I threw the car into park and ran inside, peeling off layers as I went. I traded my heels for wool pants, boots and blaze orange. I grabbed the gun and left. There was less than two hours of daylight remaining and a snow squall predicted for the next hour as a cold front moved in. It was 3pm when I walked into the woods and climbed into the Sky Condo. The big buck's tracks ran along the ridge to my right, so I turned my body to face in that direction. I was hoping that I would catch him as he did his loop. It seemed like a perfect night to have deer move. I looked to my left, scanning in front of the Sky Condo. I was startled to see three deer walking at me. The snow on the ground made...
Dad assured us that deer move in the wind. He was confident that if we were in the woods, we would see something. He could be as confident as he needed to; he had tagged out and could stay warm. The wind was howling and with the Sky Condo breaking apart, I didn't waste much time getting into my tree seat in the woods. It had taken me a handful of years to be comfortable enough swaying in a tree during a windy sit, but I was ready. It was so cold that I had on my snowmobile boots with toe warmers, my ski gloves with hand warmers and a blanket over my legs to help keep the wind from hitting the backs of my legs. I had on so many layers! It was too windy to hear anything move so I just kept scanning from one side...
This is how I started my second week of deer hunting. I have never been so quiet in the woods. I was painstakingly slow and keeping my eyes peeled for deer. The week before, I had jumped two deer under my stand and I was determined not to have that happen again. I walked out and around our normal route into my stand. I was at a snail's pace. I would walk, stop and look. I would look again and take a couple of steps before doing it all over again. I watched for any movement near my stand. The leaves had fallen off the trees from the wind storm the weekend prior so I had a better view of the area. I could not see any movement near my stand so I paused next to our trail camera to look around and...
"All I saw was blue smoke" dad said smiling. One week after I shot my deer and rifle season ended, Dad was still hard at it trying to get one of those big bucks we still had pictures of. But, instead, he squeezed the trigger and got his first deer with a muzzleloader. According to Dad: two doe came crossed three different shooting lanes before starting to talk at him. When he decided to fire at the biggest doe, he lined up the sites and just saw the blue smoke and no deer. "I got down and walked to where I saw her last. The second doe was still standing nearby, so I knew she was down. When that second doe ran off by itself, I knew the deer was somewhere near by" Dad picked up the blood trail and tracked his...
The snow was melting and dropping off the branches and leaves. I had been in the stand for only a few minutes when I heard a deer walking off to my right. It was one deer and too dark to know if it was a doe or buck. Maybe it was the crotch horn. I closed my eyes and listened to the deer walking away from me. At least it didn't seem spooked; maybe it didn't know that I was there. The sky began to get brighter, indicating that the rain predicted was not coming. I dug into my pocket for handwarmers. I tried to keep the crinkling plastic as quiet as I could as I ripped the first side open. I waited before I opened the second warmer to keep my noise at a minimum. When I made the second tear, just...
There was a storm coming in on Thanksgiving night, so Dad and I started and ended our day in the woods. It was silent when we walked into our stands in a turkey induced semi-stupor. The silence didn't last long. For almost two hours, we listened to someone target practicing or just shooting different guns. It was ridiculous and I still can not understand why, during hunting season, someone would do this when they could have waited until Sunday (when we can't hunt.) When we went to bed Thanksgiving night, the cold rain had turned to snow and on Friday morning, there was enough on the ground to track. Snow turns me into a kid! It could be an early snow in Oct, a Christmas show or the type that you dread in March but for...
There were signs of deer everywhere! Tracks, rubs and fresh scrapes but for some reason, I was not seeing them. Dad, on the other hand, was seeing deer everywhere he looked. One morning, he watched a spike horn chase a doe and fawn through the woods. He walked out of the woods behind a doe and fawn another night. He was seeing multiple does every time he sat or walked through the woods but instead of using that doe tag, he wanted that big, illusive buck that we knew was still hanging around. I hung out in my stands and watched a lot of squirrels. How could we be spending so much time in the woods and not come across a deer yet? It helped that Hubs had filled the freezer but we knew that there were deer all...
On Veteran's Day, the wind was so bad that I climbed down from the Sky Condo to sit in the ground blind that we had not removed since turkey season. I am usually all for rocking in the trees but there was just enough extra creeks happening that I felt better on the ground. It sleeted, the wind blew and nothing moved. Saturday was different. I started off the same way as the weekend before; Sky Condo to tree seat. I left the Sky Condo a little earlier than I had the week before hoping to see more deer than just the two does. There were fresh rubs that were a little bigger than the ones the week before, but it wasn't from a large buck. The leaves were somewhat crunchy and I took my time getting to the stand. ...
We had to revamp our hunting plan since we were now one hunter down, but Dad and I stuck with what he knew would work and where we thought the deer were. I started the morning in the Sky Condo and when it was clear that nothing was moving through, I headed to a tree seat not far away. There were fresh rubs along the path that I used and although they were made by small deer, it gave me hope that the deer would be moving through. I left my pack at the bottom of the tree and climbed the 16 feet up to the seat. I think I am more comfortable in treeseats than the bigger stands. I can't move when I am up there because every part of me is exposed to unseen deer but there is something about being so much more present with...
