Day two – October 9, 2013

Weather – mid 40s, mostly sunny
Wind – light and swirling a bit, but mostly out of the northeast
Time – dawn – 9:15am

With the pending bad weather ahead for the remainder of the week, I figured that today looked to be the best weather-wise.  Today I decided to set up in a hang-on that I put up several months before the season that I have been scouting since last December.  It has two heavy trails going through the area, both of which lead to a popular bedding area.  In addition, there are a handful of mature oaks to provide an early season attraction.

A view from the stand

As I was walking to my stand, I busted a fairly large flock of turkeys from their roost.  For the first hour and a half of daylight it sounded more like May than October as the lost birds yelped and cackled to each other in an attempt to regroup.

Around 8:00 the first deer of the day showed up, a nice sized year and a half old doe walking by herself.  She slipped in to my left and got to about 15 yards before heading up the hill towards the bedding area.  Fortunately for her I need to head to work today because I would normally jump at the opportunity to harvest a deer of that description.

About five minutes after she moved on, I had 3 does run past my stand from the west at full tilt. 

The rest of the morning was fairly quiet with a few squirrels running around gathering acorns and the occasional glimpse of a turkey in the distance. 

Around 9am, I decided to call it a day.  As I was packing up my gear, I heard the ever familiar sound of a branch snapping.  I turned around to see a doe and fawn, that I had on my trail camera quite regularly, heading right for me.  They milled around for a bit before finally heading up the hill.  At that point it was 9:15 and knew I would have to hustle back to my truck so that I could make it to work by 10.  Another fairly productive morning in the deer woods.  Hopefully the weatherman is a little bit wrong for Friday and Saturday so that I can scratch my bow hunting itch some more before the usual “October-lull” sets in.