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.

…has been found.

As bowhunters, we should all be seeking to find the perfect 30 yards in our respective properties as the weeks go by in hunting season.

The problem with finding the perfect 30 yards…

*That’s an awfully small area

*Tough to scout some places midseason because they are to close to bedding areas

*There isn’t always a great place to hang a stand in the “kill” zone

*It is continuously changing as new food sources become available and the rut comes and goes

But, I found it this morning.  A giant white oak surrounded by 4 or 5 of its progeny.

Deer poop, deer poop, acorn, acorn, acorn, poop, acorn, poop, poop, poop, acorn, acorn, acorn, acorn…

Notice I didn’t include leaves…  You nearly can’t see the ground for all the acorn hulls, acorns, and deer droppings.

I’m excited to get back in there when the wind gets right.  Should be a heck of a sit!

By the way, Hunt #6 is in the books.  This morning I sat on a green field for 2 hours, but saw nothing.  Plenty of activity going on inside the plot but most of it is happening at night which was obvious by the abundant tracks between dawn and the heavy rains we had last night around midnight.

Hunted back down at Barbour WMA on Saturday morning.

I had scouted an awesome place to hang a climber for bow season, but was sorely disappointed when I arrived after a 1,000 yard hike that the area had been clearcut within the last month or so. Talk about bummed.

Turns out that I still almost rolled the dice right because on my way out of a fruitless 3 hour sit on stand, 3 or 4 deer had walked a trail just 50-75 yards away over my boot tracks from earlier that morning.  It made me feel a little bit better that I was close to deer and now I know where a really good trail is close to where I set Saturday morning.

Not much to report though.

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.

I had to run a colleague some equipment for deer darting yesterday morning at 5:30 a.m., so I took the opportunity to take sort of an observatory post overlooking a small “kill” plot not too distant from the University.

It was a beautiful morning with temperatures not far above freezing, but the deer weren’t moving in my vicinity and all I saw was  a bunch of songbirds and a squirrel or two.

Then, yesterday evening I had promised to hit the woods again with one of my PhD buddies in the department.  Unfortunately, the wind wasn’t right to get back into the scene of Friday night’s crime, so we tried another hardwood bottom we had scouted back in early September.

The deer sign and acorns were not near as abundant as we had hoped, and our sightings reflected that.  We both had turkeys roost within 50 yards of our trees, but no deer were seen.  But as always, great to be in the woods.

The weather has been so beautiful the last 4 or 5 days, but opening day came and went without my being able to get into the deer woods.  Friday morning I was lazy and hit the snooze button.  But Friday afternoon did find me in a tree.

I headed down to a public land spot on Barbour County WMA that my buddy and I had scouted out a month and a half ago.  When I got into the spot, I was pleased to see and hear acorns dropping with every gust of the wind.  I had almost made it to my selected tree when a doe and a fawn jumped up and crashed off into the undergrowth.  Talk about deflating!

15 minutes later, I was positioned 20 feet off the ground, bow holder screwed in, safety harness in working order, shooting lanes ranged, broadhead double and triple checked, and cell phone shut off.

To the north, almost a square mile of open pine savanna.

To my east, a 40 yard shooting lane with several oak trees dropping.

To my west, more oak trees.

And straight ahead to my south was this little creek at 25 yards.  Oak trees for 20 more yards, then 300 acres of 15 year planted loblolly pines.

I was positioned in a  hardwood funnel between the 2 different planting of pine trees with the wind in my face.

About an hour and fifteen minutes into my sit, I thought I heard a deer popping an acorn.  Using my binoculars, sure enough…a deer’s leg about 60 yards to my west and heading in my direction.

Trying to pick through the thick understory of leaves, I finally managed to see one side of the deer’s head and hark…antler!  Unfortunately, that side only had 2 points which had me thinking this buck was not legal.  15 more seconds of glassing though and he had 3 points on his other side.  A legal buck!

Because I was on game lands in Alabama, my level of selectivity was at the same level of the legal limit.  In other words, if it was a doe without spots or a legal buck, I’m shooting.

He sauntered into range like he was reading the script, but when I came to full draw he made a wandering movement that preserved his life.  Off he went sucking up acorns.  I let down.  Here he comes again, I draw…he saves himself.  I let down.

At this point, I thought I saw more movement where the original deer had come from.  A quick binocular check revealed a second legal buck.  Easily weighing 20 to 25 pounds more than the one I had teasing me at the present.  His rack was broken off on one side, but his intact side carried 4 legal points.  Now, I’ve got 2 choices.

At one point, the half-rack gave me a good opportunity but when I tried to draw a bead on him, he was so close the stabilizer on my bow was contacting the metal of my climber.  While I was gawking around my peep sight trying to determine my next move, my cam grabbed and jerked the arrow back down making a couple minor metallic noises.  Not minor in the deer woods though.

The 5 pointer jumped back in the direction of his initial approach, but the half rack bounded in the opposite direction.  I was between them.  Definitely a good situation considering what could have happened.  After a 2 minute standoff, the half rack decided he would be safer with his little buddy.

Trust me…keep reading!

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We’re finally done.  4 looonnnnggg weeks of not much sleep but getting to do one of the best jobs in the whole world….darting deer.

Last night wrapped things up with one of my fellow PhD students darting a good 10 pointer we like to call the “Mainbeam Buck”.  His beams aren’t actually that much longer than a normal deer’s would be, but his rack formation makes it look like they go on for a long ways.

He had all the body characteristics and tooth wear of a classic 4 year old.  Gross score was 130 and a half inches.

With a rainy front on the move, we didn’t even have to wait for darkness to get a dart in our final buck of the 2009 buck darting season.

All our GPS collars are now in the woods and taking locations.

Stay tuned for the end of this week and the next 3 and a half months.  We are switching from catch-and-release hunting to the real mccoy.  Bow season comes in on Thursday and I don’t plan on slowing down much until deer seasons wrap up in the end of January.

I’m going to try and bring hunts to you day-by-day…picture heavy as in seasons past.  Hopefully harvest heavy too.  I’ve got a chest freezer that is yearning for a bunch of venison.