing things up for me. I climbed down. I pulled my Bushnell off the scrape by my stand by the spring. I figured that it was a shot in the dark placement for a camera and it could be more productive somewhere else. Boy I was mistaken. On wednesday at 3:06pm (while I was at the church) Pencil decided to freshen up some scrapes and walked right under my stand! AAAGGHHH!
Sunday, November 17th - Saturday evening, Zach and I drove to Kofstad's cabin to shoot the breeze. On our drive home, we decided to take the scenic route and hopefully spot some deer. Sure enough, in the headlights we saw a buck with a doe and we debated on whether or not to pursue them the next morning. We decided to give it a shot since we weren't really seeing many deer in our other spots. We had a NNW wind and it was spitting heavy snow. We parked on the crossing closest to where we saw the deer the night before and just waiting for it to break day enough to see through our scopes. At about 7:15, we started walking. I had Zach walk north up the east side of the 40 where the grass had been mowed incase they took off running ENE, which I figured they might. I didn't make it 150 yards from the truck when my daydream was broken into by the sight of two deer making their way quickly out of some cattails headed NNE. Zach was already about 200 yards from me so I didn't really have time to yell anything so I decided to take some shots. The deer on the right was going to disappear first as they were sort of trotting. That was the doe. I picked up the buck in the scope and put my crosshairs a tiny bit above the top of his shoulders. I ended up shooting four times and hitting him once. Zach threw one bullet out there in that time. As I was switching clips, I lost sight of the deer. Zach headed over to me and we decided to just walk slowly up to where we thought we saw them last to hopefully cut a track. Right as we got near the area where we should've seen a track, I looked up and only about 60 yards away was the buck who stood up out of his bed all hunched over. He was in pretty rough shape. "Take him!" I told Zach. He dropped to one knee and finished off the buck. We high-fived and walked right up to him. Admittedly, there was a little ground shrinkage from the mental images the night before, but it was still a really cool story - to be able to put together a plan and actually have it work out. The deer looked to be a three year old 6 point (no brows). He'll score right around 100". It filled a tag for meat and also provided some wolf bait for dad and I. Mission accomplished.
