My Late Season Hunt in Missouri....

[nbadger23]

I can't promise the same great pictures that Scoot and some of the others take but I'll give it a whirl......

Last December (December 26, 2012 to be exact), a good friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to go bow hunting with him in Missouri, in January of 2014. At first I thought he was a little crazy as who in their right mind goes on a bow hunting trip in January but the more I listened, the more it piqued my interest. It turns out that his wife had walked into the local archery shop in Hudson, WI and asked about buying a guided hunt for her husband for a Christmas/Birthday present. As luck would have it, the shop she walked into (A-1 Archery) was an outfitter and had semi-guided hunts available in Missouri.

We were looking at late December/early January because his work schedule wouldn’t allow for anything between Thanksgiving and Christmas they were full in the November time frame. Although I was concerned about how hard the hunting would be, both from a weather and a deer pressure standpoint, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. He and I have traveled together to Canada many times on fishing trips together and we have had a lot of fun, even when mechanical and weather issues come up, which they always do. On top of that, we have the same sort of drive and expectations when it comes to hunting so I had no doubt we’d approach the trip in the same way.

After thinking about it for a few minutes I decided I wanted to go…. Like there was ever a doubt My next hurdle was getting the time off work. We would be leaving on Dec 29th, and hunting the 30th – Jan 3rd which meant I’d need the 30th and 31st off, which are notoriously a no-go for my job given that it’s year end. I must have made a good case for myself because I was able to secure the “ok” for it and we were set. Now the year long wait began.

Over the course of the spring and summer I did some reading on the place we’d be going, which was Tombstone Creek Outfitters, in Harrison County, MO. I’d never hunted with an outfitter before so I had the typical concerns about the quality of the hunt and such. You hear horror stories about people paying for hunts that turn out to be very poorly run and basically a scam but I felt pretty good about things after checking out their HSOforum, their face book page, finding some other reviews on-line, and speaking with Paul Korn, one of the owners. Paul was very responsive to any questions that we had, allowed for a flexible payment schedule, and you could tell he genuinely wanted people to have a great time and have a chance at a mature deer.

I used the hunt as an “excuse” to buy a new bow as well. I really didn’t need that much of an excuse as I was shooting a 14 year old Parker Challenger that maxed out at 42 lbs. The bow had served me very well over those 14 years but it was time to upgrade and this hunt was the push that I needed. In June I became the proud new owner of a Hoyt Charger, setup at 48 lbs and ready to kill!

I absolutely love that bow but I did have some challenges with the new setup. I’d been shooting with a pendulum sight for 20+ years and had decided to go with a fixed pin sight on the new bow. It took a lot of getting used to, both from having to pick out the pin I needed and focus on, and from judging yardages as well. It took a lot of practice but it was fun as the bow shoots so smoothly.

Minnesota archery season came and I shot a doe in October, but unfortunately did not capitalize on the two opportunities I had with mature bucks in November. Wisconsin gun season was a success with two fat does being added to the freezer and now we were in December. I really wanted to keep bow hunting in December to keep myself “in shape” but the opportunities were few and far between. If I had the time, the weather was brutal and when the weather was nice, I didn’t have the time I did make it out once, just enough to keep my normal hunting prep routine fresh in my mind. I was able to keep shooting though, both inside and outside, so I felt good about that.

As you can imagine, we’d both been watching the weather like a hawk and we were starting to get a bit concerned about the cold weather we might face. I knew that morning hunts in general aren’t that productive in the late season but I had hoped for some 10-15 degree mornings to allow for some movement but there was none of that in sight. We were going to be lucky to be seeing highs in the 15-20 degree range on some days. I stocked up on hand and feet warmers, got a new face mask, and hoped for the best.

My buddy came down on the 28th and we got the truck packed, had a good meal, and turned in early as we were going to leave around 5:30 a.m. the next day. We had about a 5.5 hour drive, along with a stop to get licenses in front of us so we wanted to make sure we gave ourselves plenty of time to get there early enough for Paul to take us out to the property we were going to hunt that week. Dreams of big bucks filled our heads that night….

[Scoot]

Dreams of big bucks filled our heads that night….

I bet the did!!! Cool- another story to follow and help me get through the monotony of January. Thanks for taking the time to do this, nbadger! I hope you report to us about lots of deer and the big bucks saw on the trip.

[DonBo]

I know the guys at A1 really well, and know several who have hunted Tombstone Creek. Nothing but good things to say about the place, and the people.

Can't wait to see how your hunt played out.

[minky]

Great story so far!

Any hunt after Jan 1st is going to be a tough going.

[slimngrizzly]

Good so far! Hope you punched a dandy!

[nbadger23]

Day 1 of the trip.

The weather was a bit dicey to start with as we headed out Sunday morning. It was snowing a bit, blowing, and darn right cold but once we hit Albert Lea and headed south on 35 it was manageable, outside of a few wind gusts. We rolled into Bethany, MO around 11:30, picked up our licenses and were back on the road at 11:45 for a short drive over to Tombstone Creek. We really liked the look of the area as we drove, lots of ag fields surrounded by plots of woods, with ridges and valleys.

I will admit that when we pulled into camp I was a bit surprised at how small the buildings looked but I quickly warmed up to the place. They have a main house where folks can shower, do laundry, cook, and relax in front of a nice t.v. Nothing extravagant but very comfortable, just how I like it. The main sleeping quarters are bunkhouses which are basically small little cabins that have bunk beds, a fridge, microwave, table, and a desk. We actually stayed on the “porch” which is a bunkhouse attached directly to the house. This was nice as we had an indoor bathroom should the need arise during the night, something that was greatly appreciated with the below zero temps we had most nights.

Here’s a pic of our “home away from home” for the next 6 days.” The view is from my perch on the top bunk. I'd like to say we weren't quite organized at that point but in reality, we brought too much stuff and our room was kind of a disaster all week. But hey, as long as you can find your bow, your arrows, and your release, what else do you need!

Yes, I did get my nails painted before we left for the trip. I may not like anything pink on my bow but I want my nails to be pretty :-)

After unpacking we met the other hunters in camp, and it was time for Paul to take us out to look at the property we were going to hunt. He gave us the following topo map to look at and we talked through how to hunt the land.

He showed us where the main bedding areas were (yellow circles on the map) and pointed out where their stands were (the red squares on the map). We talked through how the deer generally use the area, what winds we wanted for each stand, and what he’d seen the deer doing the past few days. They’d had some fresh snow so he was able to get a good idea of which fields they were hitting and where they were coming out.

He was very adamant about how important it was for us to watch our exit and entry to our stands and not have our scent blowing into those bedding areas. Although we understood the point he was making, it didn’t really hit us as to how important this was until later in the week when he told us how few people had hunted this property during the year. I don’t remember the exact # but I know it amazed me that they could keep the pressure so low on their properties. These deer had maybe had hunters in their core bedding areas a handful of times a year due to tracking a deer, shed hunting, and that’s about it. My initial fear of hunting “pressured late season deer” was starting to ease a bit.

He also focused heavily on where we should park our vehicle. This was partially so that we would obey the wishes of the farmer who owned the land but also so that the deer wouldn’t see the vehicle. We didn’t think much of this in regards to spooking deer but we would learn more about this later in the hunt.

He then took us for a drive to get us acquainted with the route and the land. We drove into some of the fields to look for tracks and he pointed out stand placements and such. We started getting some ideas for other places we might want to hang our stands as well.

When we got back to camp, Paul had told us that if we wanted to, he was going to let us hunt that night because he thought we’d lose a few mornings to cold weather. My first thoughts were that we wouldn’t go out because the wind was blowing at about 25 MPH, making the 20 degree temps feel like 0 but after he took us out to the property and showed us the activity in the cut soybean fields, I quickly changed my mind. Add to the fact that we had a NW wind, which was perfect for almost all stands on the property and it was game on. We got back to camp and quickly got dressed and off we went.

When we scouted with Paul earlier, he told us that the deer seemed to be focusing on the areas of the field that I put white circles on. He recommended that we park just off the road near the middle of the field (there was a grain bin there with a driveway on the opposite side of the road) and walk across the field to #3, with one of us sitting on #3 and the other one going either to 2 or 4. We kind of flipped a coin as to who got the first choice the first night and my buddy headed to 3, with me heading to 2. I figured the wind would be less down in that corner and was thinking I’d need some cover from it to make it through the hunt.

The stands were all clearly marked from the field on in so I had no problem finding it. They also have safety ropes attached with prussic knots so that you can be tied in as soon as you leave the ground. I had just implemented these on my stands at home and was very glad they had these as these hang-ons were 18-20 feet in the air. That’s higher than I normally go and when you add in all the clothing and big boots it can be a dicey climb.

This is the only stand, out of 11 that I sat in, that I didn’t get a picture from so you’ll have to use your imagination

This stand was about 30 yards into the woods, off the field and faced west, so my back was too the field. It had a valley to my left and a hill in front of me, with a creek bed/gulley about 30 yards in front of me. It was a great looking stand but it didn’t produce that night as there were no deer sightings, just squirrels. I spent a lot of time playing around with my new range finder, ranging the squirrels that were around me

My buddy had better luck as he saw a doe and two fawns around 5, then at dark (which was around 5:30 in the woods), 3 bucks came through, with the last one having a pretty high rack but it was too dark to get a good look. #3 is in a pine stand and it gets darker in there a lot faster than the other stands due to the pine trees.

All in all it was a pretty good start to the trip and we were excited for the next day. We got back to camp, got unbundled, and headed into the house to see how the other hunters had done. We had a couple of guys from the Stillwater area who were making their second trip down for the year, a couple of guys from Arkansas, a father and son from Chicago, and Paul’s family, including his Dad, who is a great guy to be around. It was a great mesh of people as we all got along well, told hunting stories, and talked strategy. My buddy and I are also big Packer fans, which is the same for Paul's family so we had quite a bit of excitement that night as the Packers downed the Bears on a last minute touchdown.

I shouldn’t forget to mention Eli, the Korn’s dog. He is a very nice dog who will gladly pick up any piece of food you might happen to drop on the floor He helped fill the void of missing my pup while I was there.

The wind forecast for the morning was going to be out of the SSW, which wasn’t the greatest for the morning but we knew we likely had short odds in the morning anyway due to the cold temps. We decided we’d hunt #6 and #5 to do some long range scouting and keep our pressure to a minimum.

We turned in early that night as it had been a long day and it would be an early, cold morning.

[Scoot]

Nice start! ...and those are very pretty nails!!!

[sticknstring]

Great looking prop! Stands 4 & 9 probably got a workout in November. Can't wait to hear more about your trip!

[nbadger23]

Day 2 of the hunt

The alarms went off Monday morning and preparations began for the cold morning hunt. Neither of us are coffee drinkers and we both get going pretty quickly in the morning so we were able to sleep in until 5:30 or so. We’d have about a 15 minute drive to the land, then our walk in.

The wind was holding at SSW so we stuck with our plan from the night before. We had decided I would go to #6 which was on a finger, with field on both sides, and a pond in front of it. The pond was frozen so it obviously wasn’t drawing any deer for watering but it provided a good barrier to make a pinch point in front of my stand. My buddy went to #5 which was back in a corner of a cut soybean field. We knew he ran a risk of kicking deer off the field but we were hoping he might catch something transitioning between the two chunks of woods. The plan didn’t work very well as neither of us saw deer but we also didn’t last very long in the stand. At 8:30 we were both very glad to get down as the wind was very, very raw and just beating me up on my stand.

Here’s a few pics of the view from the stand and the sunrise, which was the highlight of my morning:

A funny side note about the pond. You'd see these man made ponds quite a bit and in talking with Paul, they did have stand placements on some of them to take advantage of early season warm weather when deer were drinking more prevalently. Obviously when they are frozen over they aren't much of a draw but there had been a gentleman from the SW U.S. who was convinced that "the deer had to drink" so he chipped a hold in the ice and sat over that watering hole for 3 or 4 days, ignoring the cut soybean field that the deer were hammering

The second part of our plan for the day was to go scout the field edges along the back field across from where #8 was and see if we could pick a spot for our stands there. We had seen some very good trails coming out when we scouted with Paul the previous day so we thought we’d give ourselves some other options, preferably morning options as we knew that stands 2-4 and likely #8 were going to be good at night.

The problem we were facing with morning stands was that at the time, the snow on the ground was crunchy as heck and you sounded like a herd of elephants when you walked on it. Taking this into account, we decided to set the two stands just off a deep creek bed, near some well used trails, with the idea being that we could use the creek bed as cover to walk in. We figured if the wind was right they wouldn’t be able to see or smell us, and if we walked slow enough we might get by with it.

We put my buddy’s stand up in the corner, into the woods about 20 yards (see the pink square in the corner) and mine down the field about 150 yards. I picked a tree that had shots out to the field, into the creek bed itself (where they had a well used trail) and across the creek bed. There were some good vines growing off the stand that I thought would give me good cover. They definitely did that but they were a pain in the butt to trim away to get the stand up.

We were plenty warm, a bit tired, and very hungry as we headed back around 11:00. We checked in with the other hunters, had some lunch, and readied ourselves for the evening hunt. Not many deer were seen that morning.

The evening hunt would put me on stand #3, with my buddy on #4. The wind was being kind of funny as it was in the process of making it it’s way around from the SW to the S. We talked it over with Paul and given that it seemed that the wind was going to hold from the SW as we walked in and not switch until we were on the stand it would work. We decided not to get onto the stand until around 3:30 as two hours was about the max we were able to sit in the temps we were having (10-12 degrees with wind chills around 0).

As I mentioned before, stand 3 is in a pine stand on a ridge. It’s got elevation changes in front of it and off to the north, with a soybean field to the east and the more common oaks and such off to the south.

The view in front of me down into the valley that led up to this ridge.

The view off to my left... my buddy had seen the bucks come from the far left of this picture the night before.

I hadn’t seen a deer yet from the stand so I was itching to see some action. It didn’t take long as I spotted a doe and a fawn in the valley in front of me as soon as I got into the stand. They never came closer than 100 yards but it was nice to see. As I got settled in I tried to get the lay of the land. My buddy had told me how the deer had moved when he hunted it and I could see the trail he was talking about. I also had well used trails 20 yards in front of me and 20 yards behind me. I could see why Paul had said what a good stand this was.

Everything stayed quiet until about 4:30 when I spotted movement off my left shoulder, from the south/SW. I could see horns on the first one and the second one, with the third one too far back to get a good idea about yet. The first was a 4 pt, and the second was a nice 8, but obviously a 2.5 year old. It gave me hope as to what the third one was. I grabbed my bow and readied myself as the first two passed on the trail behind me. The third one finally came into sight and he was a HUGE……………. one horn deer I was about to hang my bow up and get some pictures of them when he looked back off to the SW and had “that look” you see bucks get when they sense another buck coming in.

I cautiously turned that way so as not to spook him and looked for what he was so fixed on. I couldn’t hear anything approaching because there was no snow on the pine needle floor so I had to wait for them to show themselves. The first one finally did and it was a small buck. He was going to take the trail in front of me so I turned in case he had his big brother with him. He did indeed have “his brother” with him, but it was more like his twin as he sported a similar small rack.

I really needed to hang my bow up by now as my hand was starting to get really cold after holding it for so long but the deer hung around me. I wish I could have seen what happened off my right shoulder because it sounded like one of the first three charged at these other two, stopping short of my field of vision… and then the other two bounded off to the north. I could hear the other 3 walk away to the north as well, not in the field, but paralleling it.

I was finally able to put my bow down and relax and try to get my hand warmed up but the action didn’t slow down for long. At about 5:10 I saw movement off to the south again and this time I could see horns from about 100 yards away… this one had potential. I grabbed my bow and waited to see what this deer would do. He was angling toward the field, staying on a trail that I ranged earlier at about 35 yards. It was decision time… was he big enough? This is where having a range finder that gave me better magnification would have been nice as I was having a tough time judging his size and grabbing my binoculars was not an option. It was getting a bit dark in those pines and I just couldn’t tell. I had to let him pass, both because of being unsure of the size and because of the 35 yard distance in that fading light.

He walked out to the field and once he got out there I could get the binocs on him and get a better look as he was in some better light. He was an 8 pt, with G2’s that were likely 8-9 inches, with his G3’s a bit longer. His brow times were likely about 3-4 inches. I couldn’t get a good read on his mass or tell if he was outside the ears or not. After watching him out in the field for about 5 minutes I looked off to the SW and here were 5 does filtering out. They were slowly browsing their way out and all of a sudden two of the does got up on their hind legs and started kicking at each other. I almost laughed out loud when I saw that, all I could think of were two kangaroos fighting each other

This whole scene seemed to get the buck’s attention as he was now focused on the group of does. He started working his way back into the woods towards them and I knew I was going to have to make a decision on him again as he was going to come within 20 yards. He was facing me when he walked in so I could get a look at his spread and he was just outside the ears. When he got broadside at 20 yards I drew back and had a decision to make….. but in the end I just couldn’t let loose. He was a very nice deer, one that I would have been proud of, but he just wasn’t quite what I was ready to shoot.

He went over to those does and started pushing them around, pushing them out to the field and following them with his nose down the whole time. It gave me a bit of hope that maybe we had a doe coming into estrus late on the property. They went onto the field and out of site and after waiting a bit I gathered my things, got down tp meet my buddy on the field edge. I quietly exited and met up with him, thankfully not spooking any deer and asked him how his night went.

He had quite an exciting evening as well as he had seen 10+ deer, including the same 3 bucks that I saw at 4:30. They had actually started sparring with each other in front of him. He said he was watching some other deer and then he heard antlers clash together and looked over and saw two of them going at it. He grunted at them a bit to kind of play with them and had them wondering what was going on. All in all, a fun night in the stand for both of us.

We headed home and had a warm meal waiting for us as the guys from Stillwater had again left some food for Paul’s wife to get started. I was starting to get spoiled! Deer sightings had been pretty good that night and one of the guys from Arkansas passed up a 140ish type deer as he was looking for something bigger. I told him I doubted my trigger finger could do that, especially in the type of weather we were hunting in!

The next day was supposed to start out cold (around 5 degrees) but warm up nicely and the wind would be low, coming out of the SE in the morning and moving around to the NE later in the day. We decided to give our new stands a shot the next day and use the creek bed as cover. Sleep came very easily with all the fresh air we were getting.

One side note about the pictures I took. I had hoped to use my digital camera to take most of the pics but the cold weather was just not cooperating with it. It's not the greatest camera in the world but had better zoom than my phone so that was a disappointment. That left only my phone and I did the best I could with it but the cold affected that as well. I couldn't leave it on for the whole hunt as the battery would drain in that short time so I would basically take pictures when I got in the stand or when I had first light, and then turn it off. That didn't leave much opportunity to get pictures of deer but that's the way it goes.

[NoWiser]

Great story, sounds like a heck of an exciting evening!!

[certified jumbo]

Cool stuff badger....Thanks for sharing your story. I'm enjoying. ..

[PropsterII]

C'mon now, you've been back a couple weeks. The reports should be flowing from your fingers! As much as Scoot likes to keep us in suspense, even he doesn't keep us in suspense this long

[frogtosser]

Are you allowed to shoot a doe too or is it strictly bucks?

[nbadger23]

Frogtosser... the license comes with 2 tags and technically they are two "either/or" tags. We would have been allowed to shoot one buck and one doe on Paul's property (or possibly two does, we never asked that question). When we got there, Paul asked us what type of deer we were looking to shoot and told us that we were welcome to shoot does.

[nbadger23]

Day 3 of the hunt

We got going a bit earlier as our walk would be a little longer to the stand and we wanted to try to take it slow to be as quiet as possible. It was a balmy 6 degrees out! As soon as we started down the creek bed we knew our plan was flawed. No matter what we did it was almost impossible to be quiet. The only thing we could hope for was that we’d catch deer filtering back from the woods and fields to the NE and N as they may not hear our grand entrance.

It was a gorgeous morning, with what seemed to be some hoarsfrost on the trees. This was the view I had over my left shoulder, across the field.

As I mentioned, we were right near a creek bed and here's the view I had in front of me. You can see in the first picture that it looks like it had been a well used area.

I started taking pictures around 7:15 and unbeknown to me, the flash was on. My buddy would later ask me if I had a flashlight that I was shining towards him. I said “no, why?” He said he saw a light coming from my way just after daybreak and he thought I was signaling him that deer were coming his way so he grabbed his bow and held it for about 15 minutes, waiting for the “deer to come.” I laughed and told him that 1)It was my camera, not any deer and 2)I wouldn’t have been smart enough to figure out how to signal him.

I had no deer sightings that morning but he was able to watch 6-8 deer out in the way back field off to the North. He said one of them was a huge bodied deer but he didn’t have binoculars with him to get a better look. Apparently they came out to the field around 7:15 and stayed out there until almost 8. We had a good plan, but we weren’t in the right place.

We were able to hang in there until about 9 and down we came. You may be thinking that we weren’t hunting much with only 2 to 2.5 hours a sit but Paul had warned us earlier in the week that we needed to be cautious about over doing it, especially in the weather we were having. We knew what our limits were as far as staying warm and didn’t want to over do it. I was pulling my bow back every half hour on stand to stay loose and it was amazing how many times it was a tough go.

Thankfully the weather warmed up nicely that day and we were excited about the possibility of good deer movement that afternoon. It was almost 40 degrees when we went out! We decided to try to be in the stand around 2:45 as we knew we could sit longer in this weather. We started with a south wind and new it would be shifting to the SE as we sat so we decided that my buddy would sit on 8 as we had scouted that area in the morning and he liked what he saw. We also thought it would be a good opportunity to scout the new stands we hung as he could see that area from 8. I was going to sit on 4 and hug the north end of the field when I walked in to keep my scent from blowing into the bedding area.

The “road” that goes back to the fields where 8 is was very rutted up. It wasn’t a big deal when things were frozen but with this warm up things were getting muddy. I was a little concerned that I wasn’t going to get out of there but the Dodge did it’s job, albeit it was a tad bit dirtier afterwards.

I was making my way to 4 and as I got close to the woods I saw two does making their way out, about 30 yards for me… ugh! They obviously saw me pretty quickly and off they went. Oh well, not much I can do about that so I made my way to the stand. I got my safety harness attached and up I went. This was my 5th climb into a stand and the upper body was starting to feel it a bit, I was very glad to be strapped in, in case my arms betrayed me. I had just gotten into the stand and looked out to the field and saw 5 does making their way across the field from the NE. I quickly pulled my bow up to get ready but they stayed to the south of me.

Once they cleared out I started getting setup. I hunted 11 different stands in 11 sits and it was interesting to get used to the setup in each one. All of them that we hunted had a bow rope attached and some sort of bow hanger but not all of the bow hangers worked for my preferences. First of all, I’m only 5’2 so some of them were simply out of reach, but many of them were on the right hand side and I like to hang my bow on the left hand side so I can grab it with my bow hand. My buddy had mentioned to me that there was a bow hanger in this one but it would be way too high for me and he wasn't lying. Later in the night I asked Paul if Shaq had been hunting with him because that thing was WAY up there. I couldn’t even touch it with the top of my bow being on my tippy toes. My buddy had said that he could just barely reach it but he didn’t use it because he was afraid if he got the bow on the hook it might swing away from him and he’d never get it back.

This sit started the string of “let’s see what I can drop out of the tree stand” episodes. This time it was my quiver of all things. Down I go… did I mention it was pretty warm and my arms were getting a bit tired? Let’s just say I worked up a good sweat by the time I got back up.

4 was an interesting stand in that you could see forever, especially with snow on the ground. The stand faced North, with a gradual increase in elevation to the North. You could see 3 different trails coming from the funnel area to the North and they all came together about 20 yards from me. To the West was a big valley with what looked to be a thick ravine followed by a hillside. To the South was a ravine about 75 yards away and then the ground slowly rose to the pine stand that surrounds 3. To the east was the soybean field.

Here's the view off my left shoulder.

The view in front of me... the trail sure looks promising.

The view back towards the field...

This stand looked like a great rut stand as it looked like a place bucks would love to cruise through. Unfortunately all I saw were does that night but it was fun. After the first 7 I’d seen early I then saw 3 other groups of 4, 3, and 3. Seven of those all came out where I’d seen the first two when I walked in, and where the 5 that came off the field went in. It sounded like the same area that my buddy had seen deer go out to the field when he hunted it as well so thoughts started forming about moving a stand there as darkness approached.

Those thoughts were quickly disrupted by the sounds of coyotes howling, first off to the SE, then off to the SW and they sounded close to stand 8. Since the deer I had seen had cleared enough where I could get out w/o spooking them and it was getting on to 5:30 I decided I should get out of there as it would be another 15 minutes by the time I got back to my buddy at 8.

When I pulled up he was standing there with an arrow knocked and a knife in his hand. It seems that at dusk, the coyotes lit up VERY close to his stand and he wasn’t a big fan of that whole situation Let’s just say he was glad to see the truck.

He asked me how many I saw and I said “17”.. he said,” weird, that’s how many I saw as well.!” He had multiple deer in range, including a few bucks, but nothing big enough to shoot at. He said saw nothing come out in the corner we hung our stands, which was a bit discouraging.

As a side note, we were both willing to shoot a doe, but were going to try to wait until later in the week so we didn’t run a risk of burning the property by having to track one in the woods.

It was quite a fun night and we were already wondering what the weather/wind was going to do the next day to plan the next sit. I had almost forgotten that it was NYE until someone mentioned it back at the house. Paul’s wife was kind enough to cook us all dinner so for a third straight night I didn’t have to cook… bonus!

There was a young man in camp who was looking to shoot his first deer and he was just starting his education as a bow hunter. He had a doe within range that night but got busted trying to stand up. He did get a picture of the group of deer with his camera phone though so I kidded him and told him if he had time to shoot it with the camera he should have had time to stand up before they got so close… not like any of us “veteran” hunters have ever made that mistake He had also seen a very nice buck that night that unfortunately never got closer than 75 yards, but it was still encouraging.

We all enjoyed a nice meal and planned our next morning hunt. It was fun to listen to everyone try to decide where to hunt and look at the topo maps of the property they were hunting. After celebrating an early NYE it was off to bed to get ready for the next days hunt.

[frogtosser]

I just spent over an hour talking to Paul and booking my late season hunt for Dec, what a nice guy. He said you were very proactive and knowledgeable, I cant wait to hear the rest of your story.

[nbadger23]

Frogtosser... that's great to hear. Paul was being kind with the knowledgeable comment but we definitely weren't afraid to ask questions and were eager to soak up anything we could. It's not often you get to sit around at night and talk with a guy who has hunted all over the world so we took advantage of it.

The only down thing I can say about a late season hunt is that it will be tough to get many opportunities in the morning, especially if you get the type of weather we had. We talked a little about the possibility of hunting a bit later in the morning when the temps would warm up a little but we didn't follow through on that and I kind of wish we would have.

Actually, I think my biggest mistake in that regard, was not using the trail cameras we brought. We would have set them up on some well used trails on the fields, or just into the woods, to get an idea if they were moving in the later morning but we didn't do it for some reason.

It was a balance between trying to find "some" opportunity in the a.m. w/o hurting our chance in the evening as we were seeing such consistent evening movement and didn't want to mess that up.

[nbadger23]

Day 4 of the hunt....

We stayed up a bit too long on Tuesday night (NYE) and may or may not have had one more beverage than we should have but that’s a different story for a different time. We did not see midnight so at least we were fairly responsible . These activities, combined with the fact that we knew it was going to be a single digit morning, with wind chills dipping below 0, made it hard to pop out of bed the next day. This is likely a situation where I would have slept in if I was by myself but with two of you it’s harder to give in so out we went.

The plan we had discussed the night before involved finally getting into the food plot which was stand 7. It’s the furthest stand “in the woods” and Paul’s advice was to only touch it with a northerly type wind so that we wouldn’t get any of our scent into the core bedding area on either exit or entry. There were two stands within 40 yards of each other, depending if a person wanted to be in a 6’ tower blind or a 20 ft ladder stand. With the cold wind forecasted, the blind made more sense. I deferred to my buddy to give him a choice of stands first because I was cautious that I might not be able to execute a shot out of the blind. He chose 7 and so I went to 1, in hopes that I’d catch something coming back off the fields.

The warm weather the day before had melted some of the crunchy snow and although it had re-frozen over night it still had lost some of it’s insane crunchiness so that also helped us with our entry into these two stands. After a slippery walk up the rutted road we parted ways and headed to our stands.

This was my first venture into a ladder stand and these did not have the safety ropes from top to bottom. They were very heavy duty 20’ ladder stands but I was a bit skittish on the climb up. Once I got to the top I was having a bit of a panic attack and cautiously got my own safety rope out and got it around the tree, the whole time basically pressing myself against the stand and the tree for some reassurance of where my “boundaries” were. To add to the stress, a red squirrel was chewing me out for invading his territory. It wasn’t helping my concentration, especially with a small bit of sleep deprivation going on.

Once I was strapped in I got my sea legs and started to unpack. Today’s “drop” of choice ended up being my walkie talkie. My buddy had no cell phone reception so we were using walkies at predetermined times to communicate. I didn’t know at the time what I had dropped as it was still dark but I figured it was something I was going to need and sure enough, when it got light out enough to see I could tell it was the talkie. Just to make it worth it, I had also dropped my grunt call a few minutes after that so I grabbed them both when I ventured back down…

As it got light I could start to study the lay of the land around this stand. The stand faced west and it was also in the pine stand so visibility was pretty good to the north. The fields were behind me about 50 yards, with a couple of fingers coming out of the woods. To the west the elevation rose so I didn’t have much of a view there. I could make out a couple of well used trails around me and also some beds that looked fairly fresh. It gave me some hope that I’d get something coming back to bed temporarily in the area after feeding.

Here's what the first sunrise of 2014 looked like!

After about an hour in the stand I started to re-think my wisdom on deferring on stand choices. The wind was hammering me and even though my face was covered up I was starting to show signs of having cold set in. I was using a muffler for my hands and inside of it had a “mega warmer," along with little hand warmers in the fingers of my gloves. I decided to move the big warmer to the back of my neck and that did the trick. At 8:30 when my buddy called on the talkie and asked how I was (with a little bit of concern/worry/uh oh, I shouldn’t tell her I’m so warm sort of tone in his voice) I said I was fine and could make it another half hour. He was glad for that as he’d seen 6 deer filter through, including two bucks and was hoping I could hunt a while longer. Later in the day, when he was standing far enough away so I couldn’t hit him, he’d told me how cozy it had been in the blind and how he hadn’t even put a glove on his shooting hand…

I ended the morning with zero deer sightings but had about 1 billion squirrel sightings. I could count at least 6 at any point in time. It started with that pesky red squirrel and continued with grays and one black one. They were certainly having a fun time but the deer did not want to come out and play with me. At least they kept making enough noise that they had me "hoping" that something was coming. I needed that given how cold it was and how little hopes I had for seeing a deer that morning.

We had discussed moving our stands as we knew we wanted to put one a bit south of 4 where we had both seen deer come out. The issue was the wind. A NE wind would blow our scent right into the bedding area and we didn’t want to risk that so we decided to wait until Thursday to do that. So back to camp we went and it was laundry and shower time (no, it wasn’t the first shower of the week, thankfully for those around us!). They had the washer and dryer right there and 4 showers so that was nice.

I noticed I had some spots on my right hand that were itching pretty good and after looking at them more closely it looked like a bit of poison ivy like reaction. I had no clue what could have possibly caused that but after talking with Paul a bit further I realized that those vines that I thought were “such good cover” for my ladder stand were likely poison oak and there was still some “life” in them. Only I can manage to get into something like that in the dead of winter! Thankfully it wasn’t too bad and it was just a minor annoyance.

We knew that there was a front coming in with snow that afternoon but weren’t really sure on the details as different weather sites showed different things. It started to pick up pretty good around 2:00 but we decided we had to go out as you never know.

We had a NE wind so our options were 1, 5, 7, and 8. I asked Paul if he thought the food plot would be better than the fields (thinking how cozy it would be in that blind staying dry) and he said it would be hard for him to recommend not going to the fields, which made sense given what we’d seen. My buddy wanted to go to 1 but I talked him into going to 8 as I told him the coyotes couldn’t possibly be there again But seriously, it was a great wind for it and he’d seen good deer action there. It also gave him one more chance to see if there was any action around the stands we hung because if there wasn’t, those were getting pulled and moved.

I ended up in 5, hoping that I’d have deer come from the small chunk of woods to the north out to the field. The field is skinny and long and as you can see on the topo map, 5 is set in the back corner which you can’t see from the road, which I learned was very important to these deer. They are very afraid of vehicles, especially those that stop. Apparently road hunting is done quite often around there and if a vehicle stops on the road, the deer scatter. I’m used to stopping and glassing fields while they look at you from the safety of the field but not these deer… if you stop, they get the heck out of there! Paul was very cautious about where he drove on scouting missions in the morning and night so as not to go near any of his hunters. The best way I can describe it is that on Friday morning we went scouting with him as it was just too darn cold to hunt and we came by a field that was likely 400 yards from front to back, with a wooded hillside on the back side. My buddy had spotted some deer bedded down on the hillside so we stopped to glass them. Within about 15 seconds deer started getting on their feet and getting out of dodge. I was shocked to see this. It was pretty obvious that they had become conditioned to realize that when a vehicle stopped, bad things could happen.

So, back to the snowy hunt. By the time I had walked back to 5 I was starting to be more white than camo on my upper half. It wasn’t that cold but it was icky wet stuff. I crawled up into the stand and got setup and proceed to drop my bow hanger as I was trying to screw it in.. the streak continues. Instead of getting down to get it I used a tree step that was already there. I had to deal with hitting my bow every time I turned that way but such was life.

This stand was interesting. It faced north, out onto the field, but the elevation change in the field made it so the deer were almost looking eye to eye with you when they came from the north. To the west and south was a valley with a rising hill and to the east a nice trail came out about 30 yards away. It was thick as all get out 15 yards on each side of the stand so they weren’t going to come in close.

Here's what it looked like down the field to my right and is the direction I walked in from...

This is what it looked like straight out in front of me. You can see the elevation in the field and the top of that hill was almost eye level with me.

This was the rest of the field to me left. As you can see, I was near the back corner. My hope was that deer would filter out from across the field as you can see a break in the wood line and an old road/trail back there.

This was the view off my left shoulder and behind me. This area was down wind of me so I didn't hold a lot of hope of anything coming out from this direction.

I tried my best to hunt w/o my hood but I was losing the battle. I hate losing the periphery vision when you put the hood up, especially since I couldn’t hear a thing and visibility was so bad with the snow falling as it was. I basically turned in little semi-circles to look around me, which wasn’t ideal in regards to keeping movement down.

I remember saying “hey, that’s a deer”, almost in surprise, when I moved around to the southwest. A doe had come in to about 75 yards behind me and I never knew it. I didn’t stand much of a chance as she was down wind of me and within about 30 seconds all I was seeing was her flag. Oh well I thought, it’s a good sign as it was about 4:00.

At around 4:30 I did a shuffle to look out on the field (I had been protecting my face from the snow by looking south for a while) and when I turn around, there’s a doe standing in the field, on the hill, about 40 yards away, looking right at me. I play the stare down game with her and she finally decides life is ok and walks away from me, to my right. As I relax out of my motionless position I see a deer take off from the opposite corner of the field, back by the trail I thought they'd come out on. She had probably come in while I was in the stare down and I never saw her.

At this point I’m starting to get frustrated and cold. I’m also wondering how I’d even execute on getting a shot off in these conditions? I'm cold, wet, and snow falls off everywhere when I try to draw my bow back. It’s getting near 5:00 and I’m seriously contemplating heading back to the truck and warming up until it was time to go get my buddy but the deer don’t cooperate. Four more does come out into the field from the north and even though I’m not moving, and I’m down wind, they pick me out right away so I play the staring game with them. I lose and they show me their flags and blow at me and off they go. By 5:15 I’ve had enough, I just don’t care. I’m literally white on my upper half, my head is drenched, and the “uh oh, my fingers might not work to get down” feeling has set in.

I manage to get packed up and get down. Somehow I remember that I dropped my bow holder and pick that up and I start the trudge out to the truck. My right hand is basically numb so I have to adjust my glove to get my fingers balled up into my hand so I can warm them. Fun times I tell ya, fun times.

As I pull back into the field by 8 to pick up my buddy he looks like a snowman. He gets in the truck and says "are we crazy or what???” I laugh and agree with him but we both agree that it was better than sitting on the couch watching t.v.

He had seen a lot of deer, but all of them were to the south. They were coming out in the corner where the road comes through and he figured there were at least 20 of them out in the field but had no clue what they were due to the visibility.

We get home and get everything dried out and sit down to formulate a plan. It’s starting to get down to the wire and we know we need to make something happen. We’ve agreed that areas around 3 and 4 have been our best bet and we should hunt those areas the last two nights. We have a general idea where we want to hang one near 4 but are torn on what to do on 3. The two good bucks that were seen on that stand had come from an angle that kept them about 35 yards away and it had been late. We were tossing around the idea of setting a stand more near the field so that if they came out late and hit the field we'd have better light to both evaluate the deer more easily and obviously to have better shooting light. We decided to get a better look at the wind forecasts and movement after the snow after our Thursday a.m. hunt and decide from there.

The 15 year old that was in camp had an interesting night. He again had a doe in range and again was trying to stand up to draw and the stand creaked on him, which caused the doe to look right up at him and pinpoint him. We were giving him some ribbing when his Dad said “oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that stand squeaks a bit’ I told him that I thought tomorrow night would be his night and he said “you said that last night.” Paul said… “well, I can guarantee that you’re either going to shoot one or spook one given your track record the past few nights” … he laughed and agreed.

The Arkansas guys had decided to head home. They weren't in favor of the temps that were forecasted for Thursday (below 0 in the a.m., with single digits for the evening hunt). I wish they would have hung out for one more night because with the storm clearing, Thursday was sure to be a good day for movement. The farm they were hunting had standing soybeans as well, which was drawing deer in like crazy but they had made their decision. They were fun to talk to as it was interesting to get a hunting perspective from a vastly different part of the country.

No free meals that night so I got busy and grilled up a couple of steaks we had brought. After eating and cleaning up the dishes we sat down to figure out a plan for the morning. It’s going to be the coldest morning yet with the temp around 0 and a North/NW wind taking us into the -10 area with wind chills.

We decide that I’ll take my turn in the blind and he decides to go in #1. We turn in early with thoughts of a frigid morning.

[DonBo]

Great job so far on relating your story with the added pics. Can't wait to hear how the rest of the hunt goes.

[Scoot]

You bet- I'm cheering for you!

[frogtosser]

How many layers of clothes did u have on? What did u guys do during the middle of the day? The deer sound really educated too this time of year.

[nbadger23]

Frog... The typical clothing for me was:

Bottoms = long underwear (generic type, nothing special), + wool pants + Walls Cammo bibs.

Top = Underarmour turtleneck, Wickers long underwear top with a zip up neck + Underarmour long underwear top + Wool sweater + Whitewater Cammo jacket. This jacket is not really made for warmth but it's soft and quiet and it allows for packing a lot of layers underneath it. I also like the way the pockets lay out on it.

Head = Choko Facemask (100% polysester) + fleece lined cammo stocking cap

Feet = polyester socks + light weight smart wool + heavy duty smart wool + chemical toe warmers + 1400 gram Rocky's. I lightly frost bit my toes a few years back so they can really go south on me fast.

Hands = Muffler + manzella cammo gloves with flip tops and a spot for a chemical hand warmer right in the gloves by the fingers. I also usually put a "mega warmer" in the muffler if it was really cold.

Contrast this to my buddy:

Under armour turtle neck, light weight sweater, jeans, and a walls cammo jump suit. On his feet he wore cotton socks with his heavy duty La Crosse boots. It is insane how much less clothing he needed.

We were usually getting back to camp around 9:45 - 10 on the days we didn't scout or set stands. It is hard to believe but there wasn't a lot of downtime by the time you got back, got undressed, made some breakfast, showered, and figured out a plan for the afternoon. We usually just hung out in the living room and watched t.v. and talked with the other folks in camp and we'd start getting ready around 2 again. Sometimes we'd sneak a nap in as well.

I was surprised how normal the deer seemed to be in regards to their "nervousness" as opposed to what you can see here after 2 months of bow hunting pressure and a month of gun pressure. You can certainly tell they were very moderately hunted and had no gun pressure on them (except if they ventured onto neighboring farms).

Very simple process for this time of year, find the food that is the most tasty to them at that time.

[nbadger23]

Day 5

It’s as cold as advertised in the a.m. The truck temperature gauge shows 0 as we pull up to our parking spot and the wind is frigid. We sit in the truck for another 10 minutes as we knew that we didn't want to be sitting in the stands for too long in the dark and losing heat. I don’t think either one of us really wanted to get out but we did. We walk back up the slippery rutted road and he heads in at the markers for 1 and me down the hill to the road to the food plot.

The road in and the plot itself were planted with beans. There’s not a ton of them left anymore but enough where you hope you’ll catch a few deer stopping by to eat in the seclusion of the woods. I walk up to the tower blind and look at the ladder that goes up into it and wonder how the heck I’m going to do this. The ladder is about as wide as one of my boots and there’s not much room to navigate. I end up pulling myself up into the blind and sprawling out on the floor to get in… quite graceful I am at times For good measure I dropped my binoculars. I did NOT venture back down to get them after the fiasco of getting in the blind.

I was only able to get two pictures and my phone started shutting down due to the cold.

It was quite comfortable in blind as far as temp was concerned... as long as I didn't expose my hands for very long. At 7:40 I saw 6-8 does meandering through the woods about 150 yards behind me so that was a good sign but that was all there was for the morning. My buddy had seen 2 around 7:30 so they did seem to be moving a bit which was good to see.

At 9:00 we touched base on the talkies and decided to get down. We knew the NW wind was perfect for hanging another stand near 4 where we’d seen the deer travel and we had fresh snow to help our scouting.

We drove over to our stands and pulled them and then headed back over to the field by 4 and got out to take a look. We found two trails in the vicinity of where we'd seen deer on our previous hunts there and they looked pretty beat down already, on very new snow, so we were encouraged.

Now it was time to find a good tree. We were kind of hoping to find a tree that not only gave us good shots to the trails but also to the field if possible. Our “almost perfect” tree was unfortunately way too big for the stands we had so we went to plan b. We settled on a tree that was in between the two trails but only 15 yards from each. This was closer than we wanted to be given the lack of cover this time of year but it was what it was. Our thoughts were that we’d see the deer coming and be able to hug the tree to blend in with it and let them get past us and then get a shot. We had great shooting lanes and tree cover for drawing once they got past us so the plan seemed logical, as long as we spotted them ahead of time and could get ready.

My buddy set the stand up and I tended to the trimming of the shooting lanes. The stand was setup such that it faced North/NW and it is the pink box with the red arrow near it on the map. It was kind of neat to see what he looked like up the tree in his camo and to see how much he blended in except for his face, which was uncovered. I’ve always been a big proponent of wearing a face mask and seeing this reiterated my thoughts.

Here's a few views of what it looked like from the stand and I've indicated the way the trails worked around the stand.

Here's the view off my left shoulder. The elevation rose into the pine stand and there was a good trail coming off that hill.

Here's the view in front of me and how the trails formed around that one. I have "ok" visibility to the south but it does gradually drop down so I'm likely to not see deer until they are within 100 yards.

Here's what it looked like out to the field

We got all the shooting lanes trimmed that we thought we needed, got the safety rope hooked up and back to camp we went. As we were in the truck my buddy says “so, I think I’ll hunt 3 tonight and you can hunt 4, then tomorrow night you can hunt 3 and I’ll hunt 4 and I’ll take down my stand when I get down and we can carry it out.” Seems like a good plan but I was a bit down that I wouldn’t get to hunt 3 that night as I really liked that stand and the NW wind was perfect for it. Oh well, it was a good plan and they were both good spots. We headed back to camp to get a little rest

[Scoot]

Sounds very promising!

[NELS-BELLS]

I'm really enjoying your story and photos. Thanks for sharing.

Nels