and a strong cup of coffee

Dad assured us that deer move in the wind.  He was confident that if we were in the woods, we would see something.  He could be as confident as he needed to; he had tagged out and could stay warm. The wind was howling and with the Sky Condo breaking apart , I didn't waste much time getting into my tree seat in the woods.  It had taken me a handful of years to be comfortable enough swaying in a tree during a windy sit, but I was ready. It was so cold that I had on my snowmobile boots with toe warmers, my ski gloves with hand warmers and a blanket over my legs to help keep the wind from hitting the backs of my legs.  I had on so many layers! It was too windy to hear anything move so I just kept scanning from one side to the other.  I kept hearing Dad's voice telling us that deer move in the wind and I was reliving the shock of seeing that massive buck run across my parent's back yard the night before.  I was zoning out, looking straight ahead when somet...

This is how I started my second week of deer hunting.  I have never been so quiet in the woods.  I was painstakingly slow and keeping my eyes peeled for deer.  The week before, I had jumped two deer under my stand and I was determined not to have that happen again. I walked out and around our normal route into my stand.  I was at a snail's pace. I would walk, stop and look.  I would look again and take a couple of steps before doing it all over again.  I watched for any movement near my stand. The leaves had fallen off the trees from the wind storm the weekend prior so I had a better view of the area.  I could not see any movement near my stand so I paused next to our trail camera to look around and relax a little bit.  The minute that I stopped, three loud blows jumped me off to my left.  I had made a huge error; I was so concerned about looking near my stand, that I never figured that the deer would be on the opposite side of the pat...