Week Three

Week three sees me back in this spot. Found a big rub nearby and another hunter a few hundred yards away in a nice looking spot. Hope he gets some there.


Week three has seen most of us settling into the hunt. Well, it is week three for me, for others it is week one and for some places it is muzzle loader already. Several friends have scored this week, I will try to get them listed but they have been busy so if I miss you, Sorry, I’m old and forgetful.

@BigBuckPW Rob Freyer continues to lay them down, this week it was a double on does during an afternoon hunt. @t_marsh83 dropped a nice 8 pt, his first deer in four years. @sfritz took an 8 pt. @mkotzum thumped one Sunday morning early just as I started to write this a nice spike at 2 yards. @SkinnyDman got a nice doe the same afternoon Rob Freyer got his double. @deer_commander got a bit sidetracked and shot a 200 lb hog or it might have been his Dad but either way I wish I had done it. I’m ready to go pig hunting. @HuntingStories did a spot and stalk on a doe while I was writing, guess he wanted in this week. @GlennClute took a nice 8 pt on public land near me Saturday afternoon but I just found out so he is a late addition. Congrats to everyone and if I didn’t list you sorry but you will make the wrap up I promise.

There were a couple of near misses by folks. @MonicaJo4 gave one a shave while trying for her first bow kill. She will take a ribbing for that for awhile :0). I don’t think there were any turkeys or coyotes taken this week but one gray squirrel was with a 20 yard shot. Sometimes you just can’t take any more abuse from treerats. I swear I remember a moose or few taken and I know some folks are elk hunting, too. Remember folks the @ symbol with their name will let you find and follow them on Twitter.

Saturday October 15th sees the start of the @Huntography Deer Tour. It is kicking off in Wisconsin so if you use Twitter just check the hashtag #deertour for updates. Good luck to all the hunters on the tour this year. It is also the start of our fall turkey season so I have 14 days to see if I can get one with a shotgun or in my case a muzzle loading shotgun.

I have been sneaking out for a morning and evening hunt on the new farm and I’m seeing tons of turkeys plus deer. I went out Wednesday afternoon to hunt the tree where I got the cull buck Friday, I wanted to see if a doe or the 6 pt would come out. I got set up only to have a bunch of new cows released into the field behind me. I don’t mind them but these wouldn’t shut up so I could hear. Then about an hour into my set some guys start driving the treeline about 100 yards away checking for trespassers.

These are the same guys that messed up my hunt the night before when they decided to set a shooting house in a field just about the time I had been seeing a couple of bucks. They received a good cussing both times and both times I stayed in the stand after they left. The difference on Wednesday was the deer did come out. As I sat there tweeting with some friends saying I was getting down, I had had enough, everything got quiet again. I told myself might as well stay a little longer just to see what happened. I had already seen about 30 turkeys and thought maybe the deer was ease back in.

After maybe 30 minutes I saw what I thought was a cowhorn spike come out, right behind him was the little 4 point I see there all the time. They made the left turn toward me like they always do when sun hit the rack on the first one I knew it was the 6 I had jumped the first day. Now it was on, I have never taken a 6 and he had a nice rack. I got ready, waiting for them to feed down the soy bean row. The 6 came down, stopped at 35 yards broadside, looked like a backyard target. I drew, set my pin and touched the release. Just about 5 yards from him the arrow hit some Johnson grass and went who knows where. SOB!!

He ran about 30 yards, stopped to look back at what ever it was. His buddy was standing there looking at him like he was nuts for running. As soon as he stopped I knew what was coming. I have taken more than a few because curiosity got to them, this one had all the signs. I nocked another arrow then watched as he circled, stuck his nose in the air trying to find a scent always focused on where he was standing and never looking my way. He went behind a big cedar where I couldn’t see him but I knew he wasn’t leaving yet. He would either turn in front of the tree which would put him at 13 yards in front of me or slip into the woods at 16 yards. I watched as he slid into the woods and stopped perfectly broadside. When he did I drew, tucked the pin in tight to the shoulder and shot. I heard the hit, he took off tail down only to run about 40 yards just into a field then crashed.

I was thrilled. I had wanted this buck since I first saw him. He had a regular path he walked every afternoon and that combined with curiosity got him. I had watched him fall but habits run deep. I got down to look for my arrow and blood. I couldn’t find my arrow but did find a trail so I tracked it around to the field edge looking for the arrow until I saw him laying in the weeds a few yards away. When I walked up to him I saw my arrow had passed through but still had about 3 inches inside. This one continues my year of WTH shots. He was PERFECTLY broadside when I shot but the arrow exited at the next to last rib on the other side. When I skinned him the entry is in the shoulder but then hit the middle of the ribs on the near side. I can’t imagine how that arrow did what it did. Nothing about the path makes sense but it did the job and that’s what counts I guess.

The funny part was when I went to get my truck the guys I had cussed were parked in a field just across the fence. I yelled to them and we talked then I said I was going to load up my deer, telling them to come check him out. They drove around, introduced themselves and one of the first things said was “Boy, I bet you were cussing us.” I laughed and said yes I did. Then to make up for it they loaded my deer for me. Really good guys and now I know who is hunting next to me. Locals that know everyone around there.

I know a lot of the people that hunt areas where anything less than 150 inch deer isn’t worth a mention but here this deer is was better than many 8-10 pts I see. High racked matched on both sides, big, healthy, beautiful. He might not go 100 inches and I could care less. He was also number 45 for me. I realized as I looked at my journal I have taken every one of my best bucks with a bow, kinda proud of that. As I checked him in I ran into another guy, Mike Cunnigham, who was checking in a nice 7 pt he had just taken. Pretty deer and congrats to Mike.

Good luck everyone and be safe. Keep posting so I can add my friends to the weekly list.

Huntography Deer Tour Equipment List PT 2

So far we have seen where I plan to hunt during the Huntography Deer Tour along with the archery equipment I will probably be shooting. Now I am going to take a look at what I will be carrying in my pack. One good part about the hot weather of early season is I haul less stuff but I do throw in a pair of limb cutters since limbs can still be in the way. Early November here can be almost anything from summer heat to near winter cold so last minute weather reports will determine if anything extra goes in. Here is what goes to the woods pretty much every time I head in even if it isn’t needed yet, it just lives in my pack year round. The first week of November isn’t early season, it is a short 5 day archery season so I am sticking to what I start the year with barring a big cold front moving in.

My pack is nothing special, a Redhead I bought off of a bargain table for maybe $12-$15. In fact it might have been less. I have no need for a high dollar day pack to walk a couple of hundred yards at most then hang it in a tree. The pack police have never come up and told me it wasn’t good enough. This one has been used for years in all kinds of weather without any signs of wearing out. Plenty of internal spots to organize, extra external pockets plus the Buddy Lock system for adding pouches. I only add a pouch to carry my range finder everything else goes inside. What I carry with me varies depending on time of year but not by much.

Here is the list.
1. An OLD pair of camo jersey cotton gloves with the trigger finger cut off. These are my lucky gloves. Can’t begin to remember how many I’ve taken wearing them.

2.A light weight mesh camo head net. Good for keeping skeeters off.

3.Zip Ties, good for all manner of things and what I use to attach tag to deer critters.

4.Assorted calls. 2 Primos can calls, a Knight & Hale fawn bleat (only two 8 pointers I‘ve taken came RUNNING to this call), Primos Buck Roar and rattling bag. I have no idea why I keep dragging the rattling bag around since it never works.

5.Crossbow crank

6.Bushnell range finder. The cheapest version.

7.Chuck Stapel custom drop point skinner. This knife has cleaned many a critter.

8.Hand held light and 3 color head lamp. Under $20 for both.

9.2 screw in hangers just in case I need them.

10.Safety rope. I use an HSS vest but hate their strap system to attach it to the tree. This is one from Summit that works great. I hook them together with a locking gate carabiner.

11.Drag strap for my HSS vest. Comes in handy dragging slick heads since they don’t have handles.

12. Pull up rope

If the weather looks like it is going to be cold I throw in an extra fleece cap, gloves and fleece face mask. If it looks like rain I chuck in a set of camo Frogg Toggs. These go in the big compartment along with essentials like TP enclosed in a Ziploc bag, whatever lunch is for the day and a snack or three along with water.

This list of 18 things changes only slightly during muzzle loader when I add powder, primers and bullets for whichever smoke pole I decide to carry to the woods. I try to keep everything in this pack so I know where to find it. If I do take any out to say, put in a fanny pack for a short hunt, it goes right back in afterwards. I know people that buy calls, flash lights and such every year because they move stuff around and it gets lost. Most of this stuff is cheap so I grab extras when I can to have if I need it and this lot stays where it belongs.

Disclaimer time: I did not receive compensation from any company mentioned in this post. All was purchased at full retail.





Here is a link to pick up a copy of the first Deer Tour DVD from Huntography.

Huntography Deer Tour Sets

With the upcoming Huntography Deer Tour many of the hunters are talking about what we are doing to get ready. Many are on Twitter, showing pics of plots, stand locations and gear, others on their blog or youtube. I have no plots this year, all of my cameras were destroyed in a flood so no trail cam pics for me.  Most folks have seen pics of my spots but I have never taken time to explain why I hunt them. Same with a lot of my gear, you see it in pics but I haven’t gone into much detail about what I hunt with or why. Time to fix that. Here is a first installment on where I hunt and the stands I use.

First the spots I have ready. The main one is 18 acres on the mountain. Monteagle mountain in the edge of Marion county in Unit A which has a smaller deer limit than Unit L where I live. This is big hardwoods full of oaks the deer love. One problem, oaks are everywhere so critters feeding on them can feed all over the woods. No real way to pattern them so I hunt trails at junctions and crossing points. Trails are everywhere you look, crisscrossing the woods with little rhyme or reason. I have found a few spots deer use repeatedly so set up on them. My favorite is halfway down a hill on an old stagecoach road. Deer come down a hill from the property next door, cross a tiny creek to wind up within 35 yards of my stand. Another trail comes in on my left. It just goes right through the middle of the woods within 20 yards, another comes out another 20 yards above it. This spot has given up 8-9 deer so far with hopefully more to come. I plan on taking a look at a couple of stand locations a bit deeper into the woods but this spot is hard to beat.

If these trails seem close, they are. I take most of my deer with a bow so most of my stands are in places where I can get that type of shot. No need for 300 yard shots where I am mainly because you can’t see that far. This property has great climbing trees literally everywhere you look. I keep a ladder stand in my favorite spot but use my Summit climbers to stay mobile and hunt other spots.  While this is a mountain the land is gently rolling, heavily wooded and very rural. In fact Great Granpa Tate’s old still is still visible up one of the hollers. Yes we say holler. The area is very old growth timber that is open enough to see a good distance with small heavy thickets of laurel.

What some folks can’t believe is my stand height, a whopping 8 feet off the ground. Yep that is all I use of my ladder stand. I leave the last section of the ladder off and this has worked fine for years. Deer will walk within yards of that stand and not pay any attention to it. Even when I use a climber it rarely goes over ten feet but it works for me.

The other place I have to hunt is in Marshall county just minutes from my house. 30 acres of fairly thick brush that has no food to offer. Deer use it for a bedding area mostly when pressure on surrounding farms gets too heavy. I didn’t see one deer on this place last year but have taken several off of it. It has almost no place to put up a ladder stand or climber so most of the hunting is from blinds. Part of the property backs up to a subdivision but here it is legal to hunt wherever I want on my property as long as shots don’t go toward homes. I know more deer use this spot than I see but because of the thick brush visibility is only 40-80 yards in many places. Yes it is a tough place to hunt but it is the only private land close to me where I have permission. With a lot of work and money it could be made into a good spot but that may never happen.
 I build blinds rather than use popups here this way there is nothing to steal and rebuilding one takes very little time. For some I use whatever is on hand but more and more I am using panels I build at home then take in. Built from 2x2 lumber I make by ripping a 2x4 then cutting to length and cover with fence wire, they are light, easy to set up and brush in. You can use string or zip ties at corners to have one ready to brush in minutes. Covered with local foliage they blend right in. I have additional panels made if I want to add a roof but rarely do. I attach the roof panel to a couple of trees at the back, add a couple of poles at the front corners to hold it up, some plastic on top then pile on some brush.  These are handy on private land where they can stay in place and cheap enough to replace or fix if needed. Many can be built from scraps you can pick up from a building site throw away pile. I do have one ladder stand on this property set up at a creek crossing. I am thinking of maybe adding one or two more but it is tough to do here.

So there is a quick look at the spots I hunt. A couple of ladder stands, a couple of more ground blinds, two Summit climbers, an old Cobra and a Viper X4 and I am pretty well good to go. I will post about my bows and pack next so stay tuned.

Check out last year's tour and pick up the DVD at Huntography