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2004 Deer Season Journal
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Friday PM
We got into the woods a little late on Friday evening, arriving after a day of work and school we didn't get into our stand until about 4:45PM. The weather was very nice but a little too warm. The warm weather always seems to limit deer movement and on this evening the mosquitos were out in full force. Staying still while mosquitoes are buzzing in your ears and biting you is nearly impossible.
One doe did come in, but she was spooky right from the very beginning. Maybe she saw us swinging and slapping. After checking us out real good she finally decided to go elsewhere.
Later, as it was starting to get dark, we saw two or three more deer down in the woods below us. Once again they were very skittish and disappeared over the hill.
Saturday AM
We got started early the next morning and were in our stands and settled in by 7:00AM. I thought that once daylight arrived we would see several deer. Our scouting camera had taken over 180 pictures in this area in the prior two weeks.
Our first sighting was a turkey. It was not yet daylight when a turkey came running through right underneath of us, and then circled and came past us again. We have no idea why this turkey came running past us like a turkey with it’s head cut off.
About 7:45 an 8 point buck came walking toward us on the old logging road. As it approached at about 40 yards , it looked right up at us as though it knew that we would be there. It came a little closer but eventually turned and left before coming much closer. A doe bawl from my can call did make him turn and look in our direction one more time, but not enough to bring him back. We recognized this buck from the scouting camera pictures. He is an 8 point that has a longer left brow tine. Unfortunately he looked a little bigger in the pictures.
Throughout the remainder of the morning two other does showed up and became spooked as they noticed us from over the hill.
Saturday PM
For the evening hunt we thought that we would see if we could hide our mosquito slapping by using our blind. Since I'm hoping to get my son in a position to get a shot at a dow, we set up close to where we expected the deer to appear. Three deer came in with the first being a long spiked buck that came in behind us. We didn't know that he was back there until he snorted. He tired of us quickly and took off.
After he left, we closed all of the openings except for the one in front of us. We thought that maybe the buck had seen us moving as he approached from behind. After all, we could only shoot through the front anyway.
The next deer to arrive was a button buck that popped up over the hill right in front of us. As soon as he saw us he stopped and came no closer before turning to leave.
A little later we were jarred awake by snorting directly behind us. Whatever it was, it didn't like the look or smell of our blind.
The most interesting thing was a group of four gobblers that came right in front of us. They hung
around for a few minutes and finally wondered off.
We spent the drive home trying to figure out what we can do different the next time. I had neverseen the deer this spooky this early in the season. Each of the deer that we encountered acted asthough they were looking for us. Even the button buck that we saw was very cautious. Generallybutton bucks are pretty carefree.
On the other hand we had turkeys closer to us than the deer that we saw. That is interesting since itis usually difficult to fool a turkeys eyes.
We have tried a cover scent this year for the first time. I'm wondering if it could have something todo with it. I'll probably try to go without it on our next outing and see what happens.
My son also hunted with me every time this week. This automatically doubles the movement, odor and noise while hunting. Did this have anything to do with the deer picking us out so quickly? I do not know.
We do a lot of our hunting near our deer feeders, food plots and mineral licks and we were prettyclose to where the deer usually show up to try to get Ryan a close shot at a doe. Next week we'll trybacking off hoping to put the deer at ease and maybe still catch a shot opportunity as the deer come and go.
Digital Scouting Camera
I talked about our new digital scouting camera in the last update. This week we were able to look atover 180 pictures that were taken in the area of our middle food plot, deer feeder and mineral licksite. Other than having fun looking at the pictures we were able to determine when deer activity wasoccurring by examining the times that the pictures were taken. This helped us know when weneeded to be in our stands.
We got two pictures of a decent 9 point buck that we had not seen previously. It's always fun to seewhat we have on the camera each visit.
Even though we didn't get any shots it was a beautiful weekend. The leaf color maybe just past it's peak, but it is still a great time to be in the woods.
Scrapes
One good sign that we did see this week were a couple of scrapes that we found. We didn't notice
any rutting type activity but the scrapes were a sign of things to come. One, in particular, appeared
very fresh. It was probably made during the night.
Return from the October 23rd Update to the 2004 Deer Season Journal.
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