103112 - mock scrape turned hot after Sandy

Rut is on! After the storm I cleared my mock scrape… Doe visited first and checked out the branch, then forky thrashed it, then he came back and scraped it….. time to hit the woods!

Hurricane Sandy and a new Big-Five Grip

I managed to hunt all day on Saturday and not see a deer. Lots of field scrapes that were fresh but no luck otherwise. No other hunters spotted either so that was refreshing and it was a pretty day. Then the Hurricane hit. I was sent home from work by 11:30. By 4pm my power went out. It is still out. I lost a red oak, a poplar, and a maple in the front woods at my house, but everything else was OK. Lots of trees down in the rest of the neighborhood though, and several over the power lines. It will be some time before power is restored. I was able to operate pretty much as usual with the help of some head lamps, candles, and an oil lamp. The oil lamp rocked. Real efficient on fuel too. I will pick up a couple more and some reserve fuel for my emergency kit in the future. My Hill Big-Five needed a new grip so I took some of the buckskin I tanned, via the ivory soap method, and cut out the pattern. Since I was using a deer that I had shot, I wanted to be as authentic as possible so I twisted up some deer back sinew into lacing. This was the hardest part of the operation. I misted the skin with water to get it a little moist, and then stretched it over the handle and laced. It came out pretty well I think. I used some poly to waterproof the sinew. This is my go to bow right now so I am hopeful it may bring some mojo.

Squirrel temptations

How many times have you been waiting for the big buck to come by and had squirrels unaware of your presence in easy bow range? How many times have you fumbled for your practice arrow only to have the fuzzy critter bounce away? Well, I will now be tempted to launch one of my good broadheads at the beasties! I thawed this nice sized fox squirrel I shot with the Howard Hill bow a couple weeks back. My parents had brought me a rabbit, so I decided to have a little woodland fricassee.

I quartered both and placed them in a large stock pot with chicken broth, salt, pepper, onion powder, rosemary, and a bay leaf. I boiled them for 30 minutes, removed the parts and drained. I created a mixture of italian breadcrumbs, flour, and italian seasoning. I dusted each part and placed them on a spray oiled cookie sheet. I broiled them in the oven turning once as they browned about 12 minutes per side.

Was it good? well, the pile of bones in this photo should tell you!

I believe next time I will make a little gravy out of the leftover stock. The good thing about the traditional bow is that I can just usually resharpen that broadhead easily after a miss. I usually carry lots of ammo in the large back quiver. You better believe I will be shooting at them again.

opening weekend of muzzle loader

Mike, Brent, and I braved the start of the “silly season” on the first weekend of muzzle loading season. Brent with the hawken, me with the flintlock, and Mike with his MOAB. There were two other trucks in the parking area when we got there in the dark.

We got set up. Mike was in his stand when one guy comes in and he flashes him with the headlamp multiple times to let him know he was there. The guy sets up about 45 yards from him anyway. Later it was light and the guy is sitting facing Mike at 45 yards sitting at the bottom of a tree. Does not see him. A group of deer come by and Mike is worried the guy would shoot toward him! However, he does not. Later his friend, who reminded Mike of a “big orange gumdrop”, stops by and has a chat with the dude and leaves. Finally, the guy stands to pee and then Mike realized he never knew he was there. At noon Mike climbs down and the guy finally sees him. Brent was up his normal tree and had a guy in a big red ATV cruise by his twice through the woods. Not even on a trail! The guy had on no orange and seemed to have on camo clothing. WOW! I was set up in my normal white oak area below Brent. I did not see any action I can only attribute to the orange invasion all over the woods since I had seen the same group of deer at this spot 3 hunts in a row. I did see a fox squirrel that looked like it was piebald. It had a half all white tail. It was light tan in color with a white spot on its head. I nearly cut loose with the 50 cal. on it, but was waiting for a deer. Around time to get Mike back to the house at noon, I had a flock of 11 turkey come in and bed about 50 yards from me. I have never had turkey sit and sleep in front of me. They had a couple alert sentinel birds and the rest where hunkered down in the leaves or perched on a fallen log.

I got Mike back to the house and his car, and headed back to the woods. I had to be back at 5pm so Angela could enjoy October fest at the community center where we had her baby shower. I just brought the gun and sat on the ground at my spot below Brent. At about 330 a guy in orange with a silver ML slung over his shoulder walked past me at about 30 yards from behind, He never saw me. I radioed Brent at 4pm and said I had to leave at 430-445, but if he wanted to he could stay. He started getting down and spooked a big doe toward me. I “baaaad” to stop it in an opening at about 45 yards and it stopped right with a small diameter tree near the vitals. I aimed slightly to the right of it and the hair trigger activated a bit sooner than I was expecting. The deer ran off out of sight. I checked the shot sight and found 2 clumps of hair so I immediately started after it. The woods was pretty open but I searched all the way to the property lines and where the guy that had passed me was set up. I never saw and blood so I left the woods as I was running late. The next day I headed back with the longbow to find out more. I hiked all over the place and really looked hard at the shot sight and direction of travel. No blood, no splatter, nothing but some tufts of white hair. I am pretty sure I just grazed it.

I did see a nice buck running the ridgeline at a distance. The woods was very pretty.

Secrets of hunting - Fred Bear

Good stuff here:

Blackwater Sika hunt

Mike was kind enough to coordinate this hunt down to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge for Maryland’s “little elk”. We arrived Friday afternoon in time to meet Mike’s friend Paul. Paul is a serious and seasoned sika chaser, and was kind enough to guide us into some promising areas and give us some tips. The area we were in was one that borders a private lease and the deer like to come from the marsh toward the feeders in the evening. This was also prime sika rut time, so there was always a chance a chasing stag would run a hind by us as well. Entering into the edge of the marsh we spotted a couple persimmon trees. The fruit was just starting to drop, and there was only 1 fruit on the ground I saw. The area was totally tracked up. No whitetails were in this area so they had to be sika sign. We crossed a ditch, and entered the edge of the marsh area. Paul set us up along another perpendicular ditch where we spotted a rub and a small wallow on the hardwoods side. Mike and I found some trails leading across the ditch and set up about 60 yards from each other covering the corner of the ditch.

As the afternoon turned to evening, the wind picked up. Those narrow pine trees had us and our climbers swaying and fearful. I think I was almost seasick by the time we left! Since this was public land and the blackwater sika season is very short, we soon had much company in the woods. We were not set up deep in the marsh and soon we began to see a parade of hunters march by on their way in, unfortunately upwind of us. Mike alerted one of the hunters who came by, and the man stated he just shot a hind, not far from the lot. He thought he may have gut shot it, and was thinking about coming back for it in the morning. We could hear bugling as evening progressed. The wind made things very chilly, and as darkness came upon us we jittered our way down the trees and headed for some warmth of the trucks. Mike, Paul, and I hit the Holiday inn express and plotted the plan for the next morning over a couple Papa John pizzas. We bumped into a couple TBM guys in the lobby. Huh, we thought their Blackwater hunt was the previous weekend and they were camping? We chatted a bit and they said, “the area we were headed to the next morning was “pounded hard”. Oh well, we were planning on going deep to avoid the crowds. Brent would have loved the next morning! We got up at 4am and headed to the parking area by 4:30. We passed 2 truck loads of guys parked along the road unloading hunters. When we approached the parking lot and trail head, we saw about 5 other guys heading in. Then, in the lot were another 5 or 6 guys getting ready to start out. We donned our waders and started the hour long march through knee high water and 10 foot tall frag grass. Paul toted a small sled/boat he used to pack in some of his gear, and we would use to pull and animals out should we get lucky. Paul had us in a spot he saw a nice stag chasing the morning before. We checked the gps and spread out on a line covering the area. The wind from the previous evening was down, but the temps were cold now. We were steaming and sweating by the time I got to the base of my tree and had to strip off the chest waders and don my wool longjohns and warm clothes quickly. It is always tough to find a tree and set up when you have never been to an area before dark. I ended up right in front of a Y trail in the frag grass….no way to shoot if they came from that direction.

As it turned out, all the other 15 guys marched, like us, to the same area. Paul got bumped twice by headlamps in the trees he was planning to get into. I could hear obvious hunter bugling coming from behind me as soon as the first light began to glow. We were surrounded! It was a cold morning even with the dry wool I had carried in. There was not too much back cover in those skinny pines in the swamp.

A few hours after sun up, I heard a compound shoot followed by splashing in Paul’s direction. I glanced up at Paul, but he had not shot. As it turns out, another hunter had a hind come in range and missed (compound). That hunter did not know a stag was following the hind, but Paul did. They both approached and he focused on the stag, but the hind looked up and spotted him. Both deer bounded away and all three of us got to see the nice tall antlered stag. As they left the area we could hear the other hunters trying to bugle him back in.

We left the tree after the guy that missed walked out under our stands, then after lunch we hunted the evening back in the area we hunted the previous day. We were pooped from that 1.5 mile walk in and out of that marsh. We set up that evening near the parking area, covering the trail out of the marsh where the deer would cross into the private lease and feeders. There were also a couple of white oaks dropping acorns there. About a half hour before dark another hunter came under Mike again (getting to be a habit for him), and he was dragging a nice 3x3 stag out of the deep marsh. We stayed until dark and chatted with him in the parking lot as the stags that got away bugled into the darkness.

We drove back to Frederick at about 1130pm completely bushed, but it was a fun time chasing those cool little elk.

Columbus Day Bowhunt

Brent and I headed out to R farm early Monday. It was the first cold morning. No real frost but I was glad I had my wool on. There was a constant cold breeze. I ducked down over the hill on the way through the top field and set up in a place that watches that trail as well as a crossing to a large poplar tree that used to be the central tree of the field before it became overgrown. At about 8:30 I spotted a 3 point with about 14 inches of spread was about 35 yards downhill of me. I could have risked a shot at one point, but that was not the buck I wanted to fill my tag this early in the year. It passed by going toward beds and cover. I had a kestrel that was chasing a blue jay around, come back in to my movement and dive bomb me a few times. It was really curious and let me take a couple pics.

Around 9:30 a 6 point came from the same general direction of the 3 point. It has a unique rack. It was oval in shape. Tall, with the antler almost touching and only about 5 inches of spread. It went on a path just perfectly by my right side toward the crossing. It paused about 10 yards to my left and proceeded to lick it’s off side. Never a more perfect shot opportunity! I let him go and pulled out the camera again. He crossed right where I had planned him to.

Around noon, I saw another yearling doe (finally) still sporting it’s summer brown. It never came closer than 60 or 70 yards away. Soon after that the rains chased us from our trees. I spent the evening putting a hang on stand in my backyard. I can’t say those things are easy to install or get into. Not the most re-assuring stand in terms of safety I think.

Saturday morning bowhunt 082912

Mike, Brent, and I headed to the "R farm" on Saturday morning. I set up my climber a little downhill from Brent’s tree, where I had the encounter with the decent buck near some white oaks. Like clockwork at 7:30, 4 adolescent bucks came in on a string. There were two smaller spikes, and two fork brothers in the group. One had really nice palmated mass at his forks. Tall but narrow antlers. I decided to pass on them all. Too early in the season to be burning my archery buck tag on those when the rut is not even in yet. Two does with the longbow will be a tall order before November.

They milled about under my stand for about 45 minutes feeding. Sounded like pigs eating. I could have shot any one of them a number of times. The only sharp one in the group was this small spike that kept looking up at me and getting nervous, but he would eventually calm down and start feeding again. Eventually they wandered off toward Brent, and I was hoping he would get an opportunity. They passed him about 50 yards away and he was using his Ben Pearson recurve. After that a large squirrel came by and I shot him at about 12 yards.

Later in the morning I saw a deer far off down the hill and I thought it may approach, but never did. I eventually got down to flush it toward Brent or Mike, but I did not move anything. Then, when Brent was leaving he chased a ”very large bodied deer” out of it’s bed. I am betting it was the larger buck I missed last Saturday. On the way back to the truck, I ran into a flock of 12 hen turkey. They passed my about 40 yards away on the trail.

Mike ended up seeing a doe that played cat-and-mouse with him for a while, but never offered him a shot. He also passed on two small spikes he saw. He had seen a flock of 8 turkey, which I am guessing was the same group I saw, as they were heading from that general location.