We ran a broom up the mast and headed to port, closing off the 2020 deer season.

New camp records:

• 8 deer went to the pole
• 4 bucks– 3 went 8 points
• Most deer from one blind: 5 from Midway  — so much for the idea of hunting pressure!
• Largest button buck: 92 lbs live weight

We also had some camp-record-tickling events like:

• Most 200 yard+ shots
• Fastest deer to the meatpole: under an hour.

The Season Capsulized:
The Opener was a mediocre affair at best. Shooting was down. The processors were all talking about it being a bum year due to Covid, and the bum weather on Opening Sunday. Yes, it rained and the wind was monumental, but the deer seemed to recover quickly. After the first few days, we heard very few shots.

It would seem that the statewide numbers for November are much lower than normal. September was phenomenal. October was on-track. November? You have go back to 2012 to see similar numbers.  The overall harvest will be off, but not by that much.  September and October were better than usual.

• • SW Bracken County/SE Pendleton County is one f those spots where the shooting is phenomenal. On a good Opener, there will be 3 shot strings a minute over the first 4 hours of hunting. This year, I heard 1.6 shot strings for the first couple of hours and then it sort of petered out. I’ve heard lower rates, but this was at best tepid. From there on out, to the end of season, we barely heard a shot.
  • The weather on Sunday was abominable. We took 40 MPH gusts. Now, that should not have caused all THAT much trouble. I bet that and the rain drove a lot of casual hunters home.This was a late start. November 14 is about as late as you can get for an Opener. We’ve had good seasons with late starts, but our camp logs show overall better results with Openers before the 12th.
  • Something made the rut go early. I had ridiculous rut activity two weeks before the Opener.         See: “You Just Had to Be There!” I’m wondering what made things get so wild so early.
  • Acorns.   We had a bumper crop. Normally in really good years, the deer stay in the oaks and gorge and stay out of the open fields. I think that changed the number of times folks saw deer. I say this, but honestly, we didn’t see deer at our oak grove stands either. Our luck was mostly based on open-field movements in the first minutes of legal hunting.
  • Warm temps. This was a very mild couple of weeks. We hardly had a morning below freezing. The afternoons were fairly mild. I’m just making the observation; I do not know if this caused anything. What I do know is that most of our deer were taken in the early morning and few in the afternoons. We also saw a lot of deer moving on the roads after sundown this year

The New Guy, Remnar

Remnar is going to make a fine addition to deer camp. This year, he really got screwed on vacation time due to COVID, but now that he knows what to expect, we’ll see more of him. He managed to see at least one bruiser, and he walked away with the camp record button buck (92-lbs), shot at 200+ yards. You have to admit, the hat alone tells you he was a good choice for the Shamanic Dream Team. That there is a Stormy Kromer.

By next fall, we’ll have the accommodations sorted out. By then we should be able to handle Remnar and Mooselette coming for The Opener.

Things that did not work:

Fort Apache
We finally got Fort Apache dug out of the weeds and hauled it off. We’ll reuse the two walls in another blind later. Let me take you back and explain. Back about 2017, my backyard neighbor in town had a section of his fence fall over. I asked for the old sections and carted them down to the farm. I re-purposed all the wood and used it to build Lazy Boy, rehab S-10 and when it was all over, I had two 8 foot sections of wall leftover. I tried a bunch of things. Some worked. Some did not.

I used the two sections in a V shape and nailed them to 3 fenceposts, cutting windows for gun ports. I was in a hurry and did not have time to dig holes for the posts. That stand position, just out behind the house was ideal. I had a bunch of close encounters pre-season. However, the design was all wrong.

• The windows were in the middle of the walls and I had to sit with my knees right up in the corner to see out.
•  I had nothing at my back so I was pretty well backlighted. I tried to remedy that with a tarp, but. . .
•  . . .a strong wind came along and knocked everything over before we could really use the blind.

I have 2 walls with windows. My goal is to make a working blind, but that will have to wait until next year.

The S-10
My 2003 Chevy S-10, the HirschWagen, died. I took it in at the end of last deer season to see why it was stalling out. It never made it out of repair. I had them pull the electric winch off, but now I cannot get it working either. The winch was handy while we had it. I’ll figure out something sooner or later.

LazyBoy
I built LazyBoy so Angus could have a covered blind for inclement hunting. We originally set it up in 2014 and added the roof in 2017 and folks have hunted it on-and-off since. Over the summer, 3 cedars rocketed up and blocked the view of the far side of the ravine, and frankly, no one thought to check– my bad. Remnar missed his shot at The Big One due to those cedars. We’ll cut them down before next year.

Things that Did Work:
Without the HirschWagen, I had to come up with ways to get deer out of the ravines. I used a simple, expedient method. I had a 100-foot length of 5/8″ rope and ran it down to the deer, then tied the other end to the trailer hitch and then rolled forward slowly while somebody on the other end steered the deer over obstacles. It really worked better than I ever imagined.

The TC Compass in 7mm-08
I’ll have a whole post about my thoughts on 7mm-08 and the Thompson Center Compass. Double-thumbs-up for both.

Midway Phoenix
I shot my buck out of the Midway Phoenix blind, just as he entered the Garden of Stone. Then I pretty much left it for anyone who wanted it. Remnar, Moose, and Angus all got their deer from there; Angus scored his second doe there on Last Saturday– 4 deer out of one stand in one season!

Things that keep on working:
We really had no appreciable failures. Every piece of gear I’ve reviewed in the past 5 years is still going strong. My Buck 113 knife went through 4 deer and I can still shave with it after season. The $8 Harbor Freight pull saw has been through dozens of deer pelvises and is still cutting them like butter.

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