Skip to main content

Deer Season 2015

We kicked off the new season on Saturday and it could not have been a better morning.  The moon was out, the stars were bright and there was just a slight chill in the air.  It was 24 degrees.

After last year's last minute switch in sitting spots and my success, I let Hubby pick where he wanted to sit.  He wanted the Sky Condo and I took T3.  As the three of us walked along the path into the woods, the silence was broken by a single howl. It was loud and close.

Sound travels Dad said but we all knew that the coyote was close.  He was probably in the woods between us and T3. Luckily, it was just one coyote (only one was howling.)  We split from Hubby and headed directly towards T3 as another howl came.  We were walking directly towards the coyote. I kept thinking about the deer and how they were probably moving away from the coyote and further away from us and T3.  As we came to a field, the coyote howled again but he was further away at the other end of the field. I felt a little better.

I climbed into T3 and flashed my headlamp at Dad.  He walked back out to his normal spot and left me alone listening and watching more light creep into the woods.

Looking out from T3
Looking out from T3
This is the same location as I sat last year only now with a permanent structure, I was further into the woods and had more shooting lanes than grassy openings.  I scanned back and forth looking for movement. Even the squirrels seemed to still be asleep.

There were some early shots with one sounding kind of close (maybe someone shot that coyote) but no movement.  A half hour after the shots, I heard a noise behind me. I leaned around onto my sun porch but couldnt see anything. I turned back around and heard blowing and shorting. The wind direction was in my favor so I didnt think that the deer had smelt me from 16 feet up in the trees but something didnt smell right to this deer.  He snorted a few times and was gone. He never stepped out, never walked through any of my hunting lanes... just disappeared.

I have written that I love hearing geese in the nearby fields and without fail, a huge flock of geese flew right over me.  They were so close that I could hear the beating of their wings and the soft noises that they made to one another.  It was hunting season!

It was also Halloween and with a two year old, there are obligations that one must follow.  I had to leave the stand and be back at the truck by 10.  I also got to pick up my bear rug! So, after running errands and the noontime trick-or-treat route, the kiddo was napping and we headed back into the woods.

Hubby chose to walk, Dad went to T3 and I sat in the Sky Condo.

Still great color!


It was warm enough that I didnt need my wool jacket or gloves.  I sat and enjoyed the afternoon, the colors and the gratefulness that I have for being able to hunt with my family.  It was a perfect hunting day!

We met back at the car at 6pm.  Dad had also heard a deer blowing behind T3 but he couldnt see it. Hubby had jumped some does and had one stand her ground and yell at him while stomping her leg. I enjoyed the quiet.

This weekend, we will be out again and trying to get one of those big bucks on the ground!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Taking Turkeys to Texas

There are a few less turkeys in Maine to hunt this year. A few months ago, Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife in partnership with the National Wild Turkey Federation , captured and released more than 50 birds into East Texas with the hope of rebuilding their population.   “Eastern turkeys are where the restocking efforts originally began,” explained Shawn Roberts, Director of Field Operations for the National Wild Turkey Federation, “We tried in the 1920’s but it didn’t work.  We tried pen-raised birds and that didn’t work either. The only thing that was successful was to trap birds and relocate them to good habitat.” “We started this current effort in the early ‘80s and we had to begin looking outside the state to see if we could get them moved in. We didn’t want to violate The Lacey Act so we had to come up with a way to compensate the states that were giving up a resource either by trading other wildlife or paying them monetarily,” said Roberts. Texas is on the very edge o

Utilizing technology to make you more aware

Staci and I were roaming around the woods on a piece of property that she knew. It was snowing and we were chasing deer tracks to see if we could find some early sheds. It was a perfect day to be out in the woods and we were relaxed and not really paying attention to where we were going. We knew the border of the property and we knew that if we walked long enough we would hit roads or the bog and find our way back. We got to a point where we thought we knew where we were but we were not sure. Staci got out her compass to take a waypoint to make sure we were going in the right direction to get back to the truck. I took out my phone and turned on OnX. Within seconds we knew where we were, where the property borders were in relation to us and we could watch the dot (that represented us) on the map move as we walked out of the woods and got closer to the truck. In another adventure, my son and I headed out on a shed hunting mission.  When we got into the woods, I turned on the tracker

Where are the women?

This week, my interview with Steve at The Maine Outdoorsman went live. Steve said yesterday 200 people hit his site viewing over 500 pages. That is a lot of people reading about little ole me and hunting. Why? When I think of women who are in the general public's eye and hunt, I can think of 2 - Country singer Miranda Lambert and Sarah Palin. Why only two? Why is the female hunter such a fascinating thing? (I should probably note that I do not have cable so any and all female hunters on the hunting stations are lost to me. I'll keep it to the general public because that's what I am familiar with.) People/media were fascinated by the fact that they could get footage of Palin and her gun, shooting (and gutting) animals but I feel like the nostalgia would be lost if they had the same footage of McCain. Lambert and her hubby Blake Shelton tweet photos of their kills, and comment on what/where they are hunting. I only know this because I follow both. That's it.