2011 Season Prep and Archery Season

Well this year I got a little behind mowing my 1 acre clover patch behind my house. I was having a 24'x36 pole building put in so I decide that I would dig it by hand to save some money. Big big mistake. It took me like 2 weeks 3-4 hours a day to get it all dug up and leveled out. 70% of it I had to take off lime 4-6 inches of dirt and sod. All I had was a spade, square shovel and a wheel barrow. I was popping tylenol like it was candy everyday when I was don't. Man I was a fool. After this was all done i got my plot mowed.
All year I watch the fields around my area for deer. Well on my way to work one evening I spotted a group if deer with a couple of shooter bucks in there. I got a few picks of them over the next few nights. I decided to look up the property online to see the terrian. This place looked sweet. It has a creek running all through it and it is a good travel corridor to get to the corn fields and a orchard. For deer to get to the orchard they need to go right through this property. So I decided to talk to the owners.
When I went to talk to the owners only the wife was home and she gave me some dishearting news. They don't usually allow hunting. Then she told me I needed to talk to her husband if I really wanted to hunt it. Well that softened the initial blow a little. A few days later I was headed to town on my bike and he was sitting on his front porch like most days. So I pulled my bike over and parked it along the side of the road. As I'm walking up to the porch I introduced myself a said "I talked to your wife the other day about hunting your property and she told me to speak with you". As soon as I finished talking he said "sure". I was kinda shocked at first then pretty happy. We talked for about an hour about damn near everything from family to politics. I usually don't talk much about politics but I played along with him. He had one condition for me. Don't shoot my horses or my barn. I said that shouldn't be to hard I'm not that bad of a shot. I knew then the real ground work was going to start.
While I was waiting for my new trail camera to come in I decided to get my fall food plot started. I got the ground work up and planted my seed. I was expecting some rain in the next few days. Well the weather man was way wrong.(I wish I had a job that I could be wrong half the time and still keep my job) We have only gotten 1 inch on rain in the past 3 weeks. So this plot might not do so well.
When I got my camera I put it out on a well traveled trail. After a week I got a few pics of a doe and a small 6. So I moved it across the property on another trail. Waiting another week and not one picture. So I moved it down in the bottoms near the creek that meanders all the way down the west side of the property. Now I waiting to go check it. While I was moving the camera I walked the bottoms. Man this place is thick. It is maybe 40-50 yards wide and I can only see across it in a few parts. I did find about a dozen red oaks and a few white oaks while walking around. The deer paths were all over but mainly running at the base of each ridge and running to the creek. I might have a hard time finding a tree for my climber so I might have to resort to a ground blind.

Until we meet again. "May your arrows fly true and let's mak'em Famous"

congrats on getting permission to hunt... All it takes is to ask.. I have a guy with 72 acres of good hunting land who never lets anyone hunt.. One day last year i told him i would trade out some work for some hunting rights and he had me move a few limbs and get cattails out of his pond.. While i didnt shoot a deer that year i also regained permission this year without any work .

That always gains land owner respect. Awesome.

Well season is only a few days away and I have found a few places to hunt that give me a few different options for wind condition. I've got everything pretty much ready to go. Camera fully charged/ bow shooting great/ camo all de-scented and stored in plastic totes/ rangefinder with new batteries/ binos cleaned and anti-fogged/ and the most important spent a week in Florida with my wife so we got some time together before I make her a deer season widow so to speak. With the little guy on the way and only months to go before he is here I need to fill the tags. I'm hoping to get a good kill shot on video. I'll try to post weekly on how things are going.

good luck this year ... This is the busy time for all us hunters so i will be checkking in on WA from my mobile alot

Well this season started off with a bang, or should I say twang. I found a nice little spot on the north side of the property that opened up really nice right next to the creek where the deer crossed over road to the orchard property. The land owner told me he used to watch the deer come out of this area and feed on the apple trees across the road in the afternoon. So I set up a trail camera on the tree that i was going to climb to see what I could catch. I got a lot of activity in the 3pm to 5pm range during the week i had the camera out along with a few night shots of a few smaller bucks. So i had a pretty good idea what time I needed to be in the stand on opening day.
I work third shift so I took off work my Friday night but actually Thursday night. When I got home Thursday morning I doubled checked all of my gear to make sure I was not missing anything at all then I went to bed. I got up around 1:30pm and packed up my gear and drove down to the end of the main lane of the subdivision I live in. To get to the stand it is like a 5 minute walk.
I get over to the tree and drop my gear and pull out my vanilla corn oil mixture and spray it up wind of my stand and a few spots downwind on the trail. I climb up to about 25 feet and pull my gear up. I use one of those Hunters Specialty straps that go around the tree to hang my calls, rangefinder, and other items. After getting this all set up I attached my camera to the rail of my stand. (I bought one of those cheap tripod mounts from Wally World and took it apart and made up a mount for my camera.)
I sit down in my climber and turn the camera on and give one of those beginning of the hunt interviews (Date/time/wind direction/where I’m hunting). By now it’s about 2:45pm ish. I stand up and take a swig on Gatorade and sit back down.
It could have not been more than 5-10 minutes when I hear some noise behind me (directly downwind). I look down and see a fawn walking down the trail i just sprayed. Then i see a good size doe right in toe. It kind of surprised me that the fawn was in the lead. Most of the time while hunting I see the doe leading the way on a trail. So i get the camera turned on and I’m watching the deer come around in front of my stand. They are stopping at every spot that I sprayed then move on to the next. I moved the camera where I think she will stop and i begin to stand up. As soon as I get all of my weight on the stand it makes a creaking sound. I’m like great she is going to bolt out of here. Well she doesn’t so I grabbed my bow and attached my release. I look down to see if she is in the frame and she is at about 12 yards quartering away at about a 45 degree angle. I draw my bow back and look down to make sure my cam is going to clear the rail on my stand. Then i see her spin her head around and she is looking right at me. I quickly settle my pin just behind her front shoulder and let it fly. I see the arrow bury right where I wanted it to and see her bolt off across the creek and into the thick stuff. I seen a few trees that she ran into along the way and then I think I heard her crash.
Then I go to look at the footage from the camera and get really pissed a myself. In all the haste I forgot to hit record on the camera. DOH!!! Lesson learned. I got all my gear packed back up and waited for about 30 minutes. In that time I texted my wife to let her know about the doe I killed. I did manage to hit record when I went to retrieve the doe. Ill post that footage when I can get it off my camera but right now I dont have the right software due to it not being compatible with a MAC.
I got her gutted out, checked in, and hanging by 5pm. While skinning her out I managed to find that my broadhead broke 2 ribs on the entry side and busted the leg bone where it connectes to the shoulder blade. Massive damage!!! but the broadhead took the abuse like a champ. The only damage was to the blades they got a little nicked up and only needs resharpened. Since it was about 65 degrees that day I got her quartered out and on ice by 7pm.
Since my urban tag is filled and I have a few weeks until regualar season opens up my wife has a honey do list for me to get done in the mean time.