Blog Entries from the WeHuntSC.com blogging crew
This past weekend I didn?t get to hunt but twice due to the Christmas season activities? i.e. Christmas parties & a cantata. This is fine though because it was cold and wet all weekend and I enjoy seeing everyone during the Holiday season. So this blog post will be relatively shorter. The first time I went in the woods this weekend was on Sunday morning (yes we hunt on Sundays!). Sunday morning it was pretty cold. It was also very foggy and raining. I put on as many layers as I could and by the time I got to the stand I was sweating a little. It didn?t take long for me to cool down in this weather though! I went to the stand that Jason (the camera guy) and I put out last Thursday. I can tell you from the walk in that the deer are definitely back eating corn again. Man they had every cob cleaned except for one! I took a 360 view when it got light enough so you can see the setup.
It was so cold that I was literally hunched down in the stand just trying to stay warm. This is a 12 foot ladder stand hooked to an oak tree that is overlooking a small open area in the woods. The tree that the stand is on backs into a downhill slope, so directly behind me is a small valley. I had been sitting there and I wasn?t moving at all when I heard something jump, run, & gallop away very quickly. This sound came directly from behind me. I never moved and never even saw the deer, but I believe it was a buck as this deer was traveling solo and sounded heavy as it took off. That deer had to have smelled me or something because I wasn?t moving at all. He sounded to be about 20 ? 30 yards behind me coming up that small slope. I wish he would have been to his left about 50 yards because I may have had a chance at him. Anyway, that?s how it goes sometimes. They come from everywhere that you can?t see! As the deer ran off it blew 2 times. It sounded like it paused and started blowing again. So I took Adam?s advice and I blew back at the deer twice. Sure enough? the deer stopped blowing at me. Obviously this didn?t help me get a shot or anything, but at least it got that deer to be quiet. As I think about it now, this is the second time that I?ve been in there and heard deer blowing around me. If this happens one more time I may move the stand to a different location in there to see if it helps. Maybe sitting out on that hilltop allows my scent to spread more. Who knows? If you?ve got any insight on this, respond to this post! So about 2.5 hours was all I could take of the cold and wet and I went back to the house. This same morning my dad had gone down to the hunt over the soy bean field. They just started cutting the soy beans this week and so the visibility was a little better. He said he saw 4 deer in the field at about 350 ? 400 yards and he could tell that one was a good sized buck. Though, he said when he put his scope up that he couldn?t find the deer. It was so foggy that he said he thinks the scope was reflecting light or something off the mist in the air and it made it difficult for him to see anything (at that distance) in the scope. So while he could see them with his bare eyes, he couldn?t find/see them in the scope. Has this ever happened to you?
So Sunday afternoon I, like any good son, went back down to the soy bean field to see if I could see any deer! I did a 360 view of the bean field on my way in so you can see the setup.
I walked through the muddy field and ended up at the box stand underneath the tree. I like this stand because it provides a good wide area to look at, but it also makes it hard because you?re inside the box and have to move to see out of the corners. There are 3 windows in the box stand and in order to see the areas where the windows aren?t you have to move around a little. I usually like this stand early in the season because I can sit in there without getting torn up by mosquitoes! Then as the season changes and leaves fall I get into the woods more. This box stand is heavy and is constructed out of thick lumber. Getting it down under that tree was no easy task! Here?s what it looks like.
Once in the box stand I shot a video so you can feel the ?boxed in? feeling that you get from sitting in the stand.
I sat and sat and watched it rain and text messaged etc for a while. I then began to wonder if I could look through the scope and see the other end of the field with the mist & fog everywhere still. I put my scope up and I will say that it seemed cloudy inside of the scope. If you?ve ever looked through and old scope or a cheap scope you know that it isn?t clear or if it has let moisture in the scope then it looks somewhat foggy. This is the feeling I had when I tried to look long distances. I also wondered if the IPhone camera could look through the scope. I put it up and it can see through the scope, but it is hard to hold it still enough to do it.
Then right as it was starting to get dark, I saw movement of brown way down in the left corner about 350 yards (the same place my dad had seen the deer earlier that day). I put the scope up and dialed it all the way to 9. I watched the deer for a while hoping that a big buck would come out. It was getting really close to dark and it was getting more and more difficult to see the deer. I could have pulled the trigger, but it wouldn?t have been a good shot + I had to hurry to get to the Christmas Cantata at the church. If I would have shot at the deer I know I would have looked for blood for at least 30 minutes! So, even though I did have my safety off and wanted to, I didn?t force the shot. I sat there for about 15 more minutes and then left. That?s the weekend recap and next weekend will consist of both deer & duck hunting for me. Hopefully I can get some better footage next weekend.
Regards,
CBP
The bumper crop of acorns, all the full moons, the sun, feeding times, the weather - all reasons I?ve heard given by hunters as to why we aren?t seeing more deer this year. I went to our local processor this past weekend and he said things had been extremely slow in the past few days/weeks and from reading the article in the state paper, it seems that it?s a little slow everywhere. Don?t get me wrong, deer are being harvested, but it seems that the numbers of deer harvested are not at the level that they have been in the past. I do not take this stance from my own understanding of hunting, but rather from what I?m hearing/reading/experiencing all combined together. Does it seem slow where you are? Thursday morning I went hunting back out on the ridge again, but I did not see anything. After the hunt I decided to go walk through a different section of woods that I had not scouted yet this year. As I rode the 4-wheeler across the creek, I noticed how high the creek level was due to all the recent rains. I stopped and took a video of the 4-wheeler and creek to give you a look at the water flowing pretty quickly. This creek is usually very slow moving.
After going through the creek and riding over a bunch of muddy areas, I rode up the old logging road a ways and found a place to park that looked decent. I walked around on both sides of the old logging road for about an hour. I saw a few rubs here and there and it was really thick in some of those places. I finally walked into an area where the woods started opening up. I was about 75 yards in the woods when I heard some commotion. I looked up and 9 does where all jogging away from me through the woods. They were all good sized does too. It was weird because usually when this happens to me, the deer immediately dart away into the forest. Though, this time they went away, but it wasn?t like they were in a real big hurry. That?s how I was able to count them all. If I would have had my rifle with me (instead of lying on the 4-wheeler) I could have shot one of them, but I probably wouldn?t have. So, I obviously knew that deer were in this area of the woods and I continued walking around a little to see what I could see. I saw about 7 rubs within a 30 yard radius. On the way out from the location I also found a scrape. I pulled out the I-Phone and dropped a pin on the Google map to mark the location. I know, I know? technology and hunting meet each other and I ought to do it the old fashioned way right? I hear enough of that already. Anyway, I knew I was going to get a stand up in this location and a few hours later Jason had arrived and he helped me get the stand up. We winched it down and put out some corn. Thus, our camera man was in the building! So far the trend is that whenever the camera goes in the woods, the deer don?t move too much! (Murphy?s law at its finest). We went hunting on Friday morning and didn?t see anything, but did see a lot of squirrels. After the hunt we shot some short films on 4-wheelers & climbing stands. Hopefully you?ll see those up on the site in the weeks to come. I also got a short film of the camera guy (Jason) from my I-Phone. See it below:
Then of course we went and got some good old Bojangles and then returned to the house. We then went out to Central and started the state championship weekend. It was a good time and too much to type here, but in the end we lost the state to Dillon by 1 point? again! Man it was a tough pill to swallow and a few plays could have changed the course of the game tremendously. I will say that this season was a good example of what quality coaching can do for a team. You can see some of Jason?s pics from the game here Sunday morning we were back out in the woods at the stand that we put up on Thursday. The deer had eaten some of the corn that we put out as well. Man it was cold Sunday morning and the thoughts, images, & replays of the game the day before lingered in my mind during the hunt?we were so close! As the sun rose, the squirrels woke up and started running throughout the forest. Squirrels really have no fear of heights and don?t mind being extremely loud either. We didn?t see anything at all and about 7:45 we heard a deer blowing somewhere off in the distance. This deer blew about 9 times, which is the most I?ve ever heard a deer blow before in the woods. I don?t think it was blowing at us because the sounds were originating from far off. I hoped that something had alerted the deer in another area and that it would push them towards us, but it didn?t happen. After some engagement pictures, I went back hunting in the afternoon. My dad went with me this time and I put him in the stand that we had just put up and I went back to my climber. J.E. was hunting in the soy bean field. Right about dark-thirty I heard a shot. I got down from my climber and went back to the truck where I had dropped off my dad. He said he didn?t shoot and said he thought it was J.E. I called Mr. J.E. and he said that he shot at a nice doe, but couldn?t find it. It was so dark that he couldn?t search anymore and was going to return in the morning to see if he could find the deer. So that was a lot of hunting by me without seeing a deer. Maybe I?m doing something wrong! What about you and your area of the state? Is it slow there?
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."
I went duck hunting with Marty Smith & his son Josh Smith this past weekend. I showed up with only myself and a gun and Marty outfitted me with some waiters (which had a hole in them) and some bullets to shoot. I was a little unprepared I guess you could say, but I did have both of my stamps! Marty?s property backs into a swamp which is a creek that is dammed up by some beavers. It?s been there forever and I used to hunt there with Marty a lot when I was in middle school and high school. Since college and going back and forth to Europe I hadn?t been able to go in a while, but now I?m back in the game so to speak. I arrived to the shed a little early and took some pictures of Marty?s duck hunting home base. You scan see them below. It?s an old shed that is just what you would imagine it is and is just right for duck hunting. I like the feel of that shed...maybe because it throws me back to days when I was kid going hunting with the older guys or maybe because of the antique feel to it. I've heard many stories told in this shed as we would get ready to go hunting and then talk about how we missed ducks after the hunts. I assure you that no exaggerations have ever been made in this shed before!
Soon Marty and Josh arrived and we got our gear on and headed down to the swamp. We got out there before daylight and crossed a few dams. We had to get out a time or two and pull the boat over and then get back in. Eventually we paddled up into some cattails and wedged the boat in there real tight. He?s got some old burlap type of material in the boat that we use camouflage by draping it all over the boat. We also bent the cattails over the edges of the boat too. This really helped blend us into the swamp environment which is necessary because ducks eyes are so sharp that it?s critical to be well camouflaged. The day before Marty and Josh had shot a mallard, a wood duck, and a teal. I was hopeful that we would get some similar, good action, but in the end there were only 2 ? 4 ducks that flew in that we could see, but yet they were too far away to get a good shot. So I think I?m the ultimate jinx or something. Maybe they'll be better luck next time. Even though we didn?t get a good shot on a duck, it felt good to be out there in the swamp and to see some ducks fly again. I?m sure in time we?ll have a blog entry with some ducks on it. There is just something that is unique about being out their watching steam come off the water and hearing the distant call of a wood duck or a mallard. It?s a different feel for hunting than you get in a deer stand. One of those different feelings is the feeling of a wet sock when your waiters have a hole in them! Having a wet feet in a swamp doesn?t help you stay warm! Oh the joy, but it was a good experience and a good change of pace from sitting in a tree!
Anyway, I did shoot 2 videos that are up on our YouTube Channel and I have embedded them below.
360 View of our duck blind setup
Marty Smith calling in some mallards
Some pics from the morning
This past weekend was Thanksgiving weekend which represents many things for me. Thanksgiving represents time spent with family and friends, upper state championship football games, The Turkey Bowl, & a lot of hunting. This past weekend encompassed all of that and then some. I was able to hunt on Wednesday afternoon and I went out to my climbing stand on the ridge, but I did not see anything. On the way in I noticed that a buck made a scrape right beside a scrape and both were fresh. I?m not sure if it would be the same deer doing this or some other deer making a scrape beside another just to talk a little junk to the other deer! Lol! Either way it was a good sign to me. I sat out on the ridge and just passed time wondering about all kinds of stuff. One of the things I wondered about was how to integrate more imagery into my blog postings. I recently upgraded my phone to an IPhone 3Gs and it has video capabilities which are awesome. I shot my first video using the phone and instantly loaded it to YouTube from the deer stand. When it was over I shared the link with my mom and she was sitting in the den at our house and saw what I just shot minutes earlier from my stand. Pretty nerdy yet neat stuff. So, to give you a visual idea of what I see when I?m sitting on this ridge I have embedded the video below. The depth of the hill in the video doesn?t do it justice?and no, I don?t get real high in a climbing stand. I?m scared of heights!
So Wednesday?s hunt was nothing to talk about really other than figuring out a good use for my new IPhone. I?ll most likely try to include as many videos as possible when I can because I think it will be more interesting for any of you out here reading this stuff. Thursday morning I went to a different stand
Somewhere out there around the state there are some duck hunters getting prepared for this weekend! Yeah that?s right, you all know who you are. Make sure your waiters aren?t leaking and the reeds in your duck calls aren?t broken because the clock is ticking!
While I?m no pro at duck hunting, I do enjoy getting out in a swamp and watching the ducks fly in. There?s just something neat about it, just like there is something neat about watching deer come through the woods? you just have to have more licenses/stamps to hunt them legally, thus incurring more expenses!
It has been a while since I?ve gone duck hunting, but I?m excited to get back out there. When I was growing up we would go duck hunting in the morning before school. There were days when we would go hunting with our English teacher and at 6:45 we were chasing ducks for him and then at 8:45 we were taking his tests! It was quite the contrast and Justin Brooks and I have been known to get a truck ?stuck? in a swamp and show up late to school. Those were the good ole? days though.
So if you are a duck hunter, then speak it up on the site, message board, & post your images to the ?Post Your Visuals? page. I/we are interested to see what you?ve got going on and any bands that you collect. We are also thinking about having a duck calling competition on the site. If you think that is a good idea, let us know. If you are the ?Duck Commander? of South Carolina then prove it to us.
This coming weekend I will be guided by the self-proclaimed legendary duck hunter Marty Smith along with his son Josh. Marty has informed me that we may even get into some geese. Hopefully we?ll get some decent images to show you. We shall see and my future blog posts will tell the truth of what goes on!
I went hunting this morning and it was my first time wearing my new Coast Headlamp and I have to tell you that this thing literally lit up the forest. It is awesome! I?ve never seen a headlamp as bright as this before. Will works at Lowes and since they sell them he bought one to try out. He was wearing one the other day when we were hunting and he looked at me to talk to me and he momentarily blinded me?seriously. That?s how bright this thing is. So I told him to pick me one up from Lowes. It operates off 3 AAA batteries and you will be amazed to see much more visibility you have with this than others. The company is not paying me to market for them either! So if you?re in the market for a new headlamp, I encourage you to try one of these out. They even have the package where you can click the button to test it out before you buy it. Go into Lowes, pick it up, turn it on and see if you can look at it without being blinded. After you regain your vision, you may want to try it out.
As for the hunting, I had a 4 point come through the woods right at 8:30. I was just about to get out of the stand and he cut through the woods. He was moving relatively quickly too. I had hoped to get some good footage, but he was gone before I could get the gun-cam up. Going to check out some corn piles today and then will be back in the woods tomorrow morning.
This past weekend we were excited to hunt because we had our video guy down with the HD camera rig and we hoped to get some good footage to post here on the site. The Solunar Forecast said that the whole weekend would be ?average? hunting and it was about right.
On Friday morning we sat in a ground blind near a creek which is situated in a low, flat area of the woods. The creek and the valley surrounding it kind of makes a natural funnel for deer to come through. This is the location where many of the game camera pictures that we have posted on the site came from. At about 6:45 a deer either smelled us or saw us because it bolted down the hill to the right of the ground blind blowing at us from about 50 yards away. I only saw it for 1 second because the ground blind is situated behind a big tree and the tree obstructed my view. So I knew the deer were moving, but yet something alerted this deer that something was wrong and thus no camera action for this one. I believe it was a doe because I did not see any antlers.
We sat and sat and at about 8:40 we were ready to leave. As we unzipped the back corner of the ground blind a big white tail bounding away was all we could see. A doe was literally about 10 yards behind us and if we had sat in the blind for 10 ? 15 more minutes, we would have had the closest HD footage ever, but of course unzipping the blind spooked this deer. So hunt #1 was unsuccessful.
Since I?m assistant coach at the high school we were unable to hunt on Friday night. Saturday morning we went out to the soybean field and watched it as the sun rose. In this field you can literally see from as far right as you can see to as far left as you can see and it?s nothing but soybeans. The wind was blowing pretty well as a new front was coming in. The breeze was nice and those little black birds kept circling the field and making a lot of noise. After sitting for around 2 hours, we had seen nothing and headed out. Walking over and around soybeans is a good workout for your hip-flexor muscles. Since our stand is under a tree in the dead middle of the field, my hip flexors were burning by the time we made it back to the truck!
We left Pageland and headed to Columbia to watch the USC vs Kentucky game. It was a good game and USC prevailed in the end. We?ve got a former player playing there and he started so it was good to see him in the game. The game was a TV game which made it a long one and we headed out of Columbia around 4:15. The stadium traffic wasn?t too bad. We got home at 5:30, changed, and went straight into the woods. As we walked quietly through the woods we began to approach the deer stand. Three white tails bounded off the corn pile and back down into the woods. There were already 3 does eating the corn before we got there! Murphy?s Law here again. Jason took the camera rig up in the stand and I sat on the ground. Still, nothing to write home about. After the hunt I was exhausted and had to go to sleep early as I had burned the candle at both ends and was worn out! Too much fun for one day and I went to sleep.
Sunday morning Jason went with Will back to the ground blind and I went to the ?buddy stand?. Perfect weather conditions and Will said they saw 6 eating acorns in the middle of the old road on the way in. Though on the hunt we, again, saw nothing on either the buddy stand or ground blind.
Sunday afternoon came and we traveled to Kershaw County to a different plot of land over near Lynches River. There are coyotes out on this land and we hoped to see one of them as well. We had 2 different people in 2 different stands. Will was in a climbing stand in some planted pines and Jason was sitting in a tree-house stand watching over some planted peas. Weather seemed perfect and the scene was just like it ought to be, but nothing moving again. A lot of hunting without any good video footage or anything to write home about.
So all in all, the weekend was good, but we were not able to capture any good video to post to the site. We hunted in 4 ? 5 different stands in different types of terrain and either went in too late or left too early. Maybe I should change the name of the site to ?WeSpookDeerInSC.com? to give a more accurate representation of our hunting so far!
We?ll get the HD camera back out there soon enough and maybe we?ll get lucky. Until next weekend?
Here's an I-Phone pic of the HD camera in the ground blind
A shot from the outside
A shot from the last hunt in Kershaw County