Wanted to post this picture of one of my dad’s good hunting buddy’s first archery buck ever.  What a way to start with this fine Alamance County buck!  He got it done on the last day of 2009 archery season.  Congrats Jeremy!

…A miss that is.

I worked at my research site all day and had a couple hours at the tail end of the day to climb a tree.  Found the biggest concentration of white oaks on the entire 700 acres and got skinnied up the tree by 3:00 p.m.

I had barely sat an hour when I saw a doe coming in to feed.  She meandered around between 35-50 yards for 5 minutes before I tried bleating like a fawn to try and draw her close enough for a shot.  It worked like a charm and after a couple tense minutes of her cautiously advancing past my climbing stand location, I had a clean 15 yard quartering away shot.

You might remember that I spined the buck I shot last weekend in North Carolina at almost the exact same distance.  Compensating to what I figured would be a dead center punch, I put the sight pin on her hairline in tight to the shoulder and pulled the trigger on my release.  What do you know it…that’s exactly where my arrow flew.  One blade had hair and some blood on it, the other was clean.  I watched her bounce off and then just meander on down the ridge picking up water oak acorns.  None the worse for wear.

So, I couldn’t keep my hot streak going with archery gear but I am thankful that my miss occurred here in Alabama and not in Kansas next week.  Hopefully that will get that out of my system and I can refocus a possible shot at the biggest buck of my life next week.

Just telling the season like it is…good, bad, ugly.  Hope everyone has a good weekend hunting.  I’m headed out to Tuskegee National Forest in the morning for my final go-round of the Alabama archery season.

Smokepole season had arrived and the temperatures were cold again.  With lows around 30 degrees, I trekked into my climbing stand before daylight.  I was within 15 feet of my selected tree when I heard 2 bucks lock antlers in the darkness probably not 100 yards away in a pine stand.  As quietly as I could, I climbed the tree and got ready for shooting light.

It wasn’t long after daylight when I had my first sighting of the morning.  2 adult does were making their way downwind between my stand and the creek.  They caught my scent stream and hung around long enough making their minds up about what to do that I don’t think anything was following them.

Not long after they moved off, I spotted another doe all the way across the 200 yard wide hardwood bowl that I was hunting over.  I verified her sex through my binoculars and watched her wander up into a bedding area.  Within a minute or two, another deer appeared at the same exact spot but traveling backwards of the doe’s movement.  A quick head check showed this was no doe.  Big Buck!

2 nights before a monster 7 pointer showed up on one of dad’s trail cameras for the first time and here I was staring at him through my binoculars at nearly 200 yards.  The only reason I could see him was because the trees have dropped their leaves, but unfortunately they don’t also drop their branches and there was no way to even think about risking a shot.

He couldn’t hear my seductive bleats or my “come over here and kick my butt” grunts, but he did tune his ears into a snort wheeze.  No sooner had that sound carried over to him, he went bow legged and walked to the nearest American beech tree and made a scrape.  The whole routine – pawing leaves, licking branch, urinating down his hocks.

One of the scrapes he made under my binocular surveillance.

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Friday night was a solid 30 degrees warmer than it had been earlier that morning.  The warm temperatures effectively terminated the great pre-rut activity from the morning as well.

I sat in a cedar thicket along a hardwood corridor for 3 hours without seeing, smelling, hearing, or even sensing a deer.

Clint sat on the edge of barbed wire fence row looking into a 30 acre regenerating field.  He saw 4 does but they got downwind and the gig was up before coming into archery range.

The only good luck of the night was had by one of my dad’s good hunting buddies.  He made his first bow kill a fine one.  He grunted a 3 year old buck in from over 150 yards away and put an outstanding slightly quartering to shot on him.  Grosses near 120 and is just a beautiful North Carolina 8 pointer.  Pictures as soon as I get them in an email.

Took off from Auburn on Thursday afternoon with my buddy Clint to hunt for 2 days in North Carolina at my parent’s house.  My reason for the trip was picking up dad’s equipment for our upcoming Kansas archery hunt next week.  He didn’t want to pack his bow and other expensive equipment on the airplane, so it was a convenient excuse to come home and hunt the last day of archery and first day of muzzleloader season.

We decided to hunt a small 5 acre tract of land that funnels deer to an almost unbelievable extent during the rut.  We’re obviously not managing for trophy deer on 5 acres (although there are some great deer over there), so the option for shooting a small buck especially since it was bowseason was in play.

We positioned ourselves about 200 yards apart and the action began.  At 7:15 I grunted and not 20 seconds later a little 3 pointer is crossing the creek ditch and coming straight to a scent wick I had dipped in estrous scent.

Meanwhile, Clint is having deer cruise all around him.  A spike first, then a doe with her fawn come through.  No buck was following the doe and he tried to get a shot off on her, but she stayed just behind enough limbs to save herself.  She was traveling in my direction until another buck cut her off and chased her right back past Clint’s stand.  In the meantime, he had already had another buck cross the creek below him and cruise through the hardwoods in search of love.

Back to my stand…  20 minutes later I tried grunting again.  This time it took about a minute and 20 seconds, but the same result.  Here comes a 4 pointer.  At this point, I was concerned that I might not be able to get my bow drawn on deer to my east because I don’t have a lot of cover (none at all actually) on the tree I climbed.  I figured trying to get drawn on this lovestruck buck would be a good experiment.  Well, I got to full draw undetected and that old familiar feeling came back to me.  It felt so good that I just settled my top pin and squeezed the release.  I’m not sure if I shot a little higher than I wanted to or if the buck dropped down a couple inches, but the result was the same.  No tracking needed.

Looking back to my climbing tree.  You can see my climber still attached.

Back to Clint’s stand.  I text him to say I had caved in to the call of venison and he says all bets are off now.

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Put in my last 2 hunts before taking a few days to travel to central North Carolina for the last day of archery season/first day of muzzleloader season.

Last night I returned to the “Perfect 30 Yards” only to discover that I should have hunted the “Perfect 30 Yards” when it was the “Perfect 30 Yards.  Wow, a mouthful.  Bottom line is that I had found the first of many trees to start dropping loads of acorns.  Problem is that the other trees have caught up and what had been a 30 yard concentration of deer feeding activity is now spread out over a 5 acre ridge.  I couldn’t do a thing about it though because I hunted the stand the very first time that the wind would let me get away with it.  Sometimes that’s the way the cookie crumbles I suppose.

I did have a great hunt seeing 3 different bucks before darkness closed in.  A tiny 3 pointer led the way to the white oak buffet.

10 minutes later, a 2 year old 6 pointer came from the opposite direction.  Closest he ever got was 75 yards away, but he looked to be about 13″ wide with 5″ G2s through the binoculars.

Past legal shooting light I could see a spike buck walk about 30 yards away through a couple patches in the woods that were illuminated by the full moonlight.

I left my climber on the tree and went back this morning to see if I could intercept deer leaving the oak ridge (I’m set up on the very edge) and filtering back to the creek bottom where there is thick bedding cover.  Somehow, I got skunked even with all the acorns covering the ridge.

This picture was not manipulated at all.  There is literally 15-20 white oak acorns per square foot over a 300 yard by 150 yard area.  Unbelievable mast quantity!

After last night, I would have bet money to see deer this morning, but I believe the full moon definitely has deer on a little different pattern right now.  No worries, the woods were beautiful this morning and even got to watch my first Alabama groundhog for about 20 minutes.  They love acorns too I guess!

I finally got the wind I needed and the time I needed to be able to hunt the “perfect 30 yards”.  Slipped in about 2.5 hours before dark and got settled in without spooking anything.

The sign had dried up a little bit (still plennttyy of activity) because I think the surrounding mast trees have caught up in their acorn dropping.

Anyways, about 4:30 p.m. I heard deer walking my way.  Before I knew it, I was watching a fawn through the slats of my Summit climber with momma standing just 5 yards behind the base of my tree.

The fawn fed out to the oak tree, but ol’ nanny knew something wasn’t quite right and hung around the periphery while Bambi gobbled up white oak acorns.

10 minutes later my only encounter of the evening was over, but it was sure a beautiful night in the woods.

I’ll be heading back in this afternoon to hunt the same spot.  Still a good wind so I’m going to try and capitalize with some venison tonight if the opportunity presents itself.

Off of my second field testing experience of the week, this is my modified opinion of the 2-blade Rage broadhead.

Entrance wound was on the last rib angled forward through the chest cavity.  Note the vertical nature of the wound… I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Not bragging…but a clinic in shot placement.  Exit wound was perfect – again vertical.

Shot distance: 29 yards.

Click below to keep reading, one of the pictures I am including is a little graphic to be included for all my readers.

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Got done working on a class project on Wednesday afternoon early enough to justify a trip out to nearby Tuskegee National Forest just southwest of Auburn.

I was with my hunting buddy Clint and he knew of a good hardwood creek bottom from experiences a couple years ago.  When we arrived, the white oaks were raining hard mast so I headed south and he headed north from where we parked the truck.

I really thought I had screwed up my hunt when I walked too far and then had to double back towards the truck to find a good spot to hang my stand, but I guess that spot was just too good.

It was sure beautiful.

White oak ridge leading up out of a swamp to a pine cutover on higher ground.  Dogwood midstory.  Open understory because of some recent prescribed burns.  Custom made for deer foraging on acorns.

I hadn’t settled in longer than 30 minutes when I looked behind me back towards the swamp and saw a deer step into an opening.  There were a few water oaks in the standing water and it was picking around for some acorns.  I brought my binoculars up and saw that he was just a little yearling buck – maybe 5″ spikes on both sides.  Definitely a free pass.

He fed to within 30 yards, but even if he had been a 10 pointer I could not have shot him because he always stayed right behind some leaf cover or behind a tree trunk when he was broadside in a shootable position.  No worries…he wasn’t a 10 pointer.

He fed off and within 10 minutes my cell phone was buzzing.  I was hoping it was Clint calling to say he had shot a deer, but it was my wife making her customary call after she gets off work.  I whispered a couple minutes with her, but looked up to see a deer coming from the same direction the spike had just left.  Surely it was him coming back to the white oak feast on the forest floor below me.

Just to be safe, I quickly exited the conversation and pulled my binoculars up.  Slickhead.  Granted she wasn’t an ounce bigger than the spike that I had just seen, but no antlers meant she was a freezer candidate.

Unbelievably she walked right along the edge of the swamp past me at 45 yards before angling up the hill to eat acorns directly on the other side of the tree trunk that my climbing stand was attached to.  She wandered back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, until finally I thought she was going to clear the vegetation and the tree trunk and give me a shot.  Then she turned back and forth and back and forth.

8 minutes later, I was still looking for my first shot opportunity.  By this time I pretty much knew every yardage in her direction and when she entered the opening to the right of the old rotten log on the ground.  (see picture below).

29 yards quartering away, ranged and re-ranged.  I focused on her through the peep, came back off my sight to double check my form, settled back in and squeezed the trigger.

I didn’t see the arrow in flight, but it felt like a good shot.  She bolted back into the swamp and I could hear her splashing water as she ran.  After 3 or 4 seconds, I heard her stop and then the sound all bowhunters love – CRASH!

Long story short, I met Clint back at the truck, grabbed a drag rope and knife, and got back on the blood trail just as night was falling.  70 yards later, we made the recovery.

She was a yearling doe weighing about 75-80 pounds and my second public land deer of the week.  It was a perfect sh0t as the arrow entered on the last rib and transected her vitals before exiting the opposite shoulder.

I’ll save the rest of the broadhead damage, penetration, blood trail information for the second part of the Rage Broadhead review that will be coming to you tomorrow.

Oh yea, I can’t forget yesterday’s lunch after I skinned out both my deer.

Does it get any better?

As promised, here is a review of my first experience with the Rage 2 blade broadhead (not the KE version).  I will present facts, not flimsy “campfire” theory.

From last Friday night:

17 yard shot broadside.

~75 yard bloodtrail with “Stevie Wonder” sign.

As advertised – a gaping entrance wound.

Vitals: double lung

However, both blades were gone from the recovered broadhead.  The buck carried the arrow for around 30 yards before the arrow backed out the entry side of the deer and fell out.

I wish I could tell you that the broadhead had penetrated through scapula and that’s why the blades were broken out, but that is not the case.  I inserted a dowel through the entrance and exit holes and you can obviously see it was well back from the danger area of the shoulder bone structure.

The broadhead entered the deer in a horizontal position and broke 2 ribs on the nearside.  Careful inspection of the exit hole in the deer revealed that another rib was broken, but that one of the blades was not present when the exit hole was made.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find either blade while skinning the deer this morning leading me to believe that both blades ended up in the viscera which was left in the woods at the field dressing site.

Opinion:  Glad I didn’t hit shoulder blade.  Even with good penetration, that doesn’t do me any good if the broadhead isn’t cutting anymore.  You don’t have to worry if fixed blades are going to be still attached after penetration of a ribcage.  On the plus side, arrow flew true, great entrance and exit wound even without a blade on the exit side, great blood trail (one of the best I’ve followed).

But the jury is still out because I already have a second opinion.  That’s right – my arrow flew true again last night (Wednesday).  Another public land deer!  I’ll bring the hunt story and second part of the Rage broadhead review to you tomorrow.