One Last Chance Before Gun Season

With a couple of extra days of PTO to take before the holidays (I have 17 days scheduled off work starting December 15), I decided to head down for a quick hunt before the early bow season split ended and the shotgun seasons started up. I left work early on November 30th and headed to Bass Pro Shops to pick up my boat on the way to the cabin. I got down to the cabin with plenty of time to get the boat stowed away, change, and head out to the county land stand.

Beautiful afternoon to be in the outdoors

Dad didn't get off work until 1:00, but had decided at the last minute to head down and hunt with me as well. He made it to the cabin with about an hour and a half of shooting time left and headed to the Ridge tree stand. On my way to the stand, I spooked a doe and dad saw some deer in the big food plot in the dark on his way back in but neither of us saw anything from the stand. It turns out that we should have found a way to sit on the food plots that evening because the trail cameras showed that they filled up with deer just before dark. 

The next morning, I headed to the DNR stand just south of my property line while dad headed to the cabin stand. With a clear night and a moon that was nearly full coupled with warm daytime temperatures, I didn't expect to see much in the morning and I was completely correct. Even though there were squirrels running around everywhere, there were no deer in sight. 

Sitting a pinch point overlooking an oak ridge on the DNR land

Even with the warm temps, I had high hopes for the evening. We really haven't hunted the food plots much this year at all and deer have been showing up in both the big and small field each evening. With a South wind, we would have to hunt the box blinds on each field. The small field food plot is long and narrow with most of the deer coming out of the far south end. With the blind on the north end, I knew it was very unlikely that they would make it all the way up into bow range before dark. With this in mind, over our lunch break I grabbed a tree stand and we headed over to the small food plot to find a tree on the east side closer to where the deer come out. 

The tree we found was leaning quite a bit, but we made it work and got a couple of good shooting lanes out into the plot. After a quick lunch and changing out of sweat soaked clothes, we headed back out, me to the new tree stand and dad to the big field blind. 

Looking northwest from the new tree stand

At about 4:30, a doe came into the food plot from the south and worked up the field edge just in front of me. Even though she was up wind and I was completely still and hiding behind a tree, just before she stepped into my shooting lane at 6 yards, she figured out something wasn't quite right. Over the course of the next 30 minutes, she would work her way into the food plot and back into the woods 5 times keeping her eyes on me the entire time. Finally, at about 5:00, she decided to take off up the food plot and head to the bean field to the north. As she went behind a tree (far left of the picture above) she was about 35 yards and I took the chance to draw back. She must have caught a little movement because she stopped immediately. after standing for about a minute, she turned around again and started heading back to the woods. She was too far out in the field for a shot in the opening to my left. My only chance was a small hole through tree limbs just before she reached the woods, but I had to sit down to make that shot. I had been at full draw for about 3 minutes and didn't have an exact distance on the shot. I guessed at 25 yards and with her on edge I figured she would drop a little so I put my 20 yard pin on her vitals and released the arrow. 

The arrow appears to miss low and my heart sank a little as she ran off into the woods. I grabbed my range finder and ranged the arrow at 35 yards (so she was probably just a couple closer than that). With just a few minutes of shooting time left, I got down and retrieved my arrow. Upon further inspection I must have actually hit her just below the arm pit as there was white hair and a little fat on the arrow with no blood. I checked the trail that she ran into the woods on and confirmed there was no blood. I walked further into the woods just to make sure, but it definitely wasn't a vital hit. On my way back to the cabin, I spooked about a dozen does and fawns out of the bean field to the north of my property. 

It took dad awhile to make his way back to the cabin as well because he had a similar experience. 2 bucks had come out into the big field food plot around 4:30 as well and took a long time to work their way close enough for a shot. The buck he shot at was quartering away slightly and wheeled away at the sound of dads shot. The arrow glanced off the bucks shoulder without penetrating at all. The buck didn't really know what happened and only ran a little ways before stopping and looking around and eventually wandering off. It took dad awhile to find the arrow in the dark as it deflected up and away from the deer. 

This was my 4th hunting trip of the year, and it ended up being another good one. We didn't see the numbers this time but I attribute that to the warm weather. The food plots have done very well, and with dad and I both having a late season muzzleloader tag along with our archery tags still in our pockets, it should be a GREAT late season! Oh, and all the extra time off work will help with that too. I plan to hunt the food plots in the evenings and try to do some still hunting and hunting from the ground near thick bedding areas on public ground in the mornings.