Missouri duck opener is tomorrow. The hard pre-rut is now. I’m outta here. Pictures and stories from last week and this weekend to follow…

I’ve got a picture of a nice dead buck, I’ve got a story about a couple of bucks that didn’t die, and I’ve got a story of a couple of bucks stuck today. We are in full blown Kansas buck killing mode right now. I’ve also got a story from the Kansas duck opener to tell. You’ll have to wait for a little while for the details because right now I’m swamped.

I’m tired, my lips are chapped, I have 11 days of facial hair, and my shoulder is sore. My recent pheasant, deer, and duck bender is now concluded and I’m home again. Pictures and stories to follow but right now I’m worn out and have to clear my desk off.

I’m home from South Dakota. We had a limit by lunch time today, headed back, and now I’m repacked and ready to bowhunt tomorrow through Sunday. I’ll be generally away from the computer but I’ll try and get some pictures and updates. Until then, good luck everyone.

I half-ass hunted last Friday afternoon. I had intended to spend the afternoon on stand before I let my visiting brother’s idiotic 4 pound guinea pig dog escape and get lost. A massive doghunt was ultimately successful before it became a tasty coyote hors d’oeuvre but I was left with 30 minutes to hunt and I stunk like a guy who’d been chasing a ridiculous squirrel sized dog in 800 gram thinsulate rubber boots.

So I’m not counting that effort. That means my first real hunt will start tomorrow as I head south to meet friend and non-resident CA-Chucky. He wanted to get an early start filling his first Kansas whitetail tag and his job keeps him busy in November so we’re going to get after it for the next few days. On Friday evening I’ll head to Southern Missouri to take part in the urban season there. I’m planning to make a dent in the doe population there with my new 6.5 swede but it’s going to take a regional record to get me to burn my Missouri buck tag this early. Regular readers will remember that I always open the Missouri rifle season on this small farm where my ancestors homesteaded generations ago. The farm has a special place in my heart but crappy trophy potential. I’m hoping a more aggressive doe harvest can help.

I’ll try to post updates as we fill the meat pole up but reception will be spotty until Saturday. Then comes the Kansas urban season, then my trip to South Dakota, then another pair of out of state visitors, then the duck opener in Kansas and Missouri… and so it begins…

Saturday The Old Man and I hung tree stands and did various other chores to get ready for the season. I was headed home after dark when I caught a flash of whitetail-brown in the headlights off in a ditch along a fence. I turned around thinking it might be a poached or traffic injured deer. What I found was this:

A 60 pound fawn had somehow managed to get her back foot stuck in a fence. She wasn’t worn out and the leg wasn’t broken so I went back and grabbed a pair of wire cutters (and my camera). A simple snip and she was on her way, unfortunately at a speed I couldn’t get my camera to catch up with.

Honestly, it didn’t really make much sense. This deer was in an area that has too many deer, but I just couldn’t handle the idea of leaving her to suffer.

A particularly nasty muni court docket had me booked until around 3:00 today. After making sure we avoided jail and other nasty possibilities I changed clothes and headed out south to check food plots, move some stands around, and chase some doves if I could find any.

First, check this out:

All the plots look great but I think this one is the best. Everything is shin high and extremely dense. Once again, it appears we used plenty of turnip seed but if you look closely you can see all sorts of things are growing up:

A couple of the food plots have a different seed mix that includes this mystery plant:

Maybe somebody who paid better attention in Field Botany than I did could offer an idea? My partner was an attractive red head who drove us in her convertible to our site visits…

Finally after checking things out I wandered around chasing a few doves as they traveled between a corn field and their roost.

Now for a shower and bed…

The highlight of the early fall for me is usually the dove opener on the family farm south of town. As long as I can remember The Old Man has been planting sunflowers or wheat, inviting a bunch of friends and then having a bar-b-que afterwards. In a good year most everyone will kill a limit and we’ll total somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-250.

Not so much this year though. With an extremely wet spring the sunflowers weren’t in even close to early enough. As a result the numbers were way down. Fortunately it was still a beautiful evening and I’m in a BBQ coma…

I’m off to chase doves for the next couple of days. I’ve got my camera in my truck and I’ll let you know how it goes. Good luck to those of you hitting the field this weekend…

So after work I ran a ways west of town to look at the dove field I’ll be shooting tomorrow morning. I saw more than a few doves. Check back tomorrow for a report.