November in the Woods

Watching Squirrels 

Bow season has certainly seen a wide range of weather.  The season started in short sleeves and is now all about cold and rain....lots of it.  Last Friday Scott shot a buck on the Krause property.  He was on one side of the pond and the buck was on the other.  He called me and I said to wait till the morning so as not to push it.

In the morning Jake, Jessica and I went out to Bloomfield.  It was a beautiful morning and I went to the place I shot a 9 point last year.  I jumped 4 deer walking in the dark.  I got to my tree seat only to find the seat had rotted out, albeit the metal frame was still good.  I sat at the base of the tree and spent the morning watching squirrels knocking hickory nuts from the tree tops.

Jessica & Sam

Afterwards we went out to help Scott look for the buck he shot at the night before.  He saw the buck bound away in the high grass field adjacent to the pond.  This grass field was so high and thick it could have been used for a Jurassic Park scene.  Ember came with me and it did not take her long to run out of gas so she just followed my closely as I waded through the high grass looking for sign.  This grass was so thick you would literally have to step on the deer to find it.

Jess sighting in her gun

Scott & Sam

After an hour of looking, and about to give up, Scott and Jake finally found a few drops of blood about 200 yards from where he originally shot the deer.  We tracked the trail, very slowly, for twenty yards into a hedge row where I let Jake and Scott crawl around.  Ember and I went to the other side of the hedge row to where I found a bloody arrow.  I yelled to Scott that I found his arrow.  His excitement turned to disappointment once he saw it. "It's not my arrow." he said.  I didn't believe him.  He went back into the hedgerow to look for my sign while Ember and I walked out into the pasture.  Two minutes later two bow hunters walked up to me from Charlie's property.  They were tracking a buck that one of them had shot.  The bloody arrow was theirs and the deer, which we thought was Scott's, was actually their deer.  They were happy we had picked up their trail.  I found out a week later that they never found the deer.

Jake tracking a buck

Yesterday we held our annual sighting in the guns.  We set out 50 and 100 yard targets.  One 12 gauge would not sight in at all and Jake claimed this is why he missed all the deer he shot out at with it last year. 

We finished at 2:30 and 3:30 Scott and his son Sam went bow hunting.  While walking in the woods Sam, standing on the literal spot where we had been shooting our guns an hour earlier, shot what he called a small basket buck.  Scott watched this deer walk into a hedge row.  They decided to leave it till the morning.  Well last night a big storm came through and probably 2 inches of rain fell.  Jake went out with my knee high rubber boots on and he still got soaked.