Deer Hunting
What I do to kill time
There was a discussion raging over at kentuckyhunters.net over what was legit when it came to killing time on the stand. Some guys read, some guys putzed with the GPS. One guy plays games on his cell phone. I read when I’m expecting a long wait on the stand. I read about a page and then put the book down and scan the woods. Reading can keep you very still. It’s especially helpful for energetic kids. It gives them something to do besides fidget. I’m currently going through Teddy Roosevelt’s memoir of hunting in the badlands. Normally I’d have dusted … More . . .
Madness
Birdog428 on Hunting Chat.Net posts: Post subject: 2004 Season Discouraging And so I add another year to the 7 previous in which I have failed to kill a buck. With less than a week left to take a deer on home ground I find myself discouraged and wanting to bag it for the season. I had more free time to hunt this year than in the past 20 but it seems to have been of little help. No snow, and very little sign made for a difficult time in the local deer woods. I counted a grand total of 5 … More . . .
Hey! I resemble that remark!
sassafrastea over at KentuckyHunting.net writes as follows: ——————————————————————————– The last two nights, JUST before dark (around 5:45), I have heard rifle shots close to home. Both times there were 3 shots fired in close succession, three shots in less than half a minute. Also heard the same gunfire opening day (Sat morning at the crack of dawn). The other days (between opening day and the night before last) I had the windows closed, so didn’t hear anything. I am not a hunter but we have friends who hunt the farm, and they were out here yesterday afternoon hunting. I went … More . . .
What should I expect
A buddy of mine wanted to know what to expect if he shows up at deer camp, here at Genesis 9:2-4. He wanted to know terrain, choice of rifle and load, and weather. Here is what I told him: SW Bracken County, KY is a land of ridges and hollows. The elevation usually only differs less than 100 feet from ridgetop to creek bottom. It has all been cleared at least once. Tobacco and cattle once ruled. Tobacco is leaving and there are fewer and fewer cattle. Some folks are turning to sheep and goats. My ridge is about 40 … More . . .
Mooseboy Gets his Cherry Popped
#2 Son, AKA Mooseboy, succeeded in bagging his first deer on Opening Day. I t was a bit of a mixed victory, but then again, aren’t they all. We got up into the stand near the campground a bit late, but still well before sunrise. A screech owl, the wail of the banshee, caught us as we were starting up the ladder; I’ve been hearing it all my life, and it still makes my skin crawl. From the look on #2’s face, it was the perfect spook to get the juice flowing. We settled in and began the wait. … More . . .
Game Cart
My folks called up today to wish me well on the hunt. I wish I could get Dad out for a try, but he says his deer hunting days are over. The were paging through the BassPro flyer and found a game cart on sale, and wanted to know if I’d be interested in having it as a Christmas present—early like. Gosh, they’re nice people. Game Cart I’d bought an old tow-behind garden spreader that I was going to scavenge to make a game cart. But that was two years ago, and it’s still sitting in the barn. This looks … More . . .
Shamanic Guide — How do you Bleat?
Bleating is fairly simple: First you have the contact bleat– this is the call that deer use to announce their location. It is a friendly neutral call. Say “maa” — like “ma” but with a long “a” sound. That’s a bleat. Three of these over 15 seconds is a about all you need to sound like a deer attempting to make contact with friends in the neighborhood. Now think of a deer caught in a fence. Say “maaAAAaa!” or even “maaaAAAaaaAAAAAaaa” That is the distress bleat. The more it rises and falls, the more distress you are imparting. String a … More . . .
Waiting for the Opener
It’s getting close. Opening Day is getting real close. Saturday morning. I’ll try and pull out of work early on Friday. Girlfriend is going down early to open up. There is not much else to do except sit and wait. I’ve been obcessing on the weather report. It looks like lows in the mid-twenties. That’s about as cold as it gets for an opener in Kentucky. I’m hoping #2 Son can hack it. It should be good weather overall, just a bit colder than we’re used to. I’ve been tidying up the loading bench and the cleaning bench. I caught … More . . .
Stress Shopping yields new bag
The long waiting finally made me succumb to stress shopping. I stopped by Walmart today. They had a really nice little padded shoulder bag that will replace my aging fanny pack. Geez! That thing has been with me since ’92 or so. This new bag has couple of nice features: a little LED light and a compass that are permanently sewn into the bag. It also has a divider in the big pouch. It will get rid of my biggest problem—the strap on the fanny kept slipping through the buckle. For the most part, I stopped wearing the fanny … More . . .
How was my Bow Season?
Bow season sort of ends for me in November. It’s not that I’m blocked from doing it. It just turns out that way. By moving my attentions to Kentucky, it’s kind of narrowed my bow opportunities in a lot of ways. First, September is usually too hot to do serious bow hunting. Yeah, the season start around Labor Day, but it’s hard to get into bow hunting deer when a) It’s so hot b) The deer aren’t cooperating c) The kids need some of my time for squirrel hunting.. That puts bow into my traditional start of the first weekend … More . . .
More on Deer Intelligence
I would say that my orginal post was in no way attempting to anthropomorphize whitetail deer, but some folks seem to think so. Quite to the contrary, deer have intelligence and world view befitting a 4-legged herbivore, and that’s about it. You really don’t need that much upstairs to eat grass, pass grass, and make little grass eaters. I could get totally gratuitous and suggest this extends to some vegetarian humans I know, but that would be going to far for just a cheap laugh at my vegan acquaintances. Your average deer is certainly above turkey in intelligence. It is … More . . .
Having an Understanding Wife
DeerMeadowFarm over at HuntingChat.net is in the doghouse, because he missed a wedding chasing a deer on opening day of gun season. He was looking for help. I say don’t sweat it. They get over it. Some things just have to be done. I knew one family down south of Memphis TN, that managed to schedule a wedding just before the opening of Duck Season. The groomsmen, the groom, and the father of the groom all brought their duck boats to the reception and took off for a week after the wedding. My son was born during opening week of … More . . .
Do you gut in the field?
I was a gut-in-place kind of guy. However, I became a drag-it-out convert when we moved into the farm. I can radio back and have a pickup within 5 minutes. I even have one of those hitch platforms that is low-enough to the ground for me to flop ’em on. It saves on leaves and muck in the cavity. If I still got one at the bottom of a ravine, I’d still gut it out to lighten the load. After hefting my big bruiser out last year un-gutted, I read an article about deer hunters having heart attacks, and I … More . . .
A Meat Pole for Deer Camp
Every good deer camp needs a meat pole. We’ve been making do for the past three years, gutting and cleaning deer on the front porch. However, it makes for a messy clean-up, and Girlfriend has decided that there is no way she can stomach another episode, with her holding the light while I get elbow-deep in a deer. I’ve pondered the problem for a while. I figured a kid’s swing set would be an ideal model, but for the height I intended, the base would be dramatically wide. I also didn’t want to use too many long pieces. It finally … More . . .
First Blood with the Muzzleloader
There’s a picture of me with my new muzzleloader. I’m at my 25th birthday party. It was a truly grand affair. I remember it like it was yesterday. I wasn’t even thinking about deer hunting with it. I just saw it at Sports Headquarters up in Sharonville, and determined that I would buy it for myself as a birthday present. It was just a standard Thompson Center Hawken in .54. However, it had a really nice stock. Everyone ooohed and ahhhed at it when I brought it out. For laughs, I loaded it with a blackpowder and a toilet paper … More . . .
What was my very first deer like?
My mind drifts back. What was my first deer like? Let me give you a few highlights: 1) Just before I shot my deer, I had nearly been trampled in a stampede of deer. 2) I shot my first deer at 10 feet with a Texas Heart Shot 3) I shot at a buck, a respectable 4 pointer, but what fell down was a doe. It all started when I was invited to hunt Sue and Hugh’s place outside Warsaw, Kentucky. Sue and Hugh had a trailer on 80 acres. I had been having some nice close-calls with the deer … More . . .
Back from the Hunt– 1 Doe with the Hawken
I’m back in from the hunt. a doe came in at 5 with her girlfriend trailing. She came in on exactly the downwind side and busted me. At 6, she came back on a crosswind trail and I nailed her at 60 yards with the 54 Hawken. This is my first muzzleloader deer in 20 years of trying. The shot rolled her over, and she was dead before she hit the ground. Funny thing: the girfriend stuck around for about 20 minutes trying to figure out why her buddy was taking a dirt nap. Deer are not really deep creatures, … More . . .
My thought on Decoys
Decoys are not one of my favorite gimmicks. On the advice of Peter Fiduccia’s articles and book, I bought a Carry-lite full body decoy. It was a gorgeous piece of work– Italian handpainted. It was incredibly life-like. I have credit to Fiduccia that his writing was so convincing. I put it out in the front yard, and my dog went nuts. I’ve got a wonderful set of photos of the dog running out and trying to get the deer to run. It was a hoot. We took it out to the nearest county park and had great results. We put … More . . .
Our Little QDM Program
My family acquired a 220 acre tract in SW Bracken County in September of 2001. When we showed up, it and the surrounding tracts were wide open to hunting. I’ve since met guys from all over that knew about that land and have hunted it over the years. In 2001, I chained up the gate and posted signs, and went about chasing everyone out. The next year, my neighbors started doing the same. As a result, my deer herd has probably doubled or tripled. We’ve also stopped having shots whizzing over our heads on opening day. We were able to … More . . .
Wet Weather for Smokepole Season
Up around Bracken County, it’s looking like scattered rain on Saturday and then sunny on Sunday. I guess my best shot will be the afternoon of Saturday, but you can bet I’ll be somewhere out there in the morning. One of my biggest disappointments was on the Saturday afternoon of ML in 2002. It was pouring pitchforks and tarbabies, and I was sitting in a barn watching the world get dark. This BIG buck came out and walked right towards me. I had him dead on with a brisket shot at 30 yards. Pop! The humidity had gotten to my … More . . .
Preparing for Muzzleloader Season
I was downstairs this morning at the bench, running one more patch down the Hawken before I pack it for the farm. This weekend is early Muzzleloader, and I finally got a good group out of the new barrel on Sunday. For twenty years, I shot buffalo bullets and round ball out of the factory barrel. Last year I finally broke down and bought one of those Green Mountain IBS barrels with the 1in28″ twist. Last year was a disaster– couldn’t get the new barrel to shoot worth a poop. I don’t know what was wrong. I tried sabots, Buffalo … More . . .
Is the Acorn Crop Failing?
At the farm in SW Bracken County, the whites are producing at a level just under last year’s bumper crop. The reds are taking the year off. Our other place is up in Cincinnati. There are acorns there, but not in any profusion. About every 10 years or so, the mast crop of the oaks fails completely. The result is ruinous to the squirrel population. The next year, they produce a bigger than normal crop of acorns. There’s been some research to suggest the trees have evolved this way as a way of insuring that at least one crop out … More . . .
Youth Hunt SNAFU PT III
——————————————————————————– Well, I wish I had a story for you that began: “There the doe lay, under a bush beside the gully. The 150 grainer had taken its time doing its work, but . . .” or “The coyotes had done their work. All that was left was . . .” or even: “How could we have been so blind as to not see her . . ” Nope. I got on my brush pants and an orange sweatshirt and took off after the sun came up. Barney and I went back to the spot and looked for anything that … More . . .
Youth Hunt SNAFU PT II
We had a hearty second breakfast and then headed out to the stand at Heartbreak Ridge, stayed for a couple of hours, heard nothing, saw nothing. Along about 1 PM we headed in for lunch and a nap. The deer we had seen in the morning had been grazing directly in front of our hunting blind up on Gobbler’s Knob. We arrived there around 3:30 and lazed around until about 5:30. #2 has been doing a lot of napping lately– must be going through a growth spurt. #2 caught the first sign of the deer. Two doe came out by … More . . .
Youth Hunt SNAFU PT I
It’s 0640 on Sunday. Why am I not in the stand? It’s Youth Weekend, why am I not in the stand with my son? Saturday morning started off perfectly. #2 son was all primed to take a deer. First light came and zap! #2 was up to his old habits, dead asleep and snoring. We were back at the barn #2 made famous last year: Late Season Youth Hunt I let him sleep for a while and then got him up as best I could. There was no action, so all he was missing was a beautiful Fall morning– Four … More . . .
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