Black Hills Combo 2012

[DonBo]

Most of you have followed me on this hunt for the past few years. I appreciate all the positive feedback and comments/questions. This is why I take the time to continue my postings of what is most certainly THE best week of the year for me.

For those who are new, I'll recap a bit. My friend Gary and I have done this hunt for over 30 years. We hunt a beautiful piece of private property near Sturgis. It's 800 acres of the most prolific wilfife habitat I've ever seen. It consists of over a mile of riverbottom teritory and some of the high pine covered ridges the area is know for with oak draws and flats between the ridges. We hunt Whitetails (bow) and turkeys (gun and bow). The river is full of nice Brown Trout upstream to spawn this time of year.

Camp consists of a comfortable tent trailer with generator right next to the river.

I never tire of this view right from camp.

Gary loves to turkey hunt as much as I do, enough so that he did not buy a deer tag this year. He has two turkey tags. I have one deer tag and four turkey tags. We both brought fishing rods.

The area is extremely dry this year. As a result much wildlife moved into the riverbottoms because of the water. Usually this is a good thing for us, but this year much of South Dakota has been affected by EHD or "Blue Tongue" disease. Sadly maybe one third of the Whitetail population on this ranch has died from this disease. It looked to us like nearly half the deer affected were bucks. Nice bucks. Most of the rest were fawns. We saw very few dead adult does.

I will take you through this hunt on a day by day basis. It will take several days to complete, so please be patient with me. I'll leave you tonight with just a few photos to give you a taste of what will come later.

[DonBo]

Day 1, Friday October 12.

It was a beautiful 65 degree day as we got to our hunting area late this afternoon. Camp was not yet set up when we heard turkeys across the river. Each year I try to tag a young bird early in the hunt to put in a marinade to be put on the grill later in the week. So I grabbed the gun and off I went for the first hunt of the week. I snuck up on a flock of about 20 or 30 hens and poults before getting close to a young jake. He staggered at the shot but stayed on his feet. With the next shot I tagged my first bird.

These Merriam turkeys, even the smaller ones are beautiful birds.

Later I headed behind camp with my Double Bull blind. A large flock of maybe 50 turkeys were around me all night, several well withing 10 yards, none were bearded toms. With one small one already in the cooler I had no intention of shooting any of these birds. All these turkeys roosted right near my blind. I did see several deer tonight, maybe 9 in all, including a spike a fork and one nice (10 pt?) buck.

Gary headed up into the hills to the east. He saw one smaller flock of turkeys and a few deer, including one nice buck.

All in all a pretty good first day.

[sportfish]

Great story ! But the EHD sucks !! I hope the winter is easy on the deer out there. I love bow hunting the Black Hills !! I have hunted the Custer area 4 out of 7 years , plan to make it back next year . Keep the story coming !!

[walleyehunter80]

Yup good read, cant wait for day two

[paceman]

Cool! Here we Go!

[Archerysniper]

Glad to see you made it back safe Don and I can't wait for your story.

[mrklean]

Cant waif for the rest of the story don

[Scoot]

Great stuff! Looking forward to the whole story. I

[sticknstring]

Sweet - camp meat already in the cooler before camp is setup! I like your priorities!

That EHD is nasty. Pretty fortunate here at home. Hope you're able to pull it off!

[DonBo]

Saturday, Oct 13

45 degrees over night, but warmed to 60 before sunup. Sat the same blind as last night. No deer this morning, but those turkeys that roosted here last night were everywhere!

Among this group I noticed one had a beard, so I took out the G5 Stryker that I use for deer and grabbed an arrow with a Mini Blaster head that I use for turkeys and waited for that one bird to get close enough. At 5 yards I decided he was close enough.

At the shot, he went right down, flopped a bit, and was done. Two tags down, two to go!

Wouldn't ya know it, it turned out to be a bearded hen. If you recall, I shot another bearded hen on the last day of the hunt last year. This is the third one I've taken out here over the years, still I was elated as this was the first bird I'd taken with my bow since Kansas spring a year and a half ago.

Back at camp, while coming up with a plan for the day, it was decided we should see if there were any trout in the river this year. There was!

Set a couple tree stands after breakfast. One along a fenceline in the center of the woods, another on a well used river crossing. Both were set for the consistant west/northwest winds that always seem to be the norm here.

Sat the river crossing stand this evening and never saw a deer. Don't recall EVER sitting two stands in a day here without seeing a single deer.

Gary did a "walk about" up in the hills to the west of camp today and found some good turkey sign but did not see any birds. He did see a bunch of deer though, including a couple nice bucks.

Got up to 70 today, windy.

[Scoot]

2 of 4 right off the bat, some nice trout caught, and some nice bucks on the radar-- this trip is starting off great!

[Coach1310]

Thanks for sharing DonBo. I am already looking forward to tomorrow.

[DonBo]

Sunday, October 14.

Wind switched to the south overnight. Got no stand for that. Headed into a roost area just north of camp. At least 100 birds in here! This is what I love about fall turkey hunting. You can't imagine the noise of that many birds waking up. All trying to outcall each other, trying to find their own little family groups among all these other birds. Being in the middle of this is really exciting for me. I did see one with a beard, and almost shot before SHE turned into the light just right and I could see the white tiped breast feathers. Another bearded hen! These roost areas in the bottoms have always held lots of birds, but seldom any toms. I'll leave these birds alone till later in the week if there's still tags that need filling.

The trout were very cooperative again this morning.

Gary and I headed up into the hills after lunch. We planned to spend the rest of the day still hunting for turkeys, then sit at a couple known roost areas towards evening.

Early afternoon I did see 13 toms running together, but they were well onto the neighboring property and I had no shot at getting these birds into range.

I was in my blind at the roost area about an hour before dark when I saw some birds coming up the draw I was watching. My binocs confirmed: TOMS! They took their sweet time approaching the small bench where my blind was set. I had my "Best Turkey Decoy" jake set out just 10 yards from me. I had heard of great responses to this new decoy from fall toms. Apparently the pose of this decoy really ticks off other toms.

Anyway, the approaching birds were out of site for several minutes as they were down in a dip in the landscape. The next thing I knew, all seven of them were right in my decoys face. All very agitated. They were strutting and chest bumping my deke, all right together. I was at full draw for what seemed like minutes before one finally cleared and I touched my release. A perfect shot! My bird flopped out of site as the other toms stood around looking at each other as if to say "What just happened here?" I probably could have shot another, but just wasn't ready yet to end my turkey hunting so early in the week.

This was not a huge old longbeard, but was a nice fall trophy in my book. It was a year and a half old "super jake" they're called. He had a 6" beard and 1/2" spurs, about 17 lbs. Three birds in three days, two with the bow. A really good start to the week.

In the middle of this action I heard deer running behind me and had 4 bucks out the back window of my blind. One was nice!

Meanwhile, Gary also saw some birds. A group of 13 with at least 5 toms included in the bunch. He also saw a bunch of deer including two big bucks in a huge battle, no sparring here, this was a big time fight. I will definetly do some more deer hunting up here in the days ahead as there seems to be a bunch of unpressured deer here, including numerous bucks.

[sticknstring]

You're a turkey killing machine!

Turkey breast and trout fillets - how can you beat that? Maybe some venison tenderloins???

[DonBo]

Turkey breast and trout fillets - how can you beat that? Maybe some venison tenderloins???

Ha, there is turkey breast in the future, but all trout were released. You'll just have to wait to see about the venison.

[Scoot]

You are a machine!!! Atta boy, Don! WTG! Looking forward to the rest...

[IlliniWalli]

awesome hunting and great read and pics!!

sounds like a turkey hunting paradise!

[DonBo]

...sounds like a turkey hunting paradise!

Oh my, did I mention the turkeys were everywhere?

[slimngrizzly]

Very neat DonBo! Looks like this year was a blast! Cant wait to see how the deer panned out???!!!

[DonBo]

Monday, October 15.

Warm, calm. Sat at my river crossing this morning. Only a pair of fawns seen. Depressing.

Gary caught some big trout this morning. A 20'er and a couple in the 17-18" range.

Warm day, 80 degrees.

This evening, I set a tree stand up in the hills, not far from where Gary saw all those deer, and bucks, last night. Only saw one small forkie, then right at dark a whole parade of deer went past on another trail about 50 yards away. Probably 9 or 10 in all. Too dark to see what they were.

Gary scouted and hunted some other country up in the hills. Not much to report.

This photo is looking up into the hills where I hunted last night and tonight.

[DonBo]

Tuesday, October 16.

Kinda slept in. Winds still from the south, still don't have any tree stands for this wind. Just snuck behind camp to watch the river crossings down where I saw the big buck the first evening. No deer, but the turkeys are still here. Had on bunch of 7 right in my lap.

Did a bit more fishing later. This was one of the nicer fish I got this week:

It's supposed to be really windy the next couple days, so I set my Double Bull ground blind in a thick bedding area for tomorrow's hunt.

Then it was lunchtime. Some of you might have wondered why on earth I'd shoot such a little bird the very first day of the hunt. Well here's the reason right here:

Bacon wrapped marinaded Wild Turkey breast. OMG, this is one of the best things ever to be put on a grill.

We headed back into the hills for the evening hunt. Gary sat in the roost area where I shot my bird the other night. Nothing.

I built a brushed-in ground blind near where the whole string of deer passed me last night. This is what the area looks like where I'm hunting:

I'm set up at the mouth of a narrow draw that opens into the mouth of a much bigger draw that leads to the east and some ag fields not too far away. It was here that I found one of the bigger bucks that had died from the EHD. I only took this one photo of a dead deer because none of them where pretty. Just took this one to show the caliber of deer we were finding.

Only saw one group of deer toninght, but it was apparently the group from last night as all were single file, nose to tail, AND all were right on top of me, 5 yards! With the exception of one small yearling doe, all were yearling bucks, 8 or 9 total. A spike, a couple forks, a couple tiny 6's, a couple tiny 8's. Of coarse they were so close that they busted me before all were past. A much nicer buck was following these deer, but he never had a chance to get to me. Still, pretty cool being so close to so many deer while on the ground.

The wind started right at dark (supposed to be 25-30 mph with gusts of 50-60+!!!) along with some rain. It's not going to be a very nice night.

[sticknstring]

Your lunch looks a whole heckuva lot better than mine today!

Pretty dismal whitetail situation it appears. Hate to see 'em go that way.

[Scoot]

Oh mama, that lunch does look good!

Yeah, the area in Western ND I hunt got hit with EHD a while ago and it really did a number on the deer out there too. Sucks!

[DonBo]

Wednesday, October 17.

Wow! Were they ever right about the wind. Slept in till I thought the trailer was gonna blow away. We actually tied it off to a tree so it wouldn't tip over. 50-60+ EASILY.

Not being too excited about trying to hunt with this wind, we headed into town for a good breakfast and do some laundry along with a little sightseeing.

Later in the afternoon Gary climbed into a blind he had in the roost area just north of camp. Although he didn't really want to shoot a small one either, a cripple came along limping badly and he filled his first tag. What a sportsman!

I headed into my blind in the bedding area and was entertained by deer all afternoon, probably seeing 18-20 deer. However only two small bucks were seen. This was kind of dissapointing because after today, with only 2 full days left to hunt, I would probably take the first mature doe that presented a decent shot.

The wind never let up all day, luckily it was still pretty warm, maybe mid 60's today.

[kwood]

Keep the story coming!!! I have never dreamed of such a hunting paradise!!!!!

WOW!

I just can't imagine anything better than being able to hunt turkeys and deer in the same day like that