October 20th Deer Season Journal

I got up early on the morning of the 20th and headed to our hunting property after dropping the kids off at school. This wouldn’t allow me to hunt the prime morning hours but any time in the woods is time well spent.

Three deer were lying in the hayfield when I first headed out that lazily got up and ambled off as I went by. I got to the oldhouse food plot at about 11:00 AM where a spike and four point buck were waiting for me. I was surprised to see them but didn’t spook them so I got to watch them for about 15 minutes before they headed off into the woods.

This is the four point buck that was waiting for me but he didn’t have a halo above his head when I saw him.

I climbed into my treestand where I spent about an hour and a half. At about 12:30 a doe and two young deer approached the food plot from the side across from me. Of course the wind was blowing from me to them and they showed up a bit nervous. They didn’t stay long before they turned and headed back into the woods. One of them was a young buck with spikes that barely reached above the fuzz on its head.

I spent the afternoon collecting game cameras and downloading pictures before heading back out.

Another tree stand at the oldhouse food plot sounded like a good idea so off I went with tree steps and a tree stand in hand. Arriving at the food plot I chased away a spike once again.

It has always been difficult finding a good tree to place a stand in on the east side of this food plot and I walked around looking for a while today as well. I finally picked a tree and got to work. I later told my dad that this turned out to be one of the most difficult tree stand installations in quite a while. I’d recommend that you don’t try climbing the downside of a leaning tree.

After hanging the stand I spent about an hour in it from about 5 to 6:00 PM. After my best monkey impersonation hanging the stand no deer decided to visit.

Although I didn’t see many deer while on stand today I did see several deer. Unfortunately I saw them while I was traveling about. In total I had six buck sightings including four spikes, one four point and a buck that may have been anything from a six to an eight point. I probably saw at least one of the spikes twice.

We haven’t seen many rubs yet this year and I only saw one more this week. It was on a tree that is about an inch in diameter. It surely didn’t set my heart pounding when I saw it.

I mentioned last week that we had put a game camera on the gut pile of Ryan’s doe hoping to catch a coyote or at least something interesting feeding there. Unfortunately we only captured raccoons and opossums.

The interesting thing is that we did get pictures of a couple of different bucks this week and caught one of our regulars in three different locations. We had been wondering why we weren’t getting pictures of many bucks in a couple of these locations but we finally found them. One of them is in the picture below. He looks like a nice healthy deer but we can't quite figure out how many points he has. We're hoping to get some better pictures of him next week.

Return to the 2006 Deer Season Journal Index.