and a strong cup of coffee

The plan was to shoot does from the property.  The only out was the big buck that we had been tracking.  Hubs was the first who successfully shot a doe in the afternoon of opening day of rifle season.  Having sat through almost all types of weather conditions and some single digit temps, I shot a doe minutes before legal time at the end of the season. Dad decided to muzzle hunt since the woods would be quieter and maybe that buck would be lulled into a false sense of security.  For two weeks, Dad walked through the woods and finally, in the same the spot that I had shot my deer, he saw a big, healthy looking doe.  As the afternoon light was fading, he made his way over to the deer. There was some relief as he evaluated the animal.  We were again fortunate that we filled all of our tags and our freezer would be willed with venison for the year ahead. Dad set his jacket and gun down and prepared himself to gut the deer.  It was not a doe.  Alt...

The 4th weekend of deer season was a bust as I had to take my kiddo to a birthday party for a classmate.  I (half) jokingly told him that from now on, when he meets a new friend, he needs to ask them when their birthday is and if it is during hunting season, he can't be friends with them. Week 5 had me in the woods for up to 5 days.  I headed in on Tuesday afternoon and sat but nothing was moving. The big buck had started showing up only at 10:30pm or 3am on the cameras.  He had not been seen during the day since the third week of the season. On Wednesday, Dad and I planned to be in the woods for the full day.  We packed sandwiches and snacks and headed into the woods.  We had a strategic plan for which areas we would hunt and where I could be and where Dad would be.  Dad ended up jumped a few deer and I jumped one as a moved from stand to stand.  No shots were fired though and we planned for Thanksgiving morning and the snow that was moving in...

I am so excited to share my interview with Bruce from Whitetail Rendezvous with you! Give it a listen and let me know what you think.  We covered a lot of different topics. https://whitetailrendezvous.com/and-a-strong-cup-of-coffee-erin-merrill/

If you do not follow me on Facebook , then you don't know that Dad totally schooled us in how to shoot a big buck.  Did some scouting, brought his gun, right place, right time, incredible buck! (Mom's flip phone doesn't take great pictures) So, that leaves Hubs (who has a doe permit) and I (who does not) to attempt to get a shot at one of these big bucks!  The competition is on!

"All I saw was blue smoke" dad said smiling. One week after I shot my deer and rifle season ended, Dad was still hard at it trying to get one of those big bucks we still had pictures of. But, instead, he squeezed the trigger and got his first deer with a muzzleloader. According to Dad: two doe came crossed three different shooting lanes before starting to talk at him. When he decided to fire at the biggest doe, he lined up the sites and just saw the blue smoke and no deer.  "I got down and walked to where I saw her last.  The second doe was still standing nearby, so I knew she was down.  When that second doe ran off by itself, I knew the deer was somewhere near by"  Dad picked up the blood trail and tracked his doe... right into a nice puddle of cold water,"She was completely in the water and dead."  Dad pulled her out and got her back onto higher ground, then got his skidder to pull her out the rest of the way.  When you lose two fellow hunters who...

The snow was melting and dropping off the branches and leaves.  I had been in the stand for only a few minutes when I heard a deer walking off to my right.  It was one deer and too dark to know if it was a doe or buck.  Maybe it was the crotch horn.  I closed my eyes and listened to the deer walking away from me.  At least it didn't seem spooked; maybe it didn't know that I was there. The sky began to get brighter, indicating that the rain predicted was not coming.  I dug into my pocket for handwarmers. I tried to keep the crinkling plastic as quiet as I could as I ripped the first side open.  I waited before I opened the second warmer to keep my noise at a minimum. When I made the second tear, just the corner came off exposing a hole just big enough to get my pinky into. The second warmer was heating up, but I couldn't get to it.  I wiggled my pinky inside the hole and tried stretching it out. I kept watch from the Sky Condo as I pulled to get ...

There was a storm coming in on Thanksgiving night, so Dad and I started and ended our day in the woods.  It was silent when we walked into our stands in a turkey induced semi-stupor. The silence didn't last long.  For almost two hours, we listened to someone target practicing or just shooting different guns.  It was ridiculous and I still can not understand why, during hunting season, someone would do this when they could have waited until Sunday (when we can't hunt.) When we went to bed Thanksgiving night, the cold rain had turned to snow and on Friday morning, there was enough on the ground to track. Snow turns me into a kid! It could be an early snow in Oct, a Christmas show or the type that you dread in March but for me, I get giddy.  I was the first one up and dressed on Friday morning. The woods were totally silent. The animals had not woken up yet and I loved how bright the world seemed under a coating of white. The silence was broken by steps. It was st...

There were signs of deer everywhere! Tracks, rubs and fresh scrapes but for some reason, I was not seeing them.  Dad, on the other hand, was seeing deer everywhere he looked. One morning, he watched a spike horn chase a doe and fawn through the woods.  He walked out of the woods behind a doe and fawn another night.  He was seeing multiple does every time he sat or walked through the woods but instead of using that doe tag, he wanted that big, illusive buck that we knew was still hanging around. I hung out in my stands and watched a lot of squirrels.  How could we be spending so much time in the woods and not come across a deer yet? It helped that Hubs had filled the freezer but we knew that there were deer all around us. Still, being in the woods was fantastic.

On Veteran's Day, the wind was so bad that I climbed down from the Sky Condo to sit in the ground blind that we had not removed since turkey season.  I am usually all for rocking in the trees but there was just enough extra creeks happening that I felt better on the ground. It sleeted, the wind blew and nothing moved. Saturday was different.  I started off the same way as the weekend before; Sky Condo to tree seat.  I left the Sky Condo a little earlier than I had the week before hoping to see more deer than just the two does.  There were fresh rubs that were a little bigger than the ones the week before, but it wasn't from a large buck. The leaves were somewhat crunchy and I took my time getting to the stand.  I was almost there when I saw two white flags flickering in the woods.  The does!  They were at my stand, eating. I was in the middle of the trail and totally exposed.  I slowly crept backward until I was up against a tree....

We had to revamp our hunting plan since we were now one hunter down, but Dad and I stuck with what he knew would work and where we thought the deer were. I started the morning in the Sky Condo and when it was clear that nothing was moving through, I headed to a tree seat not far away.  There were fresh rubs along the path that I used and although they were made by small deer, it gave me hope that the deer would be moving through. I left my pack at the bottom of the tree and climbed the 16 feet up to the seat.  I think I am more comfortable in treeseats than the bigger stands.  I can't move when I am up there because every part of me is exposed to unseen deer but there is something about being so much more present with nature than when you are hidden in a big box.  I rested my gun on the arm rests and kept watch for movement or footsteps. I hadn't been there long when two brown bodies emerged from the thick hardwoods.  I twisted slightly and got my gu...

We've waited all year for this!  Deer season was back.  Hubs, Dad and I had a rough idea of where we were going to sit to start the morning, when and where we would move to next and the basic game plan for the morning hunt. But then, I looked at the trail camera pictures. The 10 pointer that we had had on the camera last year had shown himself for the first time two days before at T3. Up until that point, we had only smaller bucks on the cameras.  But this one... we've been watching him for at least 4 years and he was beautiful.  I declared that I would start the season sitting in T3. Hubs was bumped to the Sky Condo and Dad would still hunt. It was a perfect morning - quiet and calm.  I got into T3 and settled in.  I had a set of rattling antlers, a grunt call and a bleat.  The season officially started at 6:40am.  I was ready.  From my seat, I could watch 7 different shooting lanes. I picked up the antlers and as I prepared to rattle, a...

I think overall, I was excited for turkey season.  I really was.  Then May came and we went fishing, celebrated Mother's Day and found ourselves busy.  Dad and I had one morning to head into the woods to hunt. We had moved the blind closer into the woods and the path that   I had seen the turkeys  on when I was deer hunting. We set up the decoys and waited for it to get lighter before I started calling.  I had a box call, slate call, electronic call and a couple of apps on my phone. We called and listened. Called and listened. Called and listened. After a few hours, we made our way to the fields to see if there were birds around. It was quiet as we walked but that didn't stop us from jumping at least three deer and a pair of Mallards who were swimming in a large puddle.   We snuck into the field as best we could and crept along the ridge to see if there were any turkeys eating in the corn fields. Nothing. We called and listened. ...

I just have a feeling that this year will be my year and I will be bagging one of these birds. We moved our blind to a new spot this year and I am hopeful that it will put us closer to the birds than we have seen .  Dad, Hubby and I set it up and put a trail camera out to see if there are any birds around since last spring we saw everything but a turkey. A week later, we went back to tweak a few things and check the camera. On our drive in, two hens ran away from us and into the woods.  That was a good sign!  We parked and pulled everything out of the car and over to the blind and some newly transplanted trees.  I headed for the camera and SD card. I went through roughly 75 pictures of the trees before I came to the first of a handful of deer pictures. Unlike most springs, none of these deer were thin. The extra layer of fat that they put on in the fall was still visible and come hunting season, they should be in great shape and weight!  I kept flippi...

** The following is an article that I wrote for The Liberty Project.  It was  originally  published on November 16, 2015 here .  I was never paid by The Liberty Project so they don't own the copyright. Why trusting yourself is key for success in the outdoors It is critical to know and feel comfortable with any situation you put yourself in.  This is especially true if your goal is to bring home meat for the freezer.  You need to have a level of knowledge and understanding about why you are there and what you want to accomplish.  Everything about being successful in the outdoors comes from a sense of trust: in yourself, your tool and your training.  My training came from my Dad. I started to learn and trust his experiences about where the deer were more likely to come out into an opening, where we should build a tree stand and that I could and would shoot a deer.  When it came time to take that first deer, I remember asking D...

When it is sunny out and there is snow on the ground, it is hard not to want to be outside.  Last weekend, we brought in the trail cameras and tried to figure out where we should be hunting for the 2016 season.  It is never too early to start prepping for the next season! I pulled up to where we normally park and as we got out of the car, there was nothing but deer tracks all around us. Big, little, going in both directions... all kinds of tracks. Only a couple of feet from the roadway with this bed.  I stood in the bed and snapped another photo of the beds around it.  I posted that picture on our FB page and asked people how many deer beds they could find. The deer bed closest to the road Four more deer beds  If you look through the brush and above the snow mound, you can see my car.  I am always amazed when we find out just how close the deer are to us.  We know that we have a group of 3-5 does around so this grouping could be them a...

The last few days of hunting season were eventful in the wrong ways.   Just to the right of the stick is a deer track in the leaves.  In order for my mom to prepare and cook what she needed to for Thanksgiving dinner, I stayed home to watch O while Dad and Hubby went out for a few hours. In the afternoon, Hubby stayed home while O took a nap and Dad and I went out.  The woods were quiet and calm. We didn't even see a squirrel.  Thanksgiving night, O got sick; throwing up sick, which for a two year old is a scary thing. We made the decision to not hunt on Friday morning in case he still didnt feel good.  I have been criticized in the past by readers who think that in order to be a good, qualified hunter, you need to prioritize hunting above all else. I willingly stayed home to take care of my son.  No rack of antlers is worth the comfort of your kid. None. It might make me a 'bad' hunter but it also makes me a great mom.  Friday afterno...

This is how hunting is supposed to be! Cold in the morning with a solid front on the ground.  Noisy but not enough to give your cover away. And sun. I love the sun. I sat in the Sky Condo, Hubby was in T3 and Dad decided that since time is ticking, he would walk.  The plan was for him to walk the piece by T3 in hopes of jumping something towards Hubby.  Then, the guys would head my way and split up.  Dad would head east and loop around to my treeseat.  Hubby would make a loop west then swing east and come out at my treeseat.  When I saw Hubby at the foot plot, I was supposed to head immediately to my treeseat.  I was excited about this plan because I had not sat in my treeseat all season and I missed being more outside and exposed than in the bigger stands. There was a little windy but nothing that would keep the sound of steps hidden.  I bleated the minute I could see color.  I waited a few minutes and bleated again.  I hear...