Crunch Time

Here's the deal:  We got about one week til the end of bow season ushers in the beginning of the gun seasons.  I still have my statewide any deer bow tag.  I am not a fan of late season bow hunting.  So here's what I have decided- I'm filling that tag with the first mature deer that comes within range.  Buck or doe.  I'd rather have meat in the freezer than hold out for a buck and wind up eating tag soup.

I haven't been updating the blog lately because there had been nothing to update.  The most exciting thing that has happened this November is seeing 39 turkeys the other morning. 

Speaking of turkeys, thanksgiving is tomorrow.  Happy Turkey Day!

The Slump

I don't have any exciting news to post about tonight, but it's been awhile so I thought I'd bring my hunting excursions up to date.  Last week, what ended up as one of the craziest hunting weeks I've ever experienced, put me in a major slump.

It started Monday morning.  I was hunting along the edge of the picked corn field, in the same stand I shot my early season doe.  A REALLY nice buck came out and into range.  Before he cleared the branches blocking any shot I might have had, the wind swirled on me!  He whiffed a little bit of my scent and that was all it took.  He turned to leave and I stopped him with a "muurpp".  I launched the arrow at was I thought was a buck quartering away at 40 yards.  Turns out he was more like 45 yards and the arrow brushed his underside.  I found hair all over the ground, but not a drop of blood spilled.

The slump continued on Thursday evening as I snuck through the thick timber at to the backside of our property.  I climbed the ladder stand and it didn't take long for things to heat up.  A small buck came out and walked past and on down the hill below me.  Moments later he came crashing back, with a bigger buck in tow.  The big buck was pushing him out of his domain.  The big buck, one of such size I've never had the opportunity to see on stand, let alone shoot at, came into a shooting lane at what I had ranged earlier to be 30 yards.  Only a couple twigs skewed a perfect broadside shot, but the fever caused me to try to "punch" it through. 

I watched as my arrow sailed high, cleaving only air before burying into the dirt.  Without exageration, the buck I shot at had at least 12 points and with the height and mass he carried, he very well could have easily pushed 170 inches.  The dejected feeling that sank in as I watched my arrow sail high is one I hope to never relive.

I snuck back to the same spot this Monday night.  I literally had to sneak my way through 5 different bucks as they were moving!  One was a definite shooter, not as big as the one I missed prior, but a shooter nonetheless.  He was pushing a smaller buck away from him and his doe as I hunkered into what small cover I could find on the ground.  He was well within range as he pushed the intruder away, but the cover was far too thick to risk shooting an arrow through.  After successfully pushing away the smaller buck, he disappeared back over the ridge where he came from.

Though the slump continues, I look forward to this weekend.  My buddy Scott is coming over to hunt with me all weekend & we intend to fill some tags.  With bucks locked down on hot does and the rut seemingly starting to wind down, we may just have to fill our tags with some doe meat if the opportunity arises.  Plus shotgun season is 2 weeks away & it'll all be over by then.

Late October Card Pull- Good News!!

Well I have been out a few times since the doe kill and long range binocular encounter with the Mule and things are picking up.  The bucks are chasing but the biggest buck I've seen is a solid 75 inch 8 pointer.  I pulled a card from a cam I have on the edge of a plot and I got a pleasant suprise.  I got a new mature buck on camera!  That brings the grand total to 2 bucks that are of shootable age class that I have on camera which is a pretty dismal outlook as the rut kicks into gear.  He's a solid 130 class 10 point which is exciting because in my area there is a complete domination of 8 point genetics.  Hopefully he's getting after some hot does and passing on his legacy.

My camera was watching a mock scrape with a scrape dripper over top.  I had made it in a spot where there is ALWAYS a scrape every year without fail.  It didn't look too hot but the card pull proved otherwise.  The lack of scraped ground led me to believe that it's more of a licking branch than a scrape.  I've heard they are two different forms of marking territory and I guess they are right.  I got a lot of other bucks on camera but they aren't worth publishing.  However almost every buck was getting his face all up in that oak branch.  

I did find a mega hot scrape on the ground about 50 yards away so I relocated my camera over there.  I have the 7th of November off to hunt as well as the 9th-12th.  Statistically the most bucks are killed on the 7th and the 11th however statistically the first two weeks of November suck in my areas.  Late October and the last week and a half of November seem to be the times that I have had the most opportunities to kill a mature buck.  We'll see what happens this week.  I'll leave you with some photos of the new buck working the scrape and a few paint-brush-beard-dragging limb chickens.