2015 - 2016 Deer Season Part 2 - Hunting

What a year! I would consider this the most successful and productive year yet. Although, as you will read, not everything went smoothly, it just felt like I was "in the game" every time that I hunted this year. Even with it being such a great year, I still learned a lot of lessons and plan to make some hunting strategy changes for next year.

My first hunting trip of the year was opening weekend, the first week of October. As I mentioned in my previous post, the primary purpose of this trip was to get tree stands put up on the boarding public land to hunt later in the year. Since I was headed down anyways, I decided to hunt a couple of evenings that weekend. The first night is one that I will never forget. I sat in a tree stand located on the big field food plot and the deer came out early. First out was a doe with twin fawns, after about 30 minutes, the doe made her way into one of my shooting lanes, but when I shot, she ducked and the arrow bounced off of her back. At that point, I thought the evening was over, boy was I wrong! Less then 5 minutes after retrieving my arrow, I noticed antlers coming up the ATV trail across the field. It took nearly an hour, but the buck finally made his way across the fields to within 5 yards, sadly, by this time, it was 5 minutes after the end of shooting light. Another doe and 2 fawns also came out for a total of 7 deer on my first sit. It was safe to say that my new food plot strategy for the big field was already paying off.

View during my first sit of the year

Big 10 pointer I saw on my first sit

The second night wasn't quite as exciting, but still very good. I sat overlooking the small field and had 2 fawns come into the food plot and bed down within 30 yards for more than 45 minutes. 

Fawn bedded down in the food plot
less then 30 yards away

The following weekend, I headed down to hunt with Brent, one of my neighbors. We didn't really see much, but that was expected because the weather wasn't great for hunting. 

Morning sit in the Ridge Tree Stand

Evening sit in the Cabin Tree Stand

The third weekend of October was extra special for me as I got to take my 4 year old daughter, Abigail, hunting with me for the first time. Again, the weather wasn't great for deer movement, but we did see a 1 1/2 year old buck while sitting in the new box blind overlooking the big field food plot.

Abigail trying out my binoculars

Playing Uno in the cabin

Abigail loves learning about the food
plots that we plant

Abigail snapped a picture of me trimming
some branches 

A couple of trips during late October did not produce many deer sightings. As a whole, the weather was abnormally warm, and that really limited deer movement.

1 1/2 or 2 1/2 year old buck cruising the
other side of the big field food plot

Dad and I spent 4 days hunting over the first weekend of November. We were lucky as a cold front had moved through the day before we arrived. The first couple of days produced A LOT of action, and sadly, several missed opportunities. On the morning of November 7th I had non-stop action that included getting a 25 yard broadside shot at a huge 8 point buck. I didn't quite understand why I missed, until I got down to check the arrow. It was then I saw the scar that I left on a small branch sticking out from a tree. That afternoon, I decided to sit in my favorite spot, the Ridge Tree Stand. A 2 1/2 year old 8 point buck cruised by early giving me a shot that I thought was 30 yards. Everything felt good as I released the arrow and heard it hit the deer. He ran about 15 yards, then turned around, allowing me to see the shot placement. I knew right away the shot wasn't lethal as he was hit in the leg just below the chest line. I was more then frustrated with myself at this point. I had already missed 3 shots this year, but this was the only one that was truly avoidable for me. After analyzing the situation, I had been using a tree that was 35 yards away as a reference. I thought the buck was about 5 yards closer then the tree, but on further inspection, he was actually on a trail that was along side the tree. I misjudged the distance. The next Morning, I nearly got a 10 yard shot at a doe, but she picked me off in the tree. Dad actually shot a doe that morning from the Cabin Stand, but hit her directly in the leg bone with a cut on contact broad head and did not kill her (more on that later).

Below are a few pictures from that weekend.

Bobcat kitten (1 of 3) that I saw with
their mother from the Ridge Tree Stand

County Tree Stand looking towards where
I missed the big 8 pointer

Picture of my shadow waving from the tree

I took one more trip to the cabin in November and had a couple more close encounters. It was this trip that I started to notice just how many fawns we had hanging around the property. In fact, I decided to call this the year of the fawn, which is really good for the future. It seemed like every day we had at least a couple of fawns walk by within range.

View from the Cabin Tree Stand
after a fresh snowfall

1 of 2 fawns that walked right by the tree stand

These fawns entered the field less then 5 minutes
after I got in the box blind

1 of 2 fawns that walked within range

This 1 1/2 year old buck gave me the slip

For those who have read my blogs in the past, you know that shotgun season has turned out to be very disappointing for us in previous years. With that, I didn't have high hopes going in, especially when I saw that warm weather was in the forecast. On a positive note, I had made plans for Justin, a buddy from high school, to come join us for his first deer hunt ever. After a lot of thinking, I decided to get an antlerless tag for first shotgun season and save my any sex deer tag for late season muzzleloader. Even with the warm weather, we saw quite a few deer during 1st season shotgun (although they were mostly fawns). On the first evening, during his 2nd sit ever, my friend Justin killed his first deer ever. He was hunting in the box blind overlooking the big field food plot when a 1 1/2 year old buck came out with a doe just a few minutes before the end of shooting time. He dropped the buck on the spot. I think it is safe to say that he is now hooked for life.

Justin with his first deer ever

View of the Ridge food plot opening morning
of shotgun season

Late muzzleloader season started the Monday before Christmas and ran through January 10th. The weather leading up to Christmas remained warm, but I decided to head down for a single day of hunting before traveling for the holidays. Boy oh boy, am I glad that I made that decision. That evening, I hunted the same box blind that my buddy shot his buck out of earlier in the month. With about 30 minutes of shooting time left, 2 fawns made their way into the food plot. 20 minutes after that, a 2 1/2 year old buck appeared in the south end of the plot. Although I had my bow along as well, I grabbed my muzzleloader as I didn't think he would make it into bow range by the end of shooting time. When I looked back up, a much, much, MUCH larger buck had come into the plot behind him. This buck was about twice the size of the first buck and my heart began to race like crazy. He stopped in the field quartering toward me, I put the cross hairs on his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. Of course I couldn't see much at first, but once the smoke cleared, I saw him running from the field with his tail tucked acting hit hard. I was so excited, but that turned to frustration and worry a short time later. Due to a lot of rain, the ground was very wet, and blood is difficult to see on the wet green food plot and wet brown leaves in the woods. It took me about 30 minutes to find exactly where he was when I shot, I followed the blood trail, very slowly, for another 45 minutes and made it about 40 yards into the woods. A lot was going through my head, but I was unable to find more blood and decided to stick around overnight at the cabin and resume the search in the morning. 

I woke up to pouring rain the next morning and my heart sank even more as now I knew I wouldn't have a blood trail to follow. In the rain, I headed to the last spot I had found blood the night before and walked the ridge with the trail that he seemed to be following back and forth looking for him. With no luck on that ridge, I planned to circle back to the next ridge over and do the same thing, but decided to swing through a thick bedding area on the county land on the way back and I'm glad I did. As I came up from the bottom of a ravine, I spotted his white belly and was overtaken by emotion. It ended up being a good thing that I stopped looking the night before, because I would most likely have bumped him. The shot was a few inches back, and since he was quartering towards me, I caught liver and stomach. With all the excitement, I managed to get him field dressed and drug back to the cabin and into the truck myself (no small feat). 

This is how I found him, in the pouring rain

Picture dad snapped before moving the deer to his truck

Trail cam picture of the deer I shot

The buck was a main frame 8 point with a split dagger sticking straight out from the base of his left antler. By far the biggest buck I have ever killed. Since I had to get home and rush to the in-laws to celebrate Christmas, I met my dad at a truck stop and he took him to begin processing. My dad has had a lot of deer hanging in his garage over the years, but he said this is one of the biggest. We ended up getting over 80 lbs of meat off of him (twice as much as an average deer that we get). 

With a tag filled and the freezer full, I decided to spend more time at home during my holiday vacation. I did make a couple of more trips to the cabin in late December/early January but I was focused on either filling my doe tag or killing another mature buck.

I took a trip down on December 27 to take down my trail cameras and the pop up blind on the small field food plot ahead of an ice storm (trying to learn from a similar storm last season), and decided to sit over the big field food plot that evening. It was apparent that the deer were really hitting the brassica portion of the plot. I ended up having a couple of 1 1/2 year old bucks come by, but I chose not to shoot.

Brassicas starting to get wiped out

A 1 1/2 year old buck at 25 yards

My dad still had an any sex bow tag to fill as well, so he met me at the cabin the weekend after New Years for a couple days of hunting. We both arrived in time to hunt Friday evening. Dad headed back to the box blind overlooking the big field, and I went to the small field. Within 15 minutes, dad was calling me to say he already had a deer on the ground. He had shot a doe, the 3rd deer killed from that box blind in it's first year. This was the 3rd year of planing a food plot in the big field, but the first time that we had actually killed a deer there, and 3 in the same year! As if that isn't enough of a story, it ended up that the doe that dad killed was the same one he had hit during early November. As he was field dressing the deer, he was able to retrieve the broad head that was still stuck in the leg bone.

The 2nd deer dad has ever shot with his bow

I actually had a pretty good night that evening as well. I had 5 different fawns come into the field, 4 of which were in range, as well as a doe. 

Button buck feasting on some brassicas

After talking with dad that night, I decided that I would cut the weekend short and cancel my trip down for the following weekend. The next morning was uneventful as the only deer I saw were 2 fawns as I was heading back to the cabin. We spent the remainder of the morning taking down the tree stands that I put up on the DNR and County land as well as pulling down all of the safety straps and tow ropes from the remainder of the tree stands. That evening I only really had one logical choice of a place to sit, and that was in the box blind. It was a very eventful evening. I had a fawn, as well as 3 different 1 1/2 year old bucks all within range, and I gave them all a pass. With that, my season had come to an end.

The food plots were getting torn up

Surprise, surprise, another fawn

In past years, I have included some stats that I kept for year to year comparisons, but this year there really isn't anything spectacular to share. I will say that overall number of deer seen was down a little bit, but we did have a much smaller percentage of sits not seeing deer at all. I think this really makes sense as we never got to see the larger groups of deer later in the year to bring those numbers up. It was an unseasonably warm season from start to finish, and the deer movement really showed that. The future looks bright as we sure did have a lot of fawns and 1 1/2 year old deer hanging around the property this year.

Even though it was a great year, I did manage to learn a few lessons. The first is an obvious one, I spent too much time hunting in October and not enough in November. I really need to get back to my philosophy of not pressuring the deer early and leaving certain stands alone until the rut. We also learned the value of utilizing the public ground surrounding the property as we had many great sits in those stands this year. The tree stands on the new ridge and East side food plot need to be moved back off the food plot a few yards. This will allow us more cover and less chance of deer in those food plots busing us in the tree. Lastly, we need to cut a path to access the tree stands in the woods without having to walk through the big field, on too many occasions this year we spooked deer out of that food plot walking in or out.

One final thing I would like to mention. I have decided this year to start making blog entries more frequently. Although it is fun, it really takes a lot of time and effort on my part to recall and order everything in these blogs after the season. So this year, I'm going to try to post a short blog after each trip the the cabin to do work or to hunt.

As always, a huge thank you goes out to my wife, because without her love and support (and many weekends spent home along with our 2 girls), none of this would be possible. I hope that you enjoyed hearing about my year, and thank you for reading!

2015 - 2016 Deer Season Part 1 - Preparations

Where has the last year gone? Honestly, I'm asking myself that every day as each year seems to go by more quickly then the last. As I was looking back at my notes from early in the year, it seems as if it was just a few weeks ago that dad and I headed down to the cabin to begin preparations for this past hunting season. In actuality, dad and I spent this morning in my basement grinding and packaging venison and discussing our plans for next season.

One of the side effects of planting food plots is that deer tend to stick around the property throughout the winter while bucks are shedding their antlers. Dad and I were able to find 4 shed antlers in the big field food plot while working down at the cabin in February.

ATL of the biggest find of the year

Dad with his first find of the year

4 shed antlers found in February

In March I took, Craig, a friend from work down to do some shed antler hunting. I think another thing I like about hunting for sheds is it gives me reason to get outside during a time of the year that cabin fever sets in. Craig and I walked my entire woods, but we only found sheds in the open fields.

Craig with a couple of our finds

3 antlers found in March

Of course the off season can't all be fun and sheds, there was work to be done! When designing my food plot strategy for the season, I looked back over my observations over the past couple of seasons. The first focus, and most work, was clearing and creating a food plot on the East side of the deep ravine. The food plot was located in a natural clearing in the timber but it would require us to carry all supplies across the deep ravine on foot. In February through April we worked to get the opening cleared and ready for planting:

Just getting started clearing trees

Food Plot ready for planting

Spreading lime

Ready to plant clover!

I was very excited at how well the clover established, but as the year wore on, the weeds became an uphill battle due to all of the rain that we got. In late July, I nearly wrote the plot off, but with the help of some 2-4DB, a couple of trimmers and my brother-in-law, Mike, I was able to get it back under control. 

Clover is coming up very well

Waist and chest high weeds greeted me in late July

We managed to get it back under control

Hunting over a beautiful clover plot in late October

The theme of micro food plots continued with clearing out a new food plot in the woods near the Ridge tree stand on the South end of the property. The goal of this food plot was to pull deer up from the DNR land to act as a staging area before they move out into the larger food plot in the big field. Preparation of this food plot began at the same time as the East food plot, but it would not be planted until fall. 

Future location of the Ridge Food Plot

Dad clearing out some down limbs

Putting the brush mower to work

Ridge food plot all cleared out

Lush plot of winter wheat and brassicas

With the edge feathering that was done last year, along with adding a food plot in the small field at the North end of the property, deer had really started to cross between the county land and my woods on a trail that was about 25 yards behind the cabin. We put a stand up there last year and dad shot a buck with his bow, but for the most part the deer seemed to move through there during the night. With that in mind, I decided to plant a small food plot along the drive to give the deer a reason to funnel through there more often.

Planting brassicas in early August

Plot came in very well even with a lot of pressure and little sunlight

I also planted some Egyptian wheat behind the cabin to help screen the cabin and yard from the plot.

Used Dad's garden tiller to prepare the plot screen

Egyptian Wheat doing it's job, the cabin is back there somewhere

I continued with planting the Dbltree rotation in the large field this year, but I decided to only plant about 3/4 of an acre on the south end. My goal in planting a smaller plot was to help concentrate the deer to a smaller part of the field, increasing my chances at getting a shot. The second reason was a hope that the smaller plot would help the deer to feel more secure so they would come out earlier in the evenings.

Burning off the plot screen from last year

Planting plot screen on South end of the big field

Mike helping to plant brassicas in early August

Planting cereal grains in the big field on Labor Day weekend

Abigail showing off a purple top turnip from the big field

Hunting over the big field food plot in October

Last year I had planted the small field on the North end of the property to clover and planted an Egyptian wheat screen across the end of it. That food plot really pulled deer in throughout the early season, in fact, that is where I shot a doe in early October last year. This year, I wanted to pull more deer in throughout the season, so I tilled under the clover in 3/4 of the plot, leaving the best looking clover on the South end as well as a path around the outside of the field, and started the Dbltree rotation. 

Mike pulling the disc across the small field

Cereal grains planted

Clover left at the South end of the small field

View of brassicas (left) and cereal grains (right) in early October

One other simple and inexpensive project that I tried this year was to put a couple of small kid pools out as watering holes. I placed them near well used deer trails.

Water hole added on North end of the property

Water hole added to corner of the ridge food plot

Another big change for the year was our tree stand philosophy. Something that I noticed over the past couple of seasons was that we never seemed to have much luck hunting tree stands that required us to walk through the heart of the property. We had tried to use the bottom of the deep ravine to access the stands but the property is just so small that getting in silently was a problem. With this in mind, I decided to pull tree stands from the middle of the property and focus on the edges and food plots. This would allow the middle of the property to remain untouched and hopefully allow the deer to feel more comfortable bedding and living in there.

Dad trims out a new stand location on the big field

My 4 year old, Abigail, took this picture of me
trimming out a tree stand behind the cabin

Another task for the year involved taking advantage of the public ground that borders my property to the West and South. During the early spring, dad and I did some scouting and found a couple of decent spots to put up tree stands. By having other options, it would allow us to put less pressure on my property as well as providing us new scenery on longer hunting weekends.

Stand on a high point on the DNR land to the South

Stand on a secondary ridge on the County land to the West

A snow storm late last season did a number on the 2 pop up blinds that I had out last year. We were able to salvage 1 good blind out of the parts, but we really needed another one. Dad set to work on building a modular box blind that would fit on top of the platform I had built 2 years ago. I decided to place it on the North end of the big field food plot which would allow it to be hunted on any south wind and even marginally on a West or Northwest wind. Learning a lesson from previous years, dad decided to paint the windows and interior of the blind black so that an open and closed window would look the same to the deer. Mom and dad hauled the sections of the blind down Labor Day weekend for dad and I to put up.

Working in the heat to put up the sides of the blind

Blind with windows open

Blind with windows closed

Rubber flooring to dampen noise in the blind

Abigail checking out the new box blind

View from the blind in mid-October

Of course, habitat managements and playing with tree stands and blinds aren't the only work that needs done down there. As anyone who owns a property can tell you, the work is never ending. All of the rain this year meant mowing, mowing, and more mowing...

Putting the trail mower to work

Mowing the small field

Dad mowing the drive

Mike mowing the yard

There were several other small projects that were completed as well

Trimming along the easement

Easement all trimmed!

Filled in a washout along the North ATV trail

Cleaned out and organized the shed

Put up a weather station

Added culvert to new North ATV trail

Trimmed back the trees along the cabin

Dad installed a much needed wall air conditioner

Another big project completed on Labor Day weekend was cleaning the cabin from top to bottom thanks to my mom and her 4 year old helper, Abigail. Although I don't have a picture of them working, it was quite the job.

Thankfully, it wasn't all work at the cabin this year either. In April I took my niece, Aubree, and daughter, Abigail to the cabin for the weekend.

Aubree and Abigail playing

Roasting hot dogs

Mouth full of smores

A trip down with my co-worker Craig to do some shed hunting and shooting was also a good time.

Craig's best impression of Gandalf

Craig got a chance to shoot his .22 rifle

I decided to try my hand at planting a pumpkin patch and it turned out very successful.

Hunter checking out the pumpkin patch

Hey look, a pumpkin!

Whoa! Lots of pumpkins!

With a 1 year old at home and a pregnant sister, we decided to forgo the family reunion at the cabin on Labor Day this year. That does not mean we didn't still have some fun.

Mom and dad taking a break from work
on a very hot weekend

Abigail picked some flowers

Playing with water to cool off

Reading a book with grandma

Late last year, my dog, Hunter, was diagnosed with Lyme disease. No doubt, the result of a tick bite while spending time at the cabin. There is nothing more he loves then being down there, but now I was kicking myself for not demanding more from my vet. After a shed hunting trip to the cabin in March, Hunter was favoring one of his front paws. I decided to try a new vet and it was determined the issue may be related to the Lyme disease. I also found out that, even though my previous vet said there was nothing they could do for him, the new vet informed me there was. We started treatment right away, but he required several weeks of being kept in his kennel all day to heal. Hunter missed a couple of trips to the cabin, but was by my side the rest of the year.

Ready for some shed hunting

Relaxing while watching 2 little girls play

Checking out the new food plot

Stuck in some Egyptian Wheat plot screen

It really was a phenomenal off season, and as you will find out in my next blog, a lot of the hard work that was completed payed off greatly. Check back soon for Part 2 where I will discuss my hunting season.