We decided to spend New Years at the camp this year so we loaded up and headed that way Wednesday night. This was to be a freezer filling trip as we haven't been in the woods since Thanksgiving. The boys and I slept in Thursday morning but got moving around 10 or so and decided to get some decoys out in a food plot since the river was creeping in on us by the hour. My wife took this shot just as I began tossing the dekes. That's our normal duck hole behind me, but you can see the green of the food plot where she is. By the time we left this morning, all of this was under water. Nothing special, just thought it was a great picture. The boys and I made our way in to the stand around 3 on Thursday afternoon and began seeing deer around 4. We were watching 4 does when this guy stepped out and began pushing them around. It didn't take much convincing from Grayson for me to give him the green light on shooting this buck. At 4:50 he gave us a good broadside shot at 100 yards and Grayson put it in the 10 ring. The buck jumped up and went down on his front end immediately, pushing his way about 30 yards before piling up. As we were packing all of our gear up, 3 big does came out and little brother wanted to shoot. I figured if we were taking one to the processor, we might as well take two. Unfortunately, little brother pulled his shot and missed. The deer he shot at bounded off and stopped just inside the woods but didn't offer another shot. Of course, once back at camp everyone, including little sister, had to get involved with the picture taking of Grayson's buck. The next morning (Friday) dawned cold and breezy. The boys enjoy duck hunting since I let them paint their faces. It's the little things, right? Not much was happening as the high water had the birds scattered. One fish eater (merganser) that buzzed the decoys was all we could muster. Should have had a couple more but that's the way it goes sometimes. We split up for the evening hunt and Grayson went with dad and I took Hayes with me. One quick caveat...when I looked back at the footage of Hayes shooting at the doe on Thursday afternoon (the one he missed) I actually saw a pile of white hair fly off the tail of a DIFFERENT deer that was standing beside it! We made a quick search of the area and found a partially blown off tail. We gave Hayes a pretty hard time about shooting the wrong deer...in the butt...the rest of the weekend. Just as I was snapping the picture of Hayes holding the tail, I got this picture from Laura of a couple of bucks that had eased out back at camp. She said we should just sit with her since deer hunting is so easy. :) We were on doe patrol again for Friday afternoon. It was a comedy of errors kind of day for Hayes and I. We literally took the safety off on 4 different does but everything from small bucks chasing them off as he was getting ready to pull the trigger, to my phone battery dying and miraculously coming back on and then falling off the shelf at the very moment he was getting ready to shoot again, (which makes an incredibly loud thud when your not expecting it and a deer is 70 yards away) to him not being able to find a doe in the middle of a wide open 1.5 acre field...you name it...it happened. We were finally able to get a shot at a big doe right at dark. He promptly missed her and she ran 50 yards and started feeding again. Talk about insult to injury. I elected not to let him shoot again as it was getting pretty late and his confidence was at 0. We heard big brother shoot right after us and it sounded like a hit. We packed up our gear and started out of the stand when he shot a second time. Turns out he missed the first shot, the deer ran in the woods and snorted three times only to return and walk towards the stand. Praise God for dumb deer. A nice 100lb doe was Grayson's reward giving him his second deer in two days. I spent all night consoling Hayes about the ups and downs of deer hunting. Replaying many of the misses I'd had in my hunting career. We went through what we thought might be the problem and I tried to build him back up. We had practiced both days with a scoped 22 and he was shooting lights out with it. I knew he could shoot but he was just way too jittery (buck fever) when it was time to shoot at a live animal. Fast forward to this morning and it was just he and I at it again. We had deer around us from daylight but never could get the shot we wanted. About 7:15, a single doe broke off from a group and fed toward us. She got to about 75 yards and Hayes got all lined up. Just as I was telling him "take" as in "take your time"...BOOM! He back flipped her right where she stood! I was so proud of the way he fought through the misses and buck fever and was able to redeem himself on the last hunt of the weekend. He was as proud of this doe as a B&C buck! A few pictures of Hayes with his doe taken one year to the day as his first deer ever. He claims January 2nd is his lucky day! 6 year olds aren't much help on loading a deer. Despite the mid 30's temperature, I was sweating and out of breath when I took this pic after bear hugging the deer and basically rolling it onto the tailgate. Hayes was all smiles and didn't even get his hands dirty. :) Once again, a wonderful weekend spent enjoying God's blessings and bounty. Got a freezer full of meat and made more memories than you can shake a stick at!
0 Comments
Not to sound like a broken record, but the youth weekend is my absolute favorite of the year. My boys hunt with me 99% of the time, but I feel like the whole weekend revolves around them with the title "Youth Hunt." Also, pressure is down so the deer are normally a little more active and it gives them first crack at unpressured deer for the most part. We allowed them to play hooky on Friday from school so we got an early start Friday morning. Unfortunately my oldest wasn't feeling well, so it just me and my 6 year old. He was up and at them with plenty of excitement. We had a good hunt and saw 7, including one pretty, but young, 6 point. This was the first sit in this location so I was anxious to see what it held so we did not shoot.
We came back to camp and had a good breakfast. Laura (my wife) had asked if we could try to take the kids to get Christmas Card pictures somewhere with a nice backdrop. I obliged so we loaded up and headed to do so. The first stop found a beautiful backdrop and as we headed over Hayes got within a couple feet of this nasty moccasin. My 2 year old daughter was right behind him. Guys, I let my guard down thinking the snakes would not be out with the temps. The good Lord was watching over us and protected my little ones despite my neglect. Of course I had nothing with me to kill him with so we backed away and took a couple of photos. We saw yet another moccasin at our next stop but we finally got the Christmas card photos we needed. That afternoon the boys and I set up on a 4 way where I had several good buck pictures. At 4:50 while watching a couple more deer, a really nice, mature buck stepped out and made a scrape at 180 yards. There was a 6 point feeding between him and us at about 100 yards and I felt confident he would come join him or push him off. Unfortunately he did neither and went right back into the WRP. We set up the direction he was headed as we knew he would likely cross another lane, which he did, but he crossed at 200 yards and there was no shot opportunity. We had a great hunt and planned to be back in the same stand Saturday morning. We snuck in early on Saturday with high anticipation of seeing the buck again. Right at daylight 7 hogs showed up at 80 yards. We decided to burn some powder. :D Two shots later and we had some bacon. We saw a half dozen deer and spent the next couple of hours just being silly and enjoying our time in the stand. These two fight like brothers non-stop but they truly love each other more than anything. After showing off the hogs to everyone back at camp, we had a big pancake/sausage breakfast. With yesterday's snake encounters still fresh on everyone's mind, we decided we'd go snake hunting after breakfast. So I loaded the family up and off we went. This time I was sure we had plenty of firepower. Our first snake was nowhere to be found, but we were fortunate to find moccasin number 2 still in the same area. Hayes took great pride in getting a little sweet revenge. That afternoon we decided to split up. A new buck had shown up Saturday morning just before daylight at another stand, so Grayson went with his Pop-Pop there and I took Hayes and Laura with me. The buck we were hoping to get Grayson on is below in the black/white photo. Laura, Hayes and myself headed back to the same sit as the previous two still hoping to catch a glimpse of the buck that gave us the slip on Friday afternoon. We snapped this quick group shot before taking off. Unfortunately neither buck showed up but we saw plenty of deer and another hog that had to be 300lbs+. He crossed too far and too quickly for Hayes to get a shot. Laura snapped this picture of a lone doe feeding before sunset. We all slept well after a big dinner and two hard days of hunting. We had one more hunt on Sunday before heading home and I was going to let them shoot pretty much whatever they wanted. I guess the deer read the script because we saw not hide, nor hair. We did get to witness one of the most beautiful sunrises I've seen in a while. God painted a pretty one for us Sunday morning. We called it a wrap pretty early as we had the 5 hour drive back home. Packed up, hugged mom and dad and thanked them for a great weekend packed with memories. Closed the chapter on another year of the youth hunt and soaked up every moment we could. As we drove off I thanked the Lord for his blessings, protection and allowing us to enjoy all that He has created. |
Archives
July 2016
Categories |