…after a 14 hour drive that started at 1:45 a.m. this morning.  Drive went smooth.  Overcast and drizzly all day – what I wouldn’t have given to be sitting in a stand instead of in a truck.

Shot our bows when we arrived at my buddy’s place and even saw a few decent bucks in our final descent to southeast Kansas.  800 miles logged on the Colorado and a SE wind in line for the morning.

I’ll be sitting a large bean field with a creek that wraps in behind me.  A solid 150″ buck was killed out of the stand about 4 weeks ago, and it is also the same field where I saw a 145″ buck last year during early muzzleloader season.

Dad will be sitting a food plot located near some old abandoned aquaculture ponds.  To say this area has thick cover surrounding it would be an understatement.  I’ve never sat the stand, but last year Nate Cline of Outdoor Insights smoked a 140″ 10 point with his muzzleloader.  Multiple bucks in the 120s-130s have been sighted in this hideyhole over the past 3 months and dad should be in for a good sit.

My buddy will be sitting in a narrow funnel along the riverbottom between 2 significant chunks of timber.  2 150″ class bucks have photo documented multiple times cruising past this stand, so everybody certainly has the potential to take down a P&Y in the morning.

Should be a great sit in the morning.  Hopefully we’ll all be into deer and I am looking forward to what the next 5 days will bring.  I’ll have my digital camera on stand with me – hopefully getting some pix of the action.

During the midday, we will be checking up on some food plots (a few of which haven’t been hunted  a single time yet this year) and pulling some trail cameras to see what kind of bucks have been active the last 6 or 7 days on our hunting ground.

Stay tuned…should be a great 5 days of hunting ahead.

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.

My last hunt of the whirlwind North Carolina hunting trip was spent in a ladder stand overlooking a big hardwood flat that was filled with raining oaks.  Warm temperatures squashed deer movement again and a strong breeze rattling the clinging oak/hickory leaves probably didn’t help either.

With just 20 minutes of shooting light left, I could hear a deer approaching in the “potato chip” dry leaves.  I was going to have to unload my muzzleloader when I got home so I figured if a doe showed up, I might as well make loading the muzzleloader worth my trouble.

Sure enough, it was a she.  I gave her over 10 minutes for a romantic partner to show up but he never did.  She was walking directly under the treestand at the extreme long range of 3 yards when she looked straight up in the tree and stomped her foot.  Mistake.

Not sure if the powder burns or the big sabot killed her, but we blood trailed her over 100 yards to her final resting place.  An average sized doe to cap off a tremendous weekend of hunting and supply some great eating venison.

She was kind of a special harvest because I hadn’t killed a deer with a muzzleloader in 7 years.  The last being a piebald deer in 2002.  Had plenty of chances to kill oodles of deer, but usually holding out for a big buck this time of year.

Deer #4 on the year and the vast majority of great hunting is still in this deer season’s future.

Kansas in 7 days…can’t wait!

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.

…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.