This past weekend?s weather conditions were exactly what I have been waiting on all hunting season.  We finally received some cold and calm weather. I could barely sleep from the anticipation of that first morning hunt on Saturday.  I chose the lock-on stand across from my house because the wind was perfect and I have been getting pictures from my  trail camera all during the morning hours.  Though, these pictures have not been of a buck I would like to take, there have been some nice size does.  So I opted to take my bow and see if I could get my first bow kill.  It rained for the most part that morning, but it was a very light rain and it tapered off around mid-morning.  I just knew with the cold morning and the rain deceasing, I would see some action.  I was wrong I didn?t see anything.  I sat until about 11 a.m. and got down and grabbed my trail camera.  My camera had some good pictures, but again, not of any bucks I would like to kill.  There was one promising young six point that is going to be nice in a year or two.  But the majority of the pics were between 7:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. and had several between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m.  Even though theses deer have been coming out between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., I opted to wait until 3 p.m. to go hunting because COLLEGE FOOTBALL was on!  Even though most games did not go the way I wanted them to, I still enjoyed watching them.  After watching a little bit of football, I went back to the same stand in hopes to kill a big doe with my bow.  Still nothing.  At this point, I was getting discouraged.  

This weekend turned out to be a pretty good weekend of hunting.  I didn't see a lot of deer, but I did have an interesting encounter.

Saturday morning I decided to get in the stand right across the road from my house.  Let me take a second to describe the location and setup of this stand.  The stand is a lock-on that is 16 feet high, but on the edge of a little ridge.  The road to my house is literally about 60 yards behind the stand.  I can watch the cars go by while in the stand.  If that wasn't enough, my uncle's house is maybe 80 yards to the back right of the stand.  So as I watch cars go by, I can also watch what's going on at my uncle's house.  Before leaving to go get in my stand, I chained my dog up (more on her in a moment).  I got in the stand right at 6 a.m.  Not long after getting in the stand, I thought I heard some deer blowing at me off in the distance.  I thought to myself, "There is no way these deer are winding me".  The only way I hunt in that stand is if there is a Northern wind, which means the wind is blowing in my face toward the road.  Around 6:30 a.m. I hear deer blowing, only this time they are not far in front of me down the ridge.  I thought my hunt was over, which sucked because I expected the rut was on.  After hearing the deer blow a few times, I remembered something I read in a book called 101 Deer Hunting Tips:  Practical Advice from a Master Hunter (Peter Fiduccia).  In the book, Peter talks about what to do if a deer starts blowing at you.  He says you can blow back at the deer.  If I knew where my book was I would quote the actual sequence.  The gist is that you let the deer blow twice and you blow back once, something to that effect.  I blew back at the deer after it blew several times.  I traded a few more blows and the deer finally quit.  Shortly after, I heard a deer grunting and caught a glimpse of a deer moving through and opening in front of me.  I peered through the binoculars and could see horns on the deer's head, but couldn't tell how big it was because it was standing broadside.  While maintaining visual of the deer with the binoculars, I reached in my pocket, pulled out a primos estruous can, and let out at few bleats.  The buck did nothing.  I tried the grunt call, still nothing.  He just stood there broadside and eventually walked behind some trees and I thought he had left the scene.  Soon as he disappeared behind the trees I saw a doe cross the opening.  Right after she left, the buck crossed on her trail trotting and grunting.  That was the coolest thing I have ever seen.  As much as I have hunted, I had never seen a buck chasing a doe and grunting.  Unfortunately, that was my only encounter with deer for the rest of the morning.  When I got out of the stand, I quietly went and grabbed my camera that was down by the little ridge.  I check my camera and found that my dog, Daisy, has been going down to my corn pile pretty much on a daily basis.  On top of the corn, I poured a couple of bags of Buck Grub and apparently Daisy likes it as much as the deer.  However, her visits to the corn pile didn't deter the deer from visiting it as well.  I got a lot of pictures of yearling bucks with does coming out between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., which is a positive sign for hunting the middle of the day.  I only had one picture of a decent size buck, but it was taken at night time.  Let me take a minute to say that even though I only had one picture of a bigger buck at night, it doesn't mean he wasn't out there with the other deer during the middle of the day.  It just means that the bigger buck didn't happen to walk by the camera. 

Saturday evening, I went and sat in the stand overlooking the 2 acre food plot of Biologic.  I had a deer wind me right before stepping out into the plot and ran off.  That was the only deer for the evening.  That night, I met up with Clint and Will to do some brainstorming.  While we chatted, Clint and I drank us a Wild Life Energy Drink.  I thought it tasted good and it definitely gives you some energy.  I think I drank it around 9 p.m. and couldn't get wound down until close to 1 a.m.

Sunday was just a wash, literally.  I sat in the rain and cold all evening and didn't see anything.  My mom and dad think I'm crazy for sitting out in the rain like that, but you can't see the deer if you ain't out there.  So it doesn't matter what kind of weather it is, I'm going to be in the stand!  Even though I didn't see but two deer, I had a blast hunting.  Anytime I can spend out in the woods is a blessing to me, deer or no deer.  I hope to get a lot of hunting done between this coming Thursday and Sunday.  Hopefully my next blog will be me telling you about the monster buck I killed, but we'll see.  One can only hope.  I did get my camera back out and I still have my other camera out that I haven't checked.  Maybe I will have some pictures I think are worth sharing next time.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Adam      

This past weekend we were in the woods a lot.  We hunted, scouted some new land, and moved two stands.  The Solunar calendar forecasted this weekend to ?Average?, but I think the fact that we?ve had a few days of cold weather made this weekend better than ?Average?. 

Friday morning I was in the woods before daylight and the moon was so bright that the trees were actually casting shadows in the forest.  It was neat to see.  It was crisp and cold out.  The weather was perfect.   I didn?t see any deer, but I did see some squirrels and a wood pecker.  That woodpecker had the brightest red head I?ve seen.  Our corn is still sitting out there not being eaten too much at this point.  There are still tons of acorns out and about for the deer to munch on.  About 3:30 on Friday afternoon I went walking in another section of woods that we hunt on and I found 2 good rubs.  I bent down to take a picture of the first rub when I heard a loud blowing sound.  I looked up and all I saw was white!  There was a deer about 50 yards from me up the hills in the woods.  I couldn?t see if it was a buck or a doe, but I do know that it was big enough to be shot!  I couldn?t believe that a deer was out there walking around at this time of the day?but then again maybe it was bedded down and I jumped it.  With two rubs, multiple scraps, and seeing a deer at 3:30 in the afternoon, all signs pointed to this being a good location.

	The rub I saw on that big tree

Saturday morning I was back in the woods at a different stand in some thick woods on another ridge between pines and oaks.  About 30 minutes after daylight I had a small bodied deer come ?sprint-jogging? through the woods.  He wasn?t burning through there, but he wasn?t just trotting either.  He had his nose down and was on a mission as if he was going somewhere.  I believe he was trailing a doe and he didn?t care who knew it.  I heard him from way out as he didn?t have his mind on being stealth or quiet.  He passed through the woods very loudly crackling leaves as he went by.  He came by about 40 yards out from me and never raised his head.  He stopped for a split second behind a tree and then kept on trucking.  I only got to see him for a few seconds, but he was so small I wouldn?t have shot him ( or better said? shot at him) if I could have.  Though, it was good to see some action in the woods.  I grunted a few times later on with no luck or response from other deer in the area.

Then we all met up and started working in the woods.  We took 2 stands and 2 corn feeders down and moved them to new locations.  We always say that we don?t do enough of this kind of stuff?scouting out areas and putting stands in new positions that is.  I think it?s true too!  We ought to work harder and be more persistent with it, but we just get busy with other things in life and let it slide.  So as we were putting the second stand out we walked through the woods in an area that has some steep hills.  This was back near the area where I jumped the deer on Friday.  Though this time we walked and scouted a whole lot more area than I initially had on Friday.  We crossed a creek and went up to another side of the hill when we found a nice rub on a large tree.  No small buck did this.  I took a picture of it and we continued scouting.  We?ve got a stand not too far from that area so we are still trying to figure out what to do with that area of the woods. 

Saturday afternoon we went back out in the woods on a totally different track of land where we frequently see coyotes and foxes.  We had 3 people and we didn?t see anything.  We did see a huge track in the sand as we walked in though.  It was a bit warmer on Saturday afternoon.  When it got dark we went to leave and we stopped by the game-cam to see what had been going on by the climbing stand.  The climbing stand is positioned in some planted pines and there are two huge scrapes right beside it.  After taking the card out of the game-cam, we now know what is making those scraps.  This buck or (bucks) is working this scrap line.  Will thinks that these are two different bucks, but I think the images are of the same buck.  What do you think?  So thanks to Bushnell, we know that there are some quality deer working the area.

	A close up shot of the image

Sunday afternoon I was back in Pageland on a different stand.  I sat there and heard acorn after acorn fall to the ground and the squirrels were having a field day.  Right as the sunlight started fading, I saw a flicker of white up the hill from me about 60 yards out.  It was a deer, but I couldn?t tell if it was a buck or a doe due to the dense forest between us.  I have a ?gun-cam? strapped to my gun and the first thing I did was to turn it on.  The lens is strapped to the barrel of the gun and the actual recording unit is inside of my pocket.  That deer stood in one spot on the hill for about 10 minutes before it moved.  It was moving its head up and down, up and down, up and down.  I think it was rubbing on a little tree over there.  Finally, the deer started heading into the clearing where I was.  This deer had a dark coat on him in comparison to the ones I had seen previously this year.  It was a small 4-point buck.  I knew I wasn?t going to shoot him, but hoped for at least some good video footage to put on the site.  So I put my gun up and followed him through the woods.  He walked 5 yards behind our pile of corn and didn?t even give it a thought.  He went out of one thicket, through the clearing, into another thicket and he was gone.  I filmed him for 4 minutes and 15 seconds.  When I got home I looked at the footage and he was too far out for the gun-cam to get a clear shot of him.  I?m going to zoom in some more on that camera and hope for a better video shoot next time. 

So that was the weekend in a nutshell?oh and we did win our 1st round playoff game against Mid-Carolina.  All in all I think the cold weather has the bucks out and about more now than in the past.  Hopefully we can catch that big one out during the day time at some point.

Regards,

Clint