Day 3 – 10/11/14
Time: 5pm to dark
Conditions – Partly cloudy light wind out of the north, Temps mid to low 60s
After the excitement of Thursday evening, my anticipation to get back in my stand on my property was running pretty high. I unfortunately had to go out of town Friday through midday Saturday, so my next hunt would have to wait until Saturday evening, which just so happened to also be a good wind. The evening progressed very slowly. A few squirrels barked in the trees behind me, a decent amount of doves and geese flew out in front of me in the main field, but the deer remained fairly quiet. Around 6:45pm, I caught movement at the far end of the back field right around where you would normally enter the back field. I pulled up the binoculars, but was only able to see the back end of a deer moving towards the main field. Fortunately, I have a trail camera sitting right there, so I was later able to determine that it was the browtine-less buck from Thursday evening. After the deer disappeared, I began glassing the cut corn field in the distance and spotted between 5 or 6 deer feeding. They were probably either bedding in the nearby bean fields or my fencerow woods. Pretty soon darkness fell and it was time to call it a night.
Trail camera picture of the buck that I caught a glimpse of tonight
On Sunday, I came back over to the property to assess the deer activity and try to see if I could possibly identify trails that I had not seen in the summer months. A check of the cameras revealed quite the influx of deer activity from the previous week, especially on Thursday morning. Over the course of Thursday, I caught 6 different legal bucks on camera in various locations of the property. The best buck was an 8 point that I assume was the buck I saw running with the 9 point on Thursday, although he definitely looked bigger in person. The camera revealed a 13-14” 8 point with good point length. I think I got the 9 point on camera 20 minutes before the 8 point came through, but all you can see is the body of a decent-sized deer.
Another picture of the browless buck, who is making himself right at home
8 point
Additional scouting revealed two trails that I was unaware of that came from the area that I have deemed to be the “off-limits” bedding area on the western end of the property. I set up one of the trail cameras at the junction with my mowed path and decided to see what the results of that would hold at the end of this week. Neither trail was in a spot that would allow me to set up a treestand with good vision of both trails and the mowed path. I followed both new trails to see where they ended up and each of them seemed to end up in either the western edge of the back field, where you can enter the back field, or popped out in my main field just out of sight from my current stand. With this new information, I decided to put up a new hang-on stand where the road from the front field enters the back field. This stand will allow me to catch anything heading into the main field and anything that funnels from the back field to the main field. The only bad thing about this stand is I will have to expose myself to the main field when walking to and from it. I feel like today brought up more questions than answers. Hopefully I can pinpoint things before the rest of the neighboring corn gets cut. I have a feeling once that happens I will need to be pretty precise with every stand setup to avoid spooking deer.
PA Archery season – Day one – October 5, 2013
Weather: upper 60s – low 70s, hazy
Wind: light out of the southwest
Time: Dawn – 10am
I spent the morning hunting over an oak flat that has about 25 mature oak trees in a 30 yard radius, making it a deer magnet when the acorns are dropping. I was not expecting a lot of movement with the unseasonably warm temperatures. It seemed for a while that I would not be seeing anything except squirrels today.
At about 7:45, I caught movement down below me. A quick glassing with the binoculars revealed a deer that I am becoming very familiar with seeing. Only a three point, but he is probably about 13″ wide and showed up on my one trail camera for 9 consecutive days in September. Shortly after spotting him, he casually made his way up the hill munching on acorns the hole way. He came to within 15 yards before continuing up over the hill.
After he left, a heavy fog came through the area, which made visibility about 40 yards for a good 30 minutes. I started considering getting out of the tree around 9 am, that was until 8:45, when I caught more movement. This time it was a large doe and 2 fawns. They worked their way up the hill and all came within 5 yards of the base of my tree. The one fawn spent several minutes milling around directly underneath my feet. They stuck around for about 30 minutes before working their way up the hill and out of sight.
At about 10am, I decided to call it a day and climbed down the tree. With afternoon temperatures expected to be in the mid 80s, I decided to not go out in the evening. I will hit the woods one or two mornings this week, hopefully the good deer movement will continue.
The Outdoor CPA 