I was out the 21st-23rd and again the 28th-30th. The synopsis is next year is going to be a great buck year and I hate deer dog hunter owners. Over that span I saw 16 Doe, 6 spikes, 1 4pt and 1 6pt. Lots of good young bucks that will be excellent shooters next year. Already having some bone hanging, I sure can't complain but it wouldn't suck to get me another 8 or that 11 I have on cam :)
One property is 1,200 acres but surrounded by dog hunting clubs. These punks drop their dogs off at the road and they run amok across damn near the whole county. Then they sit on the land they do own and shoot everything that the dog runs by them. Perfectly legal. I could almost stomach all that ruining of my deer patterns but the way they treat the pups is brutal. Every dog I saw was skin and bones. The 5 pups I did see were very wary at first and took a lot of warming up. Because the dog would catch a scent and run in circles, often they slept outside in 15deg weather. They have GPS collars on them but the sons of ******, no good, *******-********, ****-*** owners don't bother to pick them up each night. I had one jump in the truck with me at 8pm so we took a trip to McDonalds and fed the poor creature. This past Saturday I was sleeping in my truck and heard scratching underneath the truck. Scary thing at 2am in the middle of the woods but when I got out, it was the GPS collar of the dog trying to sleep underneath my truck. I let him in and we caught a few hours of sleep together. Quite uncomfortable in a no-cab ranger but I'm a sucker for dogs and we made due.
Once I figured out where they drop the dogs off I broke out the 00buckshot and got in front of them. That was pretty cool.....No shooters kicked up but still interesting to have them run right by you at 15yds. I was hankering to get my first buck with buck-shot. I've had a few with slugs but one moving at a good clip with buck-shot would be neat.
The first weekend I had a first-time hunter out with me and did my best to put him on a deer to no success. One afternoon I had him set-up and tried to kick-up what I could behind him. An absolute gorgeous buck shot up out of the cover right towards where I had him. I didn't hear a shot and inquired. He did the right thing by not shooting at the moving deer as I had told him previously to only take a good shot. I forgot to cover that on a monster like that, fire away! No worries, not his fault and he did right. Had a couple does by him but wouldn't get into a shooting lane or were too far away on the other days.
Sunday I was up in Patrick County. It wasn't a doe a day. After getting tired of watching the same small buck multiple weekends I decided to move my stand at noon....I'm not usually a fan of that but I was sitting in the new location by 2:30. 5:00 hits and 6 doe walk right underneath my stand. Would've been great but it wasn't a doe day. All good, it was a freaking harem and someone had to be watching over it right? Heard some heavy non-squirrel leaf action behind me and thought oh baby it is on. Turned out to be a fox....Pretty neat to see the little bugger but no buck showed himself in shooting light. Had a silhouette at darn-near pitch-black but couldn't make out what it was. Sat in the blind a full hour after dark while it rummaged around before leaving so as not to spook it. I'll get him soon in the new spot. The stand location is really awesome and the deer have about 2 acres of un-cut head-high grass that they can walk out of the wood-line through. I'm sitting 15yds into a clearing with trees covering the approach paths between me and their well worn trails. I can see down into it the grass perfect, they feel nice and safe and I got the wind in my favor :)
I set-up my camera in a new spot at lunch on a newly created, heavily traveled deer path. May be setting up a ground blind over yonder pending those results.
Here's a few of the pups with ****-*** owners:
I also finished up my Euro Mount on the cull-buck from October. Had one of the artist gals at work shade in the deep parts with black, I dig it. Once the 8pt is done I'm going to see if they can get me a foliage look. Pretty cool stuff. I'll follow-up after hunting season with the steps on how it was completed. Right now, I got bucks to take care of.
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