Last day of 1st FA season

Saturday morning was a chilly one, with a nice hard frost. Brent showed up a few minutes early to my house which was fortuitous as the old guy nicknamed Bear was in the parking area (for once he was not driving through the middle of the woods with his truck). That guy is a talker and told us he had seen a couple black bear at the property a few days back. He has been having little luck there with the bucks as well, and he said he was out to shoot a doe today. Brent and I were hoping we would be able to get one between us as it was the last day of rifle/firearms season. I left both of them still talking and went in the lower bedding area I had scouted out last week, in hopes I could catch a deer coming in from the area of the houses. Because I was so close to those houses I decided to hunt with the shotgun and slugs instead of the rifle. Turns out, I could have carried the bow. I sat at the back edge of the thick multiflora rose patch using my sneaky sak and a screw-in tree step as a seat from the ground until about 9am when the wind shifted. Not a thing moving.

I decided since Brent was set up in a treestand at the ridge I would walk around and see what I could find by 9am. I walked and stalked through the field edges and thick transition areas. While I did see some pretty fresh poo and a few tracks, there was nothing. The main woods was very sparse and barren as well, and you can see forever now with the foliage down. My wife texted me around 10am that 6 deer were in the backyard! Talk about demoralizing. Brent did report seeing his white squirrel again, but no deer. I walked the entire front of the property We left at lunch and decided to change tactics and put on a sort of mini drive in order to see if we could see a deer and perhaps get a better feel for the property. We walked for a few hours and it was also pretty uneventful. I suspect the hunting pressure in this area has just been too great, and what deer are left are nocturnal and transient. They probably spend the daylight hours up the mountain at Gambrill where they are safe… or in someone else’s suburban backyard. I will not get to hunt this weekend as we are going to PA for an early Christmas with the wife’s family. I did take Friday off ½ da y to hunt, but she wants to leave right around 4pm so I am not sure about logistics there. May just save my leave for another day of hunting when I have less obligations. Sunday I worked on my knife project. Here is the osage scales epoxied down. I had also boiled the bison horn flat for an accent below the guard.