Well my bow season has already come and gone and this weekend marked week two of the muzzleloader season. Hunting on the base here isn't exactly easy (think East Texas public land), in the past two years I've seen maybe 20 deer on the stand with only a few shot opportunities that I have failed to capitalize on. Last year I wasn't able to recover a doe that jumped off in a thicket after the shot and I missed a nice eight pointer late season when my arrow shattered on release.
This year I put in a lot of hours scouting and felt like I had the deer pretty well patterned in the couple of training areas I had decided to focus my efforts in. I've never been overly mindful of scent control in the past but this year I've been playing the wind and keeping my clothes as scent-free as possible knowing that I'd have to if I was going to get close enough to kill a deer from the ground with my longbow.
For some reason I have just been getting skunked every time I step foot in the woods. The deer are there, the sign is there, but they just haven't been moving at all when I'm in the blind. I tried hunting mornings, evenings and mid-day with no success and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't starting to get to me a little bit.
I was on the fence about going hunting this afternoon, it's unseasonably warm and the wind has been howling all weekend. Not the most ideal hunting conditions but I grabbed my bow and headed to the woods anyway. I was settled into my deadfall blind about half an hour later and then proceeded to spend the next four hours watching the treetops whip around thinking to myself, "how in the world am I going to see anything in this."
At sunset the wind was still swirling but it wasn't quite as bad as it had been earlier in the day. As the sound of evening colors faded into the pines I made one last scan across the creek bottom and to my surprise saw the all too familiar flick of a tail about forty yards off to my right. I strained to make out the rest of the deer in the dwindling light and after a few anxious minutes confirmed that I had a doe and a yearling feeding their way toward me down the trail I was set up on.
I slowly shifted my weight in the chair to get into position and as they passed behind a bush at 20 yards I raised my bow arm to setup on the first shooting lane I had cut. Light was fading fast and the doe was at 15 yards and moving into position and I hear a crunch off my left shoulder. The doe stops and I hear another crunch, followed by another. I quickly realized that I was about to be busted by a second deer that had snuck up behind me on a feeder trail that intersects the main corridor I'm hunting. Meanwhile the doe and fawn are hungup at 15 yards doing the head bob trying to figure out what the other deer is stomping at. This lasts for about five minutes, I lose shooting light altogether and shortly after all three deer decide they've had enough and bound away into the darkness.
I walked out of the woods under the light of a full moon and as I packed up the truck for the ride home I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation. I can't wait to get back in the woods next weekend, hopefully my next thread will have some LDPs to go along with it but we'll just have to see.
This year I put in a lot of hours scouting and felt like I had the deer pretty well patterned in the couple of training areas I had decided to focus my efforts in. I've never been overly mindful of scent control in the past but this year I've been playing the wind and keeping my clothes as scent-free as possible knowing that I'd have to if I was going to get close enough to kill a deer from the ground with my longbow.
For some reason I have just been getting skunked every time I step foot in the woods. The deer are there, the sign is there, but they just haven't been moving at all when I'm in the blind. I tried hunting mornings, evenings and mid-day with no success and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't starting to get to me a little bit.
I was on the fence about going hunting this afternoon, it's unseasonably warm and the wind has been howling all weekend. Not the most ideal hunting conditions but I grabbed my bow and headed to the woods anyway. I was settled into my deadfall blind about half an hour later and then proceeded to spend the next four hours watching the treetops whip around thinking to myself, "how in the world am I going to see anything in this."
At sunset the wind was still swirling but it wasn't quite as bad as it had been earlier in the day. As the sound of evening colors faded into the pines I made one last scan across the creek bottom and to my surprise saw the all too familiar flick of a tail about forty yards off to my right. I strained to make out the rest of the deer in the dwindling light and after a few anxious minutes confirmed that I had a doe and a yearling feeding their way toward me down the trail I was set up on.
I slowly shifted my weight in the chair to get into position and as they passed behind a bush at 20 yards I raised my bow arm to setup on the first shooting lane I had cut. Light was fading fast and the doe was at 15 yards and moving into position and I hear a crunch off my left shoulder. The doe stops and I hear another crunch, followed by another. I quickly realized that I was about to be busted by a second deer that had snuck up behind me on a feeder trail that intersects the main corridor I'm hunting. Meanwhile the doe and fawn are hungup at 15 yards doing the head bob trying to figure out what the other deer is stomping at. This lasts for about five minutes, I lose shooting light altogether and shortly after all three deer decide they've had enough and bound away into the darkness.
I walked out of the woods under the light of a full moon and as I packed up the truck for the ride home I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation. I can't wait to get back in the woods next weekend, hopefully my next thread will have some LDPs to go along with it but we'll just have to see.
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