Deer Huntin 2008

[Jaackrabbit]

So I know there HAS to be some good stories from over the weekend. Lets hear em.

I have a couple of my own to share but it's 3am and the alarm is going to go off in another 3 hours to go back out hunting so I'll just give the short version and fill in details and pics latttttttttter...

1 buck 5pt opening day 8am
1 big doe tonight at dusk

1 other 6 pt and other big buck ??? pts has been spotted on the farm but so far have stayed out of range or in the swamp.

Mike
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[Jaackrabbit]

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[lonehunter]

Hey not much of a story but here it goes .
Put my stand up at deercamp the sunday before the opener , it's my lucky spot .

Roosterfish usually stays close to me because of the possibility of running into a bear .

The 15th and 16th not a sign of deer in the area other than a pile of bones , i'm thinking someone spread some aftershave in the area or something so we take the stand down to relocate
it somewhere else .

before we leave the area we give it a once over , find all these 10" holes in the ground , a pile of droppings with insect shells in it and then came the paw prints , fresh paw prints 9" in length .

Roosterfish says we have to find a new area to hunt from now on , lol !!!

Hey , nice harvest !!!
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[Jaackrabbit]

The 5pt buck
It was 8:30am opening day and I hadn't seen anything moving and had only heard one shot (my father-in-law missing a 6pt <<his muzzleloader missed fired>>

I had been watching some turkeys make their way across the field to the west and didn't notice the buck making his way across the tall grass to the east until he was already half way across the field. He wasn't running but he definately wasn't walking either.

By the time I opened the window on the blind and grabbed my gun he was out of the tall grass and into the cut corn field giving me a perfect 65 yard broadside shot. Only problem was he was still moving and didn't look like he was stopping. ((Well crap looks like I'm going to have to take a moving shot)) I was just about to pull the trigger when he stopped and put his head down to grab some left over field corn. <<BANG>>

I shot, he fell down. He rolled over twice and within 25 seconds had stopped moving. When I gutted him I found both lungs completely destroyed. Clean shot, clean kill, no chasing down a blood trail, no suffering. Couldn't have asked for it to go any better.

The doe
It was a pretty quite night, not a lot of deer moving. Finally 2 big does come across the field about an hour before dusk. I don't shoot because they were basicaly walking towards me so why not let them come closer for a better shot. So I wait... they get closer and closer but then at the last second they duck down into a little wooded grove 50 yards away and bed down. No shot. Another half hour it will be to dark to shoot even if they do get up.

So I wait.... another 10 minutes and it's game over. So I take a chance and put my head out the window and give a quick yelp. Sure enough they pop up, searching for the sound. They move through the little wooods fast and start bounding out across the field at a full run. They got out 60 yards before I could get my scope on one of them. I give out another sharp yelp and sure enough they stop in their tracks looking for the sound again. <<BANG>>

She dropped right where I shot her. I hit her high and the bullet took out her spine just below the neck. All she had left was one front leg and could move her head. So I jumped out of the blind and walked over and put her out of her missery.

All in all a great harvest. Both deer have been processed and I now have 50 lbs of deer burger, 14 roasts, 8 packages of breakfast steaks and 9 packages of stew meat in the freezer.

Still a lot of deer on the farm. We are allowed to take 7 this season so the hunt isn't over yet. Hopefully more to follow in a few days.

Lattttttttter...
Mike
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[davetclown]

not much to tell here,

openin I come down with a full blown cold with an over grown snuffaluffagus living in my nose.

opening morning I find there are a few extra hunters in the woods. invited and extras on privet farm. needless to say no one saw any deer. all the walking ins and outs kept every thing away, not to mention the steady rain that set in and stayed for two days.

I go back out on monday and come across an old farmall, I offered the farmer 500 and now I have another tractor... LOL, like I needed another tractor....[laugh]

so tuesday comes around I plan on picking up the tractor after a couple hours in the woods. I arived around noon time when I fitered every one would be out of the woods for lunch. The fresh now on the ground looked nice, it reminded me of what deer season used to look like.

its two hundered yards back to where the tractor is, I figured I would sit near it and wait for the guys to show up that were going to help me get it out of the woods.

I come in to a clearing and there is a horned critter. I made my aproach twards him, not close enough to pick out points but moving in and seeing no signs of the deer noticin me.

I get in range and start to take a draw and out of no where the deer gets spooked and jumbs in to the brush. then I notice there are two hunters right on my hoof not three feet behind me yackin away...[crazy]

figurin my hunt is shot now, I start working on the tractor trying to get it up and running, a couple hours of labor and drainging water out of the gas tank I get it running.

I drive it out of the woods and on to the road, not an uncomon site for that neck of the woods, every one is used to seeing farm tractors on the roads. Any way I get about 2 miles and the rear left tire falls off the tractor!!!

all four bolts holding the race in place broke off allowing the tire to spin off..

ya talk about a wild ride [shocked]

fortunatly there was a heavy peice of frame work under the tractor so the axle did not hit the pavement.

any way it was only a recker call away from getting it home.

long story short I did see a deer, but other hunter preasure was a bit of a problem on week one....
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[lonehunter]

Saturday morning and the first time i've seen a deer since before opening day of rifle , all on the neighbors property !
Six of them go by me , some walking some running and i gotta sit there and take it , lol !
Yesterday it's dumping snow all day and coming down hard when the wife says to go hunting because you just never know .

Yep, she was right .
fresh tracks everywhere and the snow is still dumping from the sky .
too much to sit in the treestand and the blind just didn't seem it would do me any good with hearing a deer going by .

I just picked a tree to sit under where the bending branches from the brush around me offered a trail to see down .
it worked , 15 minutes later a 4-1/2 year old doe showed up walking the tunnel .
My venisonless streak is over .
Another doe showed up during the feild dressing , huffed and bolted off .Thats when i realised you can't shoot the same shell two times in a row .

Now a couple of horns and a few more baldies to go and i'll be eating long into summer .
Hope it snows againI've got a few tags to go and a big appitite .
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[Jaackrabbit]

What? You mean you can't shoot two deer with one bullet? [sly] To funny !!! Congrats on the kill.

I actualy like hunting during a good snow storm. I always seem to see deer moving during them.

I've been seeing deer most every night but they all have been on the wrong side of the fence.

I almost shot a doe last night but she wouldn't come out from behind the tree and I didn't want to take a 150 yard neck shot.

Good shootin
Mike
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[Jaackrabbit]

I'm going to have to get myself a Turkey hunting license. I've seen the same 7 turkeys cross the field almost every night I've been out deer hunting.

I've never turkey hunted before..... I heard it's pretty hard but I'm thinking if I took a .22 out with me I could clean up pretty fast.

When is the season? Do you need a permit or what?
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[lonehunter]

By lottery , usually in the spring and fall if your county has a good number of them .
No .22's , shotgun or bow only .

Hey, i'm looking out the window and I have about 15 grouse walking under the pines !
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[davetclown]

there are two seasons, one in the spring and one in the fall, both on privet and public. fall season ended the day before deer season.

Like LH said, it is by draw, but left over tickets in some areas are usualy avialable. but get in to the draw or you will be left with slim pickins. those who are in the draw get a few day head start on left over tickets.

Privet hunts are much easier than on public land.

and number 4's or bigger is what you have to use on the turks. and aim for the head, you dont want to have to be spittin out shot, even if it is stainless it still dose a job on the dental work.

there is a new broad head that came out for bow hunting, around 40 buckhorns. "ouch"

but it is like a six inch diamiter razor so if your up in a tree you can shoot down and aim for the neck as aposed to puttin holes in the belly.

and the key is knowing where there is a resident flock, and if they are not disturbed to much, just like deer they will keep to the same pattern of daily habbits.

no baiting allowed, and preseason scouting is a must.

I took my first this year. and strange enough, they allowed you to take hens this year... that is a good sign that the birds are doing well.
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[Jaackrabbit]

3 more deer pulled off the farm on the last day today.

1 nice doe and 2 little ones. There have been a ton of little pints out there and Grandpa didn't want to feed anymore than he has to next year so..... )

Mine was one of the little pints. I was a bit [frown] though because the one I shot was a button buck. It was a long shot across the bean field so yeah..... didn't see the buttons. It was a sweet shot though, 170 yard shot and dropped him right in his tracks. Love those Hornady 12 gauge sabot rounds.

I'm not going to black powder it this year. Grandpa and my brother and law are going to go though.

So it's time to clean the gun, sharpen my knife and wash the hunting stuff and wait till late season opens back up.

[] Good shootin
Mike
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[lonehunter]

Sunday morning just a few minutes after eight in came a 6 point right next to the pine tree I was sitting under and he was behind me .
Once he took a couple steps to my side he got wind of me but didn't quite know where I was , stomped a few times while I sat there motionless on the outside and my heart pounding and racing away on the inside .
He bolted off and stoped 30 yards away ,perfect sideshot with the crosshairs , that is untill I clicked off the saftey and pulled the trigger .
he jumped sideways as I was squeesing the trigger , coulda been the noise I was making or he cought my movement , either way I just don't know .
I could see his front right leg took the hit as it ran off , I waited 20 minutes and started to follow his tracks .
I followed the trail up to the next road which is one mile over from where I shot him from , thought to myself , it wouldn't be much longer now . I was wrong .
It circled back through some heavy brush in a very wide arc . I had the compass with me so I wasen't too worried about continuing the search .
Through the heavy brush ,over and under blowdowns and logs , through crusted over marsh and swampy areas , sometimes the bloodtrail was heavy , sometimes i had to really go inch by inch under the pines looking for the droplets .
Along the way I found several bedding areas I had never come across before , they were filled with some of the biggest hoof tracks i've ever seen , I took a bearing on the compass and made a mental note on the location and continued the tracking .
I was now well back to and past the road where I originally shot the buck but i didn't really know positivly where i was because i was further into the woods west than i knew .
I continued on following the trail , more blowdowns , more thickets and swampy areas and then a half grown over rusty barbed wire fence .
I flagged the area where it crossed and took a bearing on the fence line , it ran south to north , the backside of someones property .
I followed the fenceline around to the west/east side and took that up to another fenceline and then another and then finally the road .
I had traveled halfway down a road with five farms on it .I went to the last three farms and got permission to track the deer on the propertys as long as i didn't shoot at any other deer i might see back there .
I walked back down to the stateland and back to my flag to continue my search .
From the blood stains on the snow i could tell my buck had bedded down twice within twenty yards of the barbed wire fence and back near someones old hunting blind . Thats where the blood trail ended and thousands of hoof tracks filled the snow from deer feeding in the farmfeilds . I circled and scowered every track and trail looking for some sign of the deer without any luck , it was just starting to snow and the sky was getting a little dark . I was pretty shure which way the road was but checked the compass just to be shure , man was I turned around .
I took a heading east and came out near the last farm on the road .
I had tracked that deer almost 4 to 4-1/2 miles through some of the thickes stuff i've ever been through .
I stopped at each farm that gave me permision to let them know i had lost the trail and wouldn't be back on their land anymore , thanked them again for letting me on their property and headed back to the truck .
When I put the key in the ignition it said it was 4:15 .
I was done in physically , my boots were soaked with swampwater and my hunting clothes were wringing wet with sweat .
I knew it was the last day of rifle but I just didn't have it in me to give that last hour one more shot for another deer , i went home instead .
I don't know if any of you have done this but i just keep playing that shot over and over in my head tring to figure out what i should have done different . The crosshairs were in the killzone , did i flintch or was my scope off from being bumped or something ? did that last second jump from the deer just graze it ?
I keep thinking of that deer and i'm kicking my own rearend over it .
from now on i'm picking out a stump or downed tree and checking my scope with the last shot of the day before i leave the woods , i never never want to go through this stuff of wondering about a deer again .

Muzzloader season is just a few days away , i'm up for it .
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[davetclown]

I still think back from time to time to all the shots I missed my target, "not many, less than you can count on one hand"

of all those times I missed I found it to have been equipment failure except once, I went back to my target and posted a flag then went back to my seat and sat and staired at the flag for an hour, then I spotted a sapling twig no bigger around than a pencil lead, I though that was so thin I never gave it any mind, I mean what are the odds of my target lining up directly behind this minute miniscule bairly noticable other when a finch lands on it bending it over. I got up walked over to the reed and examined it from top to bottom where I saw I had nicked it with my arow changing the trijectory.

ya I knew the twig was there before hand, saw many a finch landing on it. I couldnt have hit that twig if I shot at it a thousand times. Yet I sure the hellow got it that time for sure, the razor made a nice clean cut in the green bark.

I dont mean to add one more thing for you to ponder over the next week but it is worth mentioning, when arrows are noched backwards they will fly off target no matter what type of bow you are using. I am sure you didnt do this but that is a posibility...

I wouldnt pull my hair out over it, "eaiser said than done" especialy if you never see another deer you can get a shot at the rest of the season. the not knowing is the real killer of confidence.

cross bows there is only one real sure fire way to sight them in, clamp them to a bench and shoot it at a half dozen bails of hay then dial them in.

I do miss my brothers old indian recurve bow, that took a skill, more like it was an art to shot. you didnt have to wory about sites moving as I had with my compounds.

with that you had to know the ark of the arrow you were shooting and be able to be a fair judge of distance. todays hunters I have seen stands out in the woods and different collored flags at different distances away from the stand.

mind you I am not against that method, it dose mean less wounded animals in the woods. It is surprizing how much of a differance that ten feet makes when shooting a bow. and for guys with no depth perception it is a shot maker.

it is two different worlds from natural shooting and site shooting. both have its benifits, only natural shooters will be able to take targets sight shooters will miss.

when I was in my youth we used to hunt ducks and pheasnts with bow, "yep, it was leagle back then, I dont know about today"

we had arrows that were called flu-flu, the feathers were put on backwards and when the arrow flew to its enertia limit the feathers would relax and catch air and the arrow would drop to the ground many times landing standing up, especialy in the corn feilds.

no we didnt kill as many birds as we could have with a gun, but we had more targets back then, and if we did manage to hit a bird it was a kill, no wounded birds, birds with arrows stuck in them dont fly so good. ya there was a couple of them we had to run down and finish off, yep, it aint easy for a bird to run with an arrow stuck in them either..

today I doubt you could hunt birds other than on a farm ranch with a bow to have enough targets to be any good at it. it dose take pratice...

Fred Bear was a natural shooter and in his museum he had about every animal mounted that could be shot with a bow. I dont know if that museum is still standing. I was there when Fred was still alive. Yep I got to meet him, I was realy young then but was where I got the idea to hunt birds with a bow in the first place.

now rabbits with a bow, now there is some crazy hunting, zig zagging thought the grass and brush. Ya I have taken a couple sitting hossenpheppers, yet to take one on the run... At the Bear museum I saw an old film of Fred taking bunnies on the run.. now thats pretty wild..

but you know, Fred was a lot closer to an era where it was common for people to hunt with a bow for thier dinner, so they had to be good...

I guess thats enough rambling...

knowing you, I would concider only three things.

[ol][li]macanical failure, sites bummped or loose[/li][li]a un-notices obstical in the path of the arrow and the deer heard it hit that causing it to step aside.[/li][li]the deer had been shot at before and reconizes the sound of a trigger release.[/li][/ol]
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[lonehunter]

yep , this is one hunt that will haunt me for years to come .

The guns have been cleaned and put to rest untill i do some pig hunting next month , i'll resight before heading out .
I did look at my bullets , I had different grain weights mixed in together it looks like some of them had been bumped around kinda hard in the fannypack and were partially dislodged from the casing .
i probably was lucky i didn't blow up the gun .
if one of those bullets were fired it probably wabbled out the barrel .
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[bassass]

Did you ever think you just missed... lol or made a bad shot? its happens my friend
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[davetclown]

lol, now if LH was my drunken brother in law I would have been a wonderin if it wasnt a pink eliphant he was shootin at.[crazy][pirate]

one thing I know about sportsmen, when they pull the triger it is a target hit in the feild, we dont let fly any round that we do not have the fullest confidnece that it will hit the target.

having rounds in immobilized packaging in my pocket is a must in my book. banged up rounds flopping around in a pouch is the best way to have a mishap. dinged and deap scraped rounds will shere off corse no time.

this is another reason I shoot off last years rounds in to paper targeds at the range. If I am going to miss, it will be in to a back ground that will stop my projectile from wondering in to an unwanted direction.

wich reminds me, did they find the guy who shot some one on opening day of deer season? I had just breifly caught the story so i dont know what town it was either.
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[davetclown]

deffenantly get rid of that stuff for sure.

take them apart. and dont make fire crackers out of the bowder, you will blow your arm off.
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[lonehunter]

I'm using them up on the yotes and coons .
I made an oversized firecracker once long long ago , never again !

Ya' ever see a stump jump ?
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