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Whitetail Deer Hunting Season Journal
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This is our last weekend of bow hunting and we both Friday and Saturday to hunt due to the holiday weekend. I've had good hunting success in the past and hoped to see several deer this weekend as well. My best ever bow killed buck was shot on Veterans Day weekend a few years ago.
Although it was a great weekend the deer action was strange to put it mildly. We had deer sightings but not what I had hoped for.
I wandered if I had done something wrong but reviewing the digital scouting camera pictures revealed that the whole week prior to this one had been out of sorts. One buck that had been a regular for a couple of months did not show up at all while the rest only showed up in front of the cameras once or twice at the most. Most of the over 900 pictures were of does or spike bucks along with a three or four point thrown in here and there. The older bucks were obviously pre-occupied and this is what our two days of hunting showed as well.
Friday morning I arrived at my stand near a feeder and food plot at about 6:45 where a scrape at the edge of the food plot looked like it had been freshened recently. Not long after a button buck and doe arrived for a snack and provided entertainment for me.
A long spike showed up out on the logging road and just seemed to mingle around on the road while the doe and button buck were only about 40 yards away at the feeder.
A small (2") spike buck showed up behind me and the doe and button buck started moving off in the other direction. The long spike then proceeded to put his head down and start after the doe. She rebuffed him and the three of them started to walk away.
I grunted a few times at which point the long spike became real curious. I followed this with a couple of doe bleats with a "Can". At this, the long spike circled to get downwind of me. He stepped up into the food plot and spent a couple of minutes trying to locate the doe and buck that he heard. He then turned and went over the hill.
The short spike had disappeared from behind me at some point.
During this time I also saw three deer in the woods about 80 yards or so over the hill form me that were just walking past. I couldn't see any antlers on any of them but they were moving through the trees at a pretty brisk walk.
This was the end of an odd morning where only two of the seven deer that I saw seemed to care about eating. It looks like the rut was on but it wasn’t providing any large buck sightings for us.
Although I didn’t see any monster bucks the sunrise and the whole morning was beautiful.
In the evening Ryan, after hearing about the doe that I watched in the morning, wanted to go back to this same area and try to get a shot at her.
We were in our stands before 4:00 and soon after a young deer moved through the woods over the hill behind us. This was the only deer that we saw.
Ryan was cold and darkness was starting to fall on us so we left at 5:23. I usually like to stay until I can’t see just in case a deer shows up. I’m not looking to shoot, I just want to see them. Our digital scouting camera showed us that at 5:42 the seven point buck showed up. It makes you wander if he watched us walk away.
This is one of the pictures that our Stealth Cam captured just after we left our stands.
This ended a rather uneventful day for deer sightings. We had a seen a few but were still left wondering what they were up to.
On the bright side I did get to move one of my stands in preparation for gun season. I like moving stands around. There is something about the anticipation of moving your stand. Just maybe it’s in a place where you’ll see that big buck the next time you hunt.
Click here to read Saturdays update.
Return from November 12th Journal to the 2005 Deer Season Journal Index.
