A fitting end to another fun deer season with family & friends...

My nine point 

Jessica's nine point

The snowstorm seemed to take a breathier yesterday late morning and I could not resist the temptation for a walk with my muzzle-loader.  The sun was out, five inches of fresh snow, and a fairly stiff eastern wind.  I took my truck over to the Krause property on the windy road down a hill that overlooked a sweeping view of four cornfields, hedgerows, ponds all covered with a fresh blanket of snow.  I quietly got out of the truck and was startled by the screeches of a  red tailed hawk perched atop a tree that stood alone alongside the frozen pond.  Watching her fly away I was feeling great as this is the type of fix deer hunters like myself seek.  The snow was crunchy to walk in so I slid my feet like skis in the snow.  This is a great trick as it makes your walk almost completely silent.

I slid along to the end of the road and turned up a trail that two weeks earlier I had pushed a big buck to Jake.  That time we were walking parallel with each other when I spotted a group of does and a large buck.  I literally called Jake on the cell phone and told him exactly what was going to happen.  I told him I was going to push the big deer to him.  We hung up, I whistled at the deer, the 10 point buck got up and ran right in front of him.

Thanksgiving morning sunrise

Sliding quietly in the snow I chuckled to myself from the memory as I passed the infamous scene.  Just then doesn't the same big buck get up in front of me from his mid-day bed, run directly across my path, just like Jake I put my cross-hairs on him, and just like I missed him.  Oh boy did I laugh at the irony.  I tracked him for well over a mile and could tell that he was not harmed.  A great ending to a great season.

Jess & Jake

On Thanksgiving morning I had the pleasure of taking my nephew and three children out to Bloomfield for a morning of hunting.  Jake and Jessica went to my tree stand.  Andrew and Hannah sat with me atop a knoll looking over a gas well.  While it was a sunny morning the temperature was about 10 degrees and the western wind was blowing about 15 MPH.  Even though I brought a sleeping bag for us, the wind was just piercing and after a couple hours we called it quits, went home and enjoyed a large pancake breakfast.

This picture was take on the border of the Suor/Krause property...very cool seeing an owl!!!

Jake and I went out to Bloomfield one evening on the edge of an incoming snow storm.  My perch was high in a pine tree and the bows of the pine tree made a perfect natural roof keeping the big fat snow flakes off me.  This was perfect as my absolute favorite thing to do deer hunting is reading and I was enjoying a Steinbeck anthology that my mother had given me earlier in the week.  About 4:45 a 9 point walked out into the now very heavy falling snow.  Not 60 seconds after I took this 9 point Jake got a gigantic doe.  So we spent the next two hours in a wet snow storm getting deer out of the bush and to the truck.  Jake was showing me all the military drags he had learned at college as he hauled the deer out.

Hannah & I looking out from our tree stand at the Hedges....lots of memories here...lots of books read.....19 years hunting here