November 11th Deer Season Journal

Ryan and I finally got a chance to spend a couple of days bow hunting. A three day holiday weekend allowed us to head to our property on Thursday evening and hunt through Saturday afternoon.

On Friday morning I got up and noticed deer in the old garden food plot when I stuck my head out to see how cold it was. The next time I looked out there were two young bucks sparring. I went and got Ryan out of bed and we watched them push each other around for a few minutes. We're guessing that the larger of the two was a four point.

I spent the first two hours of the morning on the west side of the oldhouse food plot. We've been regularly getting pictures of a couple decent bucks at this plot all fall. I'd like to get a face to face with these bucks to see just how big they are but they have not cooperated to date and they didn't show up on this morning either. As a matter of fact not a single deer showed up to visit. I finished the morning by putting steps up to the stand on the east side of the plot and taking a break there.

We spent the afternoon cutting trees off of the logging road that had blown down on our last visit and we also put up Ryan's new treestand at the end of the hayfield.

For the evening hunt I sat in a stand near the hayfield food plot and Ryan went to a stand near the middle food plot where he shot a doe the first day of bow season.

At about 4:30 I saw deer moving away from me. I used the "Can" bleat and four deer came running into the hayfield near my location. They looked around nervously before turning and running back over the hill. It was an interesting reaction to the can, you never know for sure how they will react.

By 5:15 I couldn't stand the mosquitoes buzzing in my ears any longer so I headed for the house. It was a beautiful day with temperatures near 70 and plenty of sunshine. Unfortunately this nice weather isn't good for whitetail deer sightings but it sure brings the bugs back out.

Saturday morning I was a glutton for punishment and headed back to the treestand on the east side of the oldhouse food plot. Two hours later I'd not seen a single deer and was a little damp. The weather had changed from the sunny skies of the day before and rain was falling. Unfortunately the temperatures were still in the 60's and the deer were still sitting tight. I'll have to admit that I had bought a new pair of waterproof pants and had decided that I didn't need to wear them. It started raining as I was standing at the base of the tree looking for my misplaced hoist rope.

In the afternoon I moved a treestand in preparation for rifle season and spent about an hour in it. I didn't see a deer, but I did get rained on.

This deer drought is making it tough. I'll probably not be ready the next time a deer shows up. It seems that I get used to not seeing deer and can easily drift off and get sloppy. I hope I don't blow it when an opportunity does come along next week during rifle season.

The most interesting thing about this weekend was caught by one of our digital game cameras. On Thursday night we noticed a fresh scrape so we put one of our digital game cameras on it. Over the next two nights we got pictures of four different bucks.

These four bucks all showed up at night and the majority of the bucks that we saw on our game camera pictures were all active at night.

One of these bucks, a close racked eight point, was a buck that Ryan and I had seen back when it was still in velvet about a mile and a half from where we got this picture. We also had not gotten a picture of this buck before this occasion.

We got pictures of another buck checking both licking branches that were hanging over the scrape.

Return from November 11th Journal to the 2006 Deer Season Journal Index.