Found my way onto the relative’s computer long enough to wish everyone and a great Thanksgiving day.  We’ve already saddled up to the dinner table a couple of times today, and plan to get another helping as soon as the stomach tells me it’s alright to over-indulge again.  The weather up here in northwest Pennsylvania is absolutely beautiful.  Snow sticking to everything it touches.  Took a walk in the woods this morning and visited an old lean-to where I killed my 1st and 2nd buck ever and a doe 5 years ago.  My favorite holiday spent in a beautiful part of the country with family…can it get much better???  Well yea, if I could stay and hunt on Monday – PA’s rifle opener…oh well!  Traveling mercies to everyone these next couple of days.

I’ll be out of town for 5 days (Wednesday through Sunday) as I drive with my wife and my dad and mom to northwest Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving.  It has been more than a year and a half since I have seen PA coal country and I’m looking forward to getting out and doing some hiking in the snow.  Unfortunately, our pending move to Alabama and demands at school prevent me from staying through Monday and Tuesday and participating in one of the great rites of our nation’s hunting legacy…Pennsylvania gun season opener.  I should still have plenty of good stories and photos to share when I get back in town, maybe I’ll squeeze in a little small game hunting.  To everyone who spends time in the woods over Thanksgiving – Best of Luck!  Have a great time with family over vacation and I’ll be updating as soon as we get back in town.

I wish that I could have been in the woods yesterday evening with that hard-lined front moving through, but I needed to spend some time getting things done around the apartment in preparation for Thanksgiving.  However, I did get out yesterday morning.  I took a buddy who hasn’t been out hunting yet this year, John, and headed up to where I walked firebreaks a couple weeks ago and saw 7 deer (3 bucks).

I directed him down the trail with my climber on his back and gave him specific directions to where he could see a long ways across some hardwoods/thinned pines forest.  One of my best looking spots.

I got back in the truck and drove about 1 mile north and headed into a strip of timber and small fields that runs alongside the lake shore.  On that short drive alone, I saw 2 small bucks and 8 does alongside the road, so I thought we were in for a barn-burner of a morning.

I slipped quietly into position and started rattling and grunting.  It wasn’t long before I could see movement along the edge of the field, but it was just a doe.  Other than her, I didn’t see a thing except a bunch of turkeys that I flushed off roosts and a pair of mallards sitting on a small pond.

At about 9:30, I called John and asked him what he had seen…to which he replied, “Nothing.”  So I decided to try and do something about that.  I made a great big loop around his stand and sure enough, ran 2 big does within 40 yards of his stand 10 minutes into the push.  Unfortunately, that was all I could kick up, but at least he didn’t get skunked.

I was expecting to see more movement, but it was still a great morning in the woods.

I connected on a great Alamance County 6 pointer on Friday evening.  I headed out to the stand (same stand where cousin Ben from Pennsylvania killed his 4 pointer last weekend) around 3:00.  Wind was gusting and deer notoriously move early in this particular cutover. 

I was on the 5th or 6th rung of the ladder, and I look over to the left and there are 2 big does staring at me.  I tried to be still and not move, but finally decided that they would sit there and stare forever if I wanted to do the same thing.  Well, I didn’t really, so I continued up the ladder and they snorted and ran off. 

I figured that the sound of the wind would cover any noises that made, so that was just as well.  It was a slow afternoon until 5 o’clock, so I decided to grab my antlers and do some rattling to shake things up a bit.  This hunting season, I have rattled way more than in the previous years, and have gotten some good responses from deer, just nothing big enough yet.

About 2 minutes after I hooked my antlers back over a cedar branch, I saw a deer step out into a little opening in the cutover about 30 yards away.  I didn’t need binoculars to see that this was the 6 pointer that had already survived 2 archery and 1 rifle encounters this year, no shots fired by the hunters, but close calls nonetheless.

He was just standing there trying to figure out where the fighting bucks had gone to, so I tried to put the crosshairs on him, but there was too much brush.  He would take a step and I would try to find a hole to shoot through, and again…just too much brush.  This went on 3 or 4 more times, before I was getting concerned that he would leave and not give me a shot.

When he stepped the final time, I thought I would have a shot if he looked right at me.  So, I pursed my lips and let out a whistle.  He looked at me and I shot him right in the neck.  He dropped out of sight, and I was sure I had killed him but didn’t see any brush moving or hear any sounds. 

I gave it a couple minutes and cautiously approached where he had been standing.  He was piled up in a heap.  He weighed about 160 pounds and was built like a tank…great big neck, barrel shaped body, short legs.  His tarsals were jet black and dripping wet.  Another buck had scuffed his back and neck up pretty good and halfway tore his right ear off.  G2s were matching 9 inches and his antlers were about as polished as possible.  Not one single burr or gnurling was sticking up around his bases or anywhere for that matter.  A fine buck!

So, needless to say, I am pretty happy right now.  This deer season has been a little tougher than usual, but I’ve been blessed to be in the woods alot with the responsibilities I am carrying this semester, so I’m thankful that when a decent buck did show up and gave me an opportunity, I was able to capitalize.  He’ll make a great European mount, and I’ll think of a freezing cold November day in Alamance County when I look at his antlers on the wall.  Thanks dad for helping with the retrieval and taking some really great field photos.  Great memories! 

Something I don’t get to do very often is hunt in the snow.  For the first time in 4 or 5 years, a lot of North Carolina hunters got the chance to do just that.  It was awesome.  It is amazing to me how quiet the woods are with snow covering everything.  Of course, that didn’t last long when the wind picked up and started swaying me around in the tree…but I’ve always said the one thing I wish Piedmont, North Carolina had was more snow.  Love it!

So, I left the apartment in Raleigh at 4:30 a.m. on Friday headed towards Burlington to hunt where I saw the 5 bucks on Monday.  Packed my climber in and re-positioned slightly where I could shoot up on the pine ridge where I saw the good 8 pointer cruising 5 days ago. 

The sun was just barely coming up, when I caught movement and picked out a doe slipping along the trail in the pines.  About 30 minutes later, I saw more motion and 3 more mature does came walking by on the same trail.  Great start to the morning, now I just needed some headgear to show up.

It was about 8 o’clock when I looked and saw deer moving along the same trail but in the opposite direction.  This was the direction the bucks had traveled on Monday, so I got my scope set up in an opening, but it was a doe and fawn. 

I sat there another hour or so, when I heard limbs breaking on the far ridge that runs along the creek.  A deer was trotting down the ridge rather quickly and I kept on waiting for a buck to pop out behind her, but nothing ever showed.  I don’t know if somebody trounced her from her bed or what, but she was in a hurry to get out of there. 

With the beauty of the snow and the crisp air, I decided to hunt a little longer than usual, but ended up with nothing else coming by the stand.  Still, a great morning, beautiful scenery (sorry…left the camera in the truck because it was still snowing), plenty of deer, and a very relaxing time in the woods.

I was in Alamance County hunting yesterday, so I’ll play a little catch-up and update my latest hunting outings from Thursday p.m. to Friday p.m. 

Thursday night was a spur of the moment decision to even go into the woods.  At about 2:30 p.m., I convinced myself that missing the warmest day we’ve had in 6 days and that we will have in the next 5 or 6 days would be foolish.  Deer had to be moving. 

I swung by the house long enough to grab my slug gun, pull on my Scentlok coveralls, and grab my game lands maps.  By 3:05, I was driving down Six Forks Road, halfway watching the road and halfway staring at the maps deciding where I could go make a few rattling sequences.

I finally decided on a location and pulled the truck over.  About 500 yards in to the woods, I came out into a BIG hardwood hollow and sat down to do bang the horns together.  Nothing doing.

Another 300 or 400 yards and I came to an interior roadbed that cuts through this particular tract of game lands.  I decided to still-hunt along the road and see what I could see.  I hadn’t gone 100 yards and looked down into a creek bottom to see a deer staring back at me.  I crouched down ever so slowly and crept closer under the cover of the hill.  Come to find out, it was a nanny doe and 2 little ones feeding in on some new shoots of grass.  I evidently played it slowly enough that eventually they went back to feeding. 

Soon though, they got real nervous and I had my finger on the safety expecting a buck to step out.  Well, it was a gray fox – hardly a trophy buck. 

So, I sat there long enough for them to drift off into a cedar thicket, pulled out my antlers and crashed them together again.  Nothing doing again.

About 5:00, it was time to start heading back to the truck for an early dinner of beef roast and veggies in the crock pot, but I heard that oh-so-familiar sound of footsteps in the leaves.  I could see a silhouette of a deer slipping through the pines, and I got my gun up on an opening and stopped it with a grunt.  I thought it was a doe until he swung his head towards me to check out the sound and he was a legal buck with about 2 inch buttons sticking up. 

So, for hunting a tract of game lands where I’ve never been before, as quick of a hunt as it was, and having to leave the woods early, I was rather happy with the action I had.  Perfect example though, 3 more antlerless deer that would make great venison, but if I had time to process a deer I might very well have whacked that tiny spike because of the way regulations are set up on our game lands. 

Great evening to be in the woods!

I saw a black gray squirrel on Monday morning while deer hunting (the second within a couple of weeks in the general area of Alamance County that I was hunting).  The sighting got me sidetracked on an interesting topic in the rodent world.  Black gray squirrels.  An oxymoron of sorts, but if you’ve ever seen one, you know what I am talking about.  I did a little research and came up with some interesting facts.

*Black gray squirrels are much more heavily distributed throughout the northern portions of their range and actually quite rare south of the Mason-Dixon line although there are a few isolated populations that tend towards the black morph in the Appalachians.

*Black gray squirrels are not a separate species, or even subspecies, but rather a color morph due to a fairly rare genetic variation

*Supposed black squirrels in the Southeast are often misidentified fox squirrels, usually having a tinge of orange-ish color and much larger in size

*People often remark that black squirrels are smaller in size than gray squirrels (I thought the exact same thing on Monday morning).  This is probably an optical illusion as gray squirrels have white guard hairs that are longer than their gray coats and create a halo effect = bigger looking squirrel.

All interesting stuff.  If you have any pictures of a black gray squirrel that you have taken, email them to me at outdoorsmorgasbord@yahoo.com and I’ll post them on the blog.

When I was 15 or 16 and hunting small game in Pennsylvania, I was fortunate enough to bag a black squirrel with my single shot 20 gauge.  It was a far shot and I remember rolling that squirrel over and over in my hands looking for where a pellet had killed him.  I never found a single hole…probably contributed to the squirrel making such a fantastic mount.

Dad’s morning went much the same as mine.  Nothing until 8 o’clock.  Then it changed.

He grunted a few times, snort wheezed twice, and then clanged the antlers together.  Not 90 seconds later, he heard a suspicious sound over his right shoulder and turned to see this guy about 50 yards behind the tree stand.

Ever so slowly, he turned the gun upright and then swapped its ends to position for a left handed shot.  The buck continued right down the trail and dad pulled the trigger at 20 yards.  Surprisingly, the buck charged off down through the woods over 100 yards before stopping and doing the sway dance.  Through his binoculars, dad could see a white beam sticking up after the commotion ended.

Great buck and one of his best ever.  Symmetrical, reasonably heavy, long tines, long beams, beautiful buck!  Congrats dad, you deserved this one.  He waded through 29 different bucks so far this year to get to this one, the best he’s seen in 2008.

I took Monday off and hunted at the house in Alamance County with dad, my uncle and cousin from PA, and 2 other hunting buddies.  Cold and clear, the morning hunt started out suprisingly slow, but started picking up around 8:00.  I packed my climber into a hardwood basin that funnels deer along a major creek.  First, I spotted a little 3 pointer following a doe about 125 yards away.  Just enough movement for me to pick up the binoculars and investigate, but if he had been a shooter, a harvest would have been impossible.

About 8:45, I hit the grunt tube a couple times, snort-wheezed once or twice and then clanged the antlers together.  Third time I had called that morning, but as they say…3rd time’s a charm.  A little 4 pointer came slipping in looking for his challengers (that probably would have beaten his butt).  He approached to within 25 yards and meandered around nervously for 5 minutes before leaving.

At 9:25, I looked up on the ridge and could see a deer slipping through the pines that surround the hardwoods.  A quick look through the binoculars revealed a shooter, but he wasn’t going to present a shot with his current direction of travel.  I grunted, bleated, even snort wheezed…but the biggest reaction I could get out of him was a simple turn of the head.  He was about 16 inches wide and heavy, probably an 8 pointer (educated guess), but his tines were stubby – maybe 5 inches long or so.  Still he was big-bodied and I would have gladly tagged him if given the opportunity.

That was the extent of my morning.

My evening hunt went much the same way.  I moved my climber about 100 yards and started doing a little snort-wheeze/grunt sequence.  Not 30 seconds later, a 3 pointer came into investigate and circled my location for about 10 minutes before leaving the premises.  After he was out of sight, I repeated my calling sequence and called in the third buck of the day – a 5 pointer.  Unfortunately, that was the last deer that I saw.

As the sun went down, the wind picked up, and it finally felt like deer hunting weather.  This week should be some great hunting, a lot of does have been bred, bucks are looking and responding to the sounds of love.

I have saved this post for rifle season, but I made a gun purchase in early October in preparation for rifle season in North Carolina (and probably someday in Maryland, Iowa, and other states that require shotguns for deer hunting). 

Long story short, I got the gun on sale for dirt cheap, the Leopold scope on sale for dirt cheap, and a custom Hastings rifled barrel to throw slugs far downrange.  The only downside to the gun is the expensive shells that I am shooting…Remington hi-performance slugs, but it does command some impressive groups out to the 125 yards that it has been shot so far. 

I didn’t take the gun out on Saturday because of rain chances, but tomorrow I will hopefully debut the gun in the deer woods.  Maybe even put the smackdown on one.  At 375 grains, I think a smackdown is exactly what might happen.

I was impressed with the grain of the wood stock.  Beautiful cut of wood!