Well, I will start by stating that this season was one that was started with high hopes, I was making my first trip to the NW, in the NW corner of Illinois for a week of bowhunting in the land of giants..... This trip would be my first sit in a stand all season as my work had me out of town for all of bow season in Texas....
I will start with that hunt, my father in law (Iolabowhunter) and I booked a hunt in NW Illinois at the beginning of 09 and we had high hopes for this hunt.... The hunt was booked for Oct 24-31st, about midyear my company changed my schedule (I work in the oilfield on a 28 days on/28 days off rotation) and it had me flying home a day after we were supposed to leave for the hunt...
Needless to say we got there a day and a half late so we made our first sit the evening of the 25th... Upon driving in I was truly wondering where we were supposed to hunt, as the GPS said we were within 30 miles or so and I hadn’t seen a tree in a while…. Standing corn everywhere, nothing but corn as far as you could see (with the exception of the trees around some of the farm houses) but some beautiful country just the same…
Here are a few pic’s of the drive up and some of the country side, the trees we did see were awesome, full of color being late in October…..
Loaded up and headed out... (Thanks Forrest, (Drenalinjunky) for the use of the trailer)
Iolabowhunter (My father in law got us out of Texas)
Missouri had some really pretty country side...
We stayed in Peoria for the night and got up early and made the last two hours of the drive in corn country..
The lodge was nice and comfortable, nothing super fancy but definitely comfortable…. They had some great mounts that was surely getting our blood pumping...
After seeing all those mounts and meeting up with an associate of mine from South Carolina that had come up to hunt with us and hearing all the stories of his encounters the last couple days, we were surely ready to get in the woods...
The guide took us to the farm that we were to be hunting and the first place he took us to looked great, Iolabowhunter was the first to get his stand on a tree and ready for the evening hunt.. We pulled out onto the county road and drove to the other side of this farm to set up my stand... This farm was pretty big but only had maybe 50 acres of woods, the rest of it was carn, soybean and hay flats between the woods and the fields, makes for some pretty country...
Upon entering the woods where the guide was taking me to set up my stand we bumped a decent buck, prolly in the mid 130's and to say these deer are big bodied is an understatement... The woods there are suprisingly open once you get in them....
A look back at the hay meadow from the woods...
Those pic's were all taken from Iolabowhunter's stand site....
At this point all I could think about was getting in the stand and getting a crack at one of them big NW bruiser's... Not going to give a daily account of the hunt as it was a long and hard week, we fought really tough weather, lots of rain and even more wind.... Thus forcing me to leave the camera at the lodge for 99% of my time in the field....
Iolabowhunter had been seeing a monster buck about 175yds from where he was, so about 3 days into the hunt he moved and with no sign of big boy he smoked a doe the first evening in the new spot.... He had many encounter's but none that would prove to be fruitful...
I had been in a bottom where we had bumped the big 8 point out and was the 4th day into the hunt and finally seen him but passed on the shot opportunity... I then moved to a new spot and the first evening had a close encounter with really big buck but he would not come out of the standing corn.... Throughout the 7 day hunt I saw the big buck 4 or 5 times and again he would not come out of the corn into the woods... I saw tons of deer and passed on a good 10 while hunting this spot too but he wasn't a mature deer but he would have scored in the low 140's.....
All in all I had the best hunt of my life to not have come home with a deer and will be back again in the future.... Again, the weather was the worst I had ever hunted in, the wind and rain were brutal, if I had been at home I would not have even thought of heading to the stand... And the corn in that country is normally harvested by this time of year pushing the deer into the woods more but all the rain they had been getting since October had the fields too wet to harvest...
To be Continued...... (Have to go do a little work
)
I will start with that hunt, my father in law (Iolabowhunter) and I booked a hunt in NW Illinois at the beginning of 09 and we had high hopes for this hunt.... The hunt was booked for Oct 24-31st, about midyear my company changed my schedule (I work in the oilfield on a 28 days on/28 days off rotation) and it had me flying home a day after we were supposed to leave for the hunt...
Needless to say we got there a day and a half late so we made our first sit the evening of the 25th... Upon driving in I was truly wondering where we were supposed to hunt, as the GPS said we were within 30 miles or so and I hadn’t seen a tree in a while…. Standing corn everywhere, nothing but corn as far as you could see (with the exception of the trees around some of the farm houses) but some beautiful country just the same…
Here are a few pic’s of the drive up and some of the country side, the trees we did see were awesome, full of color being late in October…..
Loaded up and headed out... (Thanks Forrest, (Drenalinjunky) for the use of the trailer)
Iolabowhunter (My father in law got us out of Texas)
Missouri had some really pretty country side...
We stayed in Peoria for the night and got up early and made the last two hours of the drive in corn country..
The lodge was nice and comfortable, nothing super fancy but definitely comfortable…. They had some great mounts that was surely getting our blood pumping...
After seeing all those mounts and meeting up with an associate of mine from South Carolina that had come up to hunt with us and hearing all the stories of his encounters the last couple days, we were surely ready to get in the woods...
The guide took us to the farm that we were to be hunting and the first place he took us to looked great, Iolabowhunter was the first to get his stand on a tree and ready for the evening hunt.. We pulled out onto the county road and drove to the other side of this farm to set up my stand... This farm was pretty big but only had maybe 50 acres of woods, the rest of it was carn, soybean and hay flats between the woods and the fields, makes for some pretty country...
Upon entering the woods where the guide was taking me to set up my stand we bumped a decent buck, prolly in the mid 130's and to say these deer are big bodied is an understatement... The woods there are suprisingly open once you get in them....
A look back at the hay meadow from the woods...
Those pic's were all taken from Iolabowhunter's stand site....
At this point all I could think about was getting in the stand and getting a crack at one of them big NW bruiser's... Not going to give a daily account of the hunt as it was a long and hard week, we fought really tough weather, lots of rain and even more wind.... Thus forcing me to leave the camera at the lodge for 99% of my time in the field....
Iolabowhunter had been seeing a monster buck about 175yds from where he was, so about 3 days into the hunt he moved and with no sign of big boy he smoked a doe the first evening in the new spot.... He had many encounter's but none that would prove to be fruitful...
I had been in a bottom where we had bumped the big 8 point out and was the 4th day into the hunt and finally seen him but passed on the shot opportunity... I then moved to a new spot and the first evening had a close encounter with really big buck but he would not come out of the standing corn.... Throughout the 7 day hunt I saw the big buck 4 or 5 times and again he would not come out of the corn into the woods... I saw tons of deer and passed on a good 10 while hunting this spot too but he wasn't a mature deer but he would have scored in the low 140's.....
All in all I had the best hunt of my life to not have come home with a deer and will be back again in the future.... Again, the weather was the worst I had ever hunted in, the wind and rain were brutal, if I had been at home I would not have even thought of heading to the stand... And the corn in that country is normally harvested by this time of year pushing the deer into the woods more but all the rain they had been getting since October had the fields too wet to harvest...
To be Continued...... (Have to go do a little work
)
This girl can shoot with the best of them on the bench shooting at a target but hopefully that is a thing of the past.... Anyhow, she was real excited and I was proud of her, in fact once we got to the main road I told her to get out of the scout (our hunting buggy) and get in the driver's seat, I said if your big enough to kill it your big enough to drive it into camp by yourself..... She thought that was pretty cool too, she made the 3+ mile drive back to camp just fine, without harming any cedar trees.....
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