Tipmoose's 2021 Season Thread
- Thread starter Tipmoose
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On Friday afternoon and evening we decided to set up two pop up blinds and corn them. One of those blinds was at a corner known as Triple D. Here's the view from that blind.
I didn't see anything all morning, but after a quick bleat/grunt sequence I noticed something poke his head out of the tree line to the left of the pine on the far left of the pic. Of course, I was not ready. My gun was vertical against the blind and my shooting stick was laying against my knee. So I had to quickly retrieve my muzzle loader, shakily get it mounted on the shooting stick, and then find the buck. He had decided to move on along because the doe he was looking for couldn't be found. As he trotted across the lane in the pic above, he kept turning more and more to his left, offering me a sharper and sharper quartering away shot. My brain was screaming to my finger to pull the trigger and send it....and as I finally got the crosshairs lined up, I yanked on that trigger. Never the best decision. The gun went boom and the deer took off running, tail down, hunched up, straight away from me. My last flash image of the shot was of the crosshairs being in the center of the body. I knew it was a gut shot. So, I got out of the blind and walked down to where the deer had gone into the woods. Looked for blood. Found none. Walked all the way back to the blind and found blood at the impact site. It quickly dried up as the deer ran.
It was 940 AM and I called Jeff and Cooper from Low to Ground Deer Recovery, a tracking dog service. They got to me at around 430. By 5PM they had found my deer.
I didn't see anything all morning, but after a quick bleat/grunt sequence I noticed something poke his head out of the tree line to the left of the pine on the far left of the pic. Of course, I was not ready. My gun was vertical against the blind and my shooting stick was laying against my knee. So I had to quickly retrieve my muzzle loader, shakily get it mounted on the shooting stick, and then find the buck. He had decided to move on along because the doe he was looking for couldn't be found. As he trotted across the lane in the pic above, he kept turning more and more to his left, offering me a sharper and sharper quartering away shot. My brain was screaming to my finger to pull the trigger and send it....and as I finally got the crosshairs lined up, I yanked on that trigger. Never the best decision. The gun went boom and the deer took off running, tail down, hunched up, straight away from me. My last flash image of the shot was of the crosshairs being in the center of the body. I knew it was a gut shot. So, I got out of the blind and walked down to where the deer had gone into the woods. Looked for blood. Found none. Walked all the way back to the blind and found blood at the impact site. It quickly dried up as the deer ran.
It was 940 AM and I called Jeff and Cooper from Low to Ground Deer Recovery, a tracking dog service. They got to me at around 430. By 5PM they had found my deer.
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The pic above does not do justice to the place where they found him. It was on the far side of the nastiest logging platform I've seen. There was no way I was going to drag him out. So, I went back to camp and co-opted the camp quad and used it. Tied the head as high as I could above the ground and dragged him out. Probably over 300 yards total drag.
After getting all that done and the deer dragged back to the skinning rack...caped and processed I was done. Slept in the next morning while Dan tried his luck at a stand called 2nd Barn. He didn't see anything, much to my surprise. That stand is always good in the morning. So we made the decision that I would hunt 2nd Barn that evening and he would hunt Quad Pod.
Here are my views from 2nd Barn. Its a short platform stand built inside an old tobacco barn. I love this stand. Some of you may remember this stand from my season journal last year where I took pics of a doe in the lane.
Here are my views from 2nd Barn. Its a short platform stand built inside an old tobacco barn. I love this stand. Some of you may remember this stand from my season journal last year where I took pics of a doe in the lane.
Dan ended up harvesting one doe and I saw a couple of long nosed does but didn't shoot any. I'd already gotten my buck and wasn't interested in doubling our work load for that evening.
The thing about 2nd Barn is that its back in the woods a little ways. Tons and TONS of tree rats. Always running and scurrying. Noise all day. When sunset arrives, the wind dies down and the rats all scurry back to their trees and the woods become deathly silent. Its really freakin eerie. And it gets dark really fast back there. One second you're seeing sunbeams through the trees and watching squirrels fight for acorns, and the next, its almost black and white...silent. And that's when the deer appear like ghosts from every direction.
Really freakin creepy sometimes.
Next on my calendar is a trip to hunt my family farm in Missouri for their rifle season. I will be looking for a nice buck on Saturday. Failing that, a doe on Sunday. More pics to come.
The thing about 2nd Barn is that its back in the woods a little ways. Tons and TONS of tree rats. Always running and scurrying. Noise all day. When sunset arrives, the wind dies down and the rats all scurry back to their trees and the woods become deathly silent. Its really freakin eerie. And it gets dark really fast back there. One second you're seeing sunbeams through the trees and watching squirrels fight for acorns, and the next, its almost black and white...silent. And that's when the deer appear like ghosts from every direction.
Really freakin creepy sometimes.
Next on my calendar is a trip to hunt my family farm in Missouri for their rifle season. I will be looking for a nice buck on Saturday. Failing that, a doe on Sunday. More pics to come.
Chancegriffis
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