First of all, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I have been on the road for work, so I am just now getting to my weekend blog.  I hunted Thursday through Sunday and wasn?t all that successful.  However, I did get some video to share with you guys.  And even though there was not many deer sightings, I did get to spend time in the woods and that is a gift in itself.

Thursday morning I sat in the stand across from my house and right next to my uncle?s house.  Walking into the woods I spooked some deer and felt the aftershock.  I sat from 6 a.m. until 11 a.m. and all I saw was squirrels.  I got in the stand around 2 p.m. that evening.  My dad sat in the wooden stand that overlooks a 2 acre plot of Biologic.  I sat in a 20-ft metal buddy stand overlooking a half acre of Biologic.  Again, no luck.  When am I going to see some deer!

Friday morning was no better.  I got situated in the wooden stand, in the field, about 6 a.m.  When the sun rose, all I saw was FOG!  I sat until about 10 a.m. and decided to get out because the fog was not any better.  Friday evening I did not end up going hunting because I fell asleep from 12 p.m. til 4 p.m.  So I just got ready to go watch them Eagles beat down Abbeville for the Upper State Championship.  On that note, good luck to you guys this Saturday for the State Championship. 

Saturday morning I faired a little better.   I did not see multiple deer, but at least I saw A DEER.  I went back to the lock-on stand across from my house.  When I stepped into the woods, I was praying I would not hear deer running away.  Luckily I didn?t.  It was about 5:50 a.m. when I got situated into the stand.  Around 8:30 a.m., I had all but given up on seeing a deer when I spotted a body coming out of the thicket in front of me.  As it approached the corn pile, I thought it was a doe.  I pushed the safety off of my .44 Mag because I had made up my mind that I was going to shoot a doe if I saw one.  Just to make sure the deer was a doe, I picked up the binoculars.  Good thing I did because I spotted inch long horns on top of the deer?s head.  So I put the safety back on and just enjoyed watching the deer.  I really wish I would have had a camera because it was very neat watching him eat the corn on the cob.  He would eat all the corn on one section of the cob and then roll it with his nose and eat another section.  Something I did not understand was why he was being picky on which cobs he would eat.  He literally sifted through all the corn to eat certain pieces.   At one point his nose was itching, so he used his right back leg to scratch it.  When he finished scratching, he must have irritated his nose because he sneezed.  When his belly was full, the deer started moving toward my stand headed to the road behind me.  Soon as he started my way, I reached for my phone because he was going to walk within 5 yds of me and that would be close enough for my phone to pick him up.   He passes really close to me and heads across the road.  I sat until around 11 a.m. and then got down.  Before getting down, I shot a 360° view of from my stand so you guys could see just how close it is to the road and my uncle?s house.  I am not sure if you can?t distinguish my the house, but you definitely can see the road.  The clips of the deer and the scenery from the stand are below.

Saturday evening I went hunting with the rest of the WeHuntSC Team on Will?s property.  But first, I had to watch them Gamecocks own the Tigers.  GO GAMECOCKS!!!  Even though none of us had any luck, it was cool to have a change in scenery.  Will and his dad really have a nice setup out there.  Hopefully the next time I get down, we will have a little more luck.

Sunday morning, I again suffered from the disease called laziness.  I had my alarm set for 5 a.m., but I must have turned it off and went back to sleep.  I didn?t end up waking up until close to 10 a.m.  At least I got caught up on my sleep!  Sunday evening, I went and sat in the wooden stand in the field.  I didn?t have any luck, but I did get some good footage from the stand.  Check out the video below.

If I get to hunt this coming weekend, hopefully I will have some footage of deer.  Not scenery!!!

Have a nice week and good luck hunting!

Adam

 

	See the article online here

By BO PETERSEN - The (Charleston) Post and Courier

In the Lowcountry, after God, country and family, there's deer.

Young and old spend the entire year primed for fall season to open. They scout stand sites, set up motion-detecting cameras, run the dogs and watch the ground for telltale hoofprints.

A freezer of venison makes a winter; a rack on the wall is a story to tell. Hundreds of acres of corn, oats and rye are planted, and bags of corn are dispersed to lure big bucks out of the bottoms.

But sometimes they just don't come. Three-quarters of a million deer are estimated to live in South Carolina. A quarter-million bucks and does were reported harvested last year.

This fall, hunters find themselves sitting over food plots alone.

"They're not seeing the deer," said Trey Hoffman of Palmetto Deer Processing in Moncks Corner.

"The deer just aren't coming out to the fields," said Kyle Jones, manager of Echaw Creek Plantation in Berkeley County.

"It's not that the deer aren't there. There's plenty of deer track. There's plenty of deer moving," said Jacob Casa, of Ravenwood Hunt Club in Ravenel.

What it is, is the acorn. Maybe the best nut crop in 10 years is raining out of the oaks into the bottoms. That's like Haagen-Dazs to the deer, said Michael Cordray of Cordray's Venison Processing in Ravenel. And when there's ice cream lying right at your hoof, you're not going to go looking for corn.

The summer rains that brought the acorns also brought honeysuckle, greenbriar and other browse, or gazing food, that deer prefer. All that and warm weather has deer staying in the bottoms to feast and lying low until the late-night chill. It's one of those natural cycles. The better years for growing deer food usually turn out to be better years for acorns.

Some hunters are bagging deer. On Friday morning, more than 30 harvests already had been brought into Cordray's processing plant a few hours after opening. Two club hunters who brought in five deer said 20 more were spotted.

But a lot of the success has been among hunters who take on the sludge into the deep woods to stake out an acorn-rich oak tree.

So the season's a bust? Not so fast. Hunters said deer were moving when the night turned cold Thursday. The cold is thought to get them moving.

"The frost will kill the browse and sour the acorns. I think the hunting will be a lot better," Jones said.

"It ought to be pretty positive for the rest of the season," Casa said. "The bottom line is, you're not going to be able to harvest any deer sitting in your house."