Thursday I started up near the house on the 80 in the early morning. I was able to see four does behind me and then one small buck at 100 yards. I grunted 2x and he ran at me to about the 60 yard mark where he stopped and stood. He turned and walked away after about a minute or so. I could not get him to come back to me. I moved down into the swamp around 10am and sat there until dark. I did have one more small fork or spike with his nose to the ground at about 40 yards through the brush and on a mission. Nothing appeared to stop him.
Thursday night Bob arrived for comic relief if nothing else.
Friday I went out to the swamp right away in the morning and stayed out all day in the same spot. I was skunked for friday and did not see one deer. A bit discouraging as I had sat there from 5:30am until 5:00pm.
Friday night, we went out for dinner to the Legion in Neillsville. It sucked for the most part but at least it was cheap.....
Saturday morning I again headed for the swamp. I drove the atv down about half way to save some of my walking and left it out there for the day. I again did not see anything throughout the mrorning and moved way back into the farthest corner of the 80 in the swamp around 10am. This was a good move and is likely the best spot on the 80 that is not hunted. I climbed up a popple tree in my climber and sat for the day. Around 3pm I was dozing in and out and looked over to my right to say to myself "is that a deer"? Shit... it was. I grabbed the binoculars and checked it and quickly realized it was a small buck. I grabbed my doe bleat and he did not respond at all to it. I then grunted 2x and ran right at me and stopped at 25 yards. He had spotted me. I already had my release on the string but not at draw. He was out of there as quickly as he spotted me. A doe followed him. Below are a few shots from the swamp area that I liked so much.
About 20 minutes later, I spotted a lonely doe in the distance and then about 4:30pm, I decided I was going to sit for a bit. As I sat down, there was crashing behind me. There had been a doe behind me at about 25 yards and I didn't even know it. The combination of the marsh grass and wet swamp makes hearing them virtually impossible back there.
I climbed out of the stand around 5:10pm to head out. I had come in and wandered and really had no idea where I was. I thought I was going in the right direction until I realized that I did not recognize anything around me. I stopped for a bit to think about my direction, the wind, and my next move. I spotted a few large pines which I assumed had a stand in them. I headed that way to come up empty again. I almost at that point had to call Bob to help me get out of there but I had spotted another large pine about 125 yards away. I headed that way and found the stand that I was looking for. Once there though, I still had to figure out which way I was heading. Needless to say, it could have turned out that I would have had to call Bob but I ended up finding the way out on the trail in that leads to the gun stand I was near. 45 minutes later, I arrived at the atv in the woods.
Sunday I did not plan on going out due to fact I would not be able to find the stand in the dark. Bob and I went out around 7am to find the stand and do a little work on his stand and Carrie's stand. I ended up putting a new roof on her stand.
We managed to find the stand no problem and then we were off to find the lot lines as I wanted to see that part of the swamp. About 10 minutes into our journey, we came across this guy laying in the trail about 100 yards from the stand I was in on Saturday afternoon. It looked like he had been there a few days as he stunk pretty bad and was pretty stiff. He looked to be gut shot.
My initial reaction was to cut the head off and do a european mount but after thinking about it, I did not want to be respondsible for a headless deer laying on Grandma's land especially with gun hunting starting next weekend. We came back to the house and made a few calls to find the warden for the area. We got in contact with him after a few calls and he agreed to meet us in town to get a kill tag for the deer.
In the meantime, I did make an effort to find out if any of the neighbors had shot the deer and did not find it but none of them claimed it.
Bob and I went back and sawed the head off it off and headed to town to register.
Overall I would have loved to get a deer with the bow but was actually satisfied that I had found the 7 point back there. At least I went home with something......
No comments:
Post a Comment