Rainy Days and Sundays

In the words of the Carpenters circa 1971:
"Hangin' around, nothing do to but frown.  Rainy days and Mondays always get me down."

In this case it was Sunday, but the hangin around, rain, and frown part was about right.  Eric and I hit the woods again yesterday in northern MN.  The weather has been warm the last couple of days but was scheduled to cool off with a 30% chance of rain.  I should know by now that 30% to a weather man is basically saying it is going to rain but if it doesn't, I don't want to be blamed.

We got to the property early and pulled some trail cam cards and checked on our stands.  We had minimal pictures, which we expected due to the changing weather and deer patterns happening here.  The pictures we did have were good news.  In the area of our back food plot, we still have deer coming out and into the field even though most of the good clover is gone already.  In front of Eric's permanent stand we had another pic of a buck.  We have seen consistent buck activity on this camera and it is situated in the middle of the property.  The chance that we see those bucks moving in and out of that area are very good as we move forward.  We also took the time to get up a hanging stand in an area we have observed getting some activity that our current stands could not see.  It was a bold move so close to the gun season, but we really want to get some deer in the freezer, so we are doing what we have to do.

The portable hanging stand we have is not your fancy, light weight version.  I may have Eric do a review on the stand as a whole and how it worked being that he was the person who sat in it.  Just from the chore of hanging it in the tree, I can tell you these things take some practice just to hang them.  Climbing in is another story all together.  We were using screw in steps and watching Eric do this reinforced the fact that strap-on steps are worth the money...no matter what they cost.  I'm sure a lighter weight stand would have made this process a lot easier, but you work with what you have, so we made due.  After the stand was hung we cleared some shooting lanes quickly and backed out to let the area calm down.

During lunch the rain started and didn't stop.  It was a light sprinkle, followed by a harder rain, and than light sprinkle again.  We waited for a few hours and the rain slowed and stopped, so we headed out to our stands for the evening sit.  Three quarters of the way to the stands it started to pour again.  Eric saw a pile of does on the way to his stand and a couple sitting underneath it that bailed when they saw him.  The rain stopped just in time for the sun to go down and it to get cold.  We sat out the night with no shots fired and went back home empty handed.

Over all it was a good day.  We hung a stand in clearly a great spot, than found out we need to work on our exit and entrance strategies for the stand.  We also continue to see the need to shoot as many does as we can on this property to try and get the herd managed some.  Gun season is in two weeks, the rut is going to kick off very soon and hopefully some deer will be hitting the ground.    

No News is Good News?

WRONG!  We have finally started hunting our metro area and it has not been a friendly task.  Our stand is not in a very happy place right now.  The tree is to exposed and doesn't offer the shots we had hoped for now that the leaves are mostly down.  So, we have to move it.  In the mean time we have been sitting on the ground in a natural blind to try and get lucky.  The deer have been moving in and around us, but not in the places we can shoot.

The land we hunt is small and we do not have permission to hunt on neighbors land, so we are very limited with the options we have.  That means we have to do more waiting and hoping that they go where we want them to than we would like.  It also means we have to be in the stand a lot in order to make it happen.  At this time we are just biding our time and hoping it will pick up some and we can get our first deer on the ground soon.

Deer 1 - Dennis 0

Sunday was our first day of actually sitting in a stand hunting this season.  As you can read here, it has been a tough start to the season but all of our work paid off in a big way.  The day didn't go perfectly as planned though.

The plan was to get up in the morning and make our way north without being in a huge rush.  We had a few things to get finished up on our gun stands, grabbed lunch and some fantasy football stats, and headed out to the stands to sit for the evening.  Upon arriving to my stand, which is over a small Evolved Harvest No-Till Easy Plot food plot that we planted back in June, I realized my first problem was the plot itself, at this point it is really nothing more than a really nice grass clearing with huge trails running into and out of it.  The deer have eaten any clover that grew, which may be a hint that we need to rethink our food plots for next year in order to get them to last to the season.  The heavy trail sign, great wind direction and perfect natural funnel of the location made me think it was still going to be a hot spot, and it was, just not as I thought it was going to be.  The second problem made itself known to me when I tried to tie my bow and back pack to the rope hanging from the stand, that had gone missing.  After getting into the stand and securing all of my gear, I got settled in, sat back and enjoyed my first moments in the stand.

The first deer appeared about 1.5 hours into my sit.  It crossed about 40 yards in front of me (my longest comfortable shot is 30 yards) and moved past the trail opening I wanted her to come down and into the thick woods.  She was a good sized doe and trailing her was a fawn.  They wandered slowly into the oaks to my right and took their sweet time picking through the acorns and brush.  As I was watching these two, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  Another doe was walking past the opening, and she paused to sniff the trail I was sitting only 40 yards down.  I stood and watched her, ready to draw if need be.  After a minute or so, she turned and followed the same path the other two had gone.  I sat down and watched as she took the slow walk leading away from me.  My heart was racing at this point from just seeing my first 3 deer of the season.

Half an hour later I looked to my right and the second doe I had seen come by was heading back my direction.  She was slowly meandering through the woods feeding on acorns and broadleaf plants as she walked.  I stood and got myself ready, only to see there was really no place for me to shoot in the direction she was walking.  At 30 yards out, I was confident I had the distance, the direction was one we hadn't anticipated needing to shoot in.  The trails we could see when we had been doing our scouting and planning the last few months were thick and clearly used, but not the ones she was on.  She was walking a smaller trail in a direction we had no clear shooting lanes cut.  I scanned ahead of her frantically looking for a hole to shoot in.  As she closed the gap to about 25 yards, broadside, walking so slow it seemed like a pause in between each individual step, I found a small opening I thought I could squeeze an arrow through.

The confidence in my own abilities took a step back on Sunday.  My shot was right on until it hit a huge bush in front of the deer and was deflected harmlessly aside.  The deer took two steps backwards, collected itself and turned to walk directly at me.  After taking the shot and watching it bounce away, I was stunned to say the least.  When the deer started walking directly at me, I thought I was back in the game.  I fumbled around until I had a second arrow loaded up and ready to go.  I thought for sure she was going to feel me staring at her as she made her way within 20 yards.  She must have been able to hear my heart beating at 15 yards, and surely she was going to smell me at 10 yards.  At this point she is directly down wind of me, head down, giving me no good shot what so ever.  I thought about grunting to stop her, but I wouldn't have a shot even if I did.  I figured maybe I could just wait it out and she would pass right under me and I could shoot her on the other side, but that angle would be even worse.

In the end I just stood there watching as she got to about 6 feet out, winded me and bound off in the direction she came.  I lost an arrow and broadhead, missed my first ever shot at a deer with my bow, and we walked away empty handed for the group on the day and yet at the same time it was AMAZING!  I have gun hunted for a lot of years and have never had a deer get within 6 feet of me.  Not to mention I actually took a shot, missed, and the deer didn't take off like it was shot out of a cannon but instead turned and walked RIGHT AT ME.  It really doesn't get any better than this....until I shoot one of course....          

Finally Final

We are finally, officially, really, actually hunting!  Ok, it was actually just a short visit to the stand to get organized, but I am going to call it hunting after the season I've had so far.

As I chronicled last week, the season has not started all that well for me.  I did get the arrow situation sorted out with some very easy to use broadhead adapters.  So now I have all of the gear I need, the stands are up, the pictures are rolling in, and the weather is getting cooler.  I still have a nasty cold that makes sitting for long times hard.  After a few hours I start coughing uncontrollably, which is not a great bow hunting tactic as far as I have seen.

Yesterday I got out and climbed into our metro stand for the first time.  We have a mineral site near by the set up that we decided to try Primos Red Spot in.  It was on sale, so we decided to give it a shot.  We didn't pay a whole lot of attention to shooting distances when we put up our stand as we typically have hunted it with shotguns in the past.  Amazingly, all of the shots we have from the stand are around 20-30 yards.  That is perfect for us beginners.  Now we just sit and wait for something unlucky to be our first customer!

Where in the World Is....

This was supposed to be the season I started hunting early and pushed hard through the season to down a big old hog of a buck.  Well the season opened 9 days ago here in MN and I have yet to hit the woods with my bow.  What the heck happened?  It has been a combo platter of things, some I could have done differently and some that were beyond my control or knowledge base.  The thing I could have changed on my own was how late I got the stand up on our metro property.  Our northern MN property is a 1.5 hour drive so that isn't happening during the work week but most of our prep time and efforts have been on that property.  The metro stand wasn't even hung until last Friday, and it still isn't completely finished.

I went out last Friday to throw the stand in the tree and see if I could get the brush and shooting lanes cleared.  The stand is a 12 foot ladder stand and not easy to handle by one person.  I got it up in the tree and situated where I wanted it before realizing I couldn't secure it fully myself.  The tree is leaning into the direction the stand is facing, so in order to get the stand level and strapped in I needed someone to hold the ladder steady while I pushed off the tree and settled the seat in.  I was by myself, so this didn't happen.  On top of all that, I had a show at work opening weekend that had me on the clock for 12 hour days all week.  After getting done with the show on Sunday, we got up early Monday morning and took off for a visit to the manufacturers plant in Indiana.  We spent 2 days down there before a whirlwind couple of weeks found me back at home exhausted.

In spite of all that, I was pumped to finally get out in the stand and get my season underway.  I have been practicing with my new Easton ST Axis arrows and field tips, while doing research on which broadheads I wanted to shoot.  I settled on and ordered the Rocket Stealhead from Eagle Archery.  In all honesty, I took the advice of Bill Winke from MidwestWhitetail.com.  On returning from my trip I started prepping the rest of my gear for the first time and realized the Rockets did not fit in to my arrows.   I am really new to bow hunting, so a lot of what I do is based on the recommendation of others.

My arrow choice was a direct recommendation from my local archery shop.  I have yet to buy anything from them in this adventure but I felt it was important to start a relationship with a shop that was only a few blocks from my house.  I walked in and told the guy working my situation, that I was new to bow hunting and needed  my first set of arrows.  He got me set up with the right length and weight of Easton ST Axis carbon arrows fitted with field tips and blazers.  They shot beautifully right off the bat with no sight adjustments needed on my part.  The part they left out at the archery shop is apparently the arrows need a broadhead adapter ring in order for some broadheads to fit on them.  So when I went to install my new Rocket's, I was out of luck.

I finally found the time to get into the shop again yesterday to get this sorted out and as fate would have it, they didn't have any of the adapters in stock.  At this point I am fully frustrated with the whole situation and have not spent a minute in the stand so far this season.  I understand this is just the beginning of the learning curve for me and it could get worse before it gets better.  At the same time, being in the stand would automatically make me feel better about all of this.  The shop should have my adapters in a couple of days and I will hopefully make it out this week still.  With a full slate of fall projects to complete around the house and at our camper, time could be at a premium in the next few weeks.

This is definitely not the dream start to the season that I expected, on the other hand, it can't get a whole lot worse can it?    

Trail Camera Review

You might remember Eric commenting back in June that he had purchased a Wildgame Innovations IR2 game camera on sale for $49.95.  In August we purchased a second cam and pulled our first batch of pictures last weekend.  We wanted to post a short review of our initial impressions of this camera.

Set-up

The set up on this camera is super easy.  Basically install four C batteries, a memory card and strap it to a tree.   That sounds too easy and really it is, as we all know there are some things we want to know about our pictures, like the date and time.

Settings

The settings are pretty basic compared to more expensive cameras.  You can set the date and time and that is it.   There are no options for taking more or less pictures and video.  It just does what it does.  

Day Pictures

The daytime pictures are exceptional quality.  They are clear and it seems to have a good but not great shutter speed.  We do not get a lot of pictures of butts fleeing the area, but at the same time we don't get a lot of the deer as it comes into view.  

Night Pictures

Night pictures are decent quality most of the time but can get poor when the batteries start to die.  The IR seems to reach pretty far without being impressive.

Batteries

Speaking of batteries, the life of the camera increases and decreases drastically depending on how many pictures it is taking.  We had the two cameras up for 2 months, one took 560 pics and the other 110.  The 560 pic camera died 8 days before the other and started taking poor night pictures a full 13 days sooner than the other camera.  Based on just this one trial, you can get about 530 pics on one full battery charge over almost 2 months.  

Summary

Overall, these cams are a great value for the price.  If you are in a spot where you get under 500 pics in between camera checks, you should be able to keep the batteries fresh.  Based on the current price of $10 for 12 C-cell batteries, if we figure we are going to go through 4 every two months, we will use $20 worth of batteries in a year.  The pictures are great quality during the day and serviceable at night.  Durability is still a question mark at this point, but if I get two years out of this camera I will be happy.  

Hard Work Pays Off

We have put in a summer of hard work and as you can see above, it is paying off!  We went back to our northern MN property to check on our trail cameras, hang our last two stands and cut our trails one more time.  Even though we have been working on a strict budget, with no large machinery or equipment, the payoff is huge!  Our trail cams produced an abundance of eye candy, including two nice bucks.  Both of the bucks were found on our Evolved Harvest No Till Easy Plot food plots.

The first one is probably a 2 year old 8 pointer that I've named Crabby.  He is not a shooter if you are hunting for mature large bucks, but he may end up a shooter for us.  The last few years we have not had a lot of luck waiting for larger bucks and have only taken does.  The guys are itching to shoot something with some bone sticking out of its head.  Here are a few pictures of Crabby:

We also have a nice 8 pointer that is definitely a shooter for us named Booker T.  He is a large bodied deer that seems to love the camera.  We have plenty of pictures of him during the day and night at this stand.  He came past quite a few times over the time we had the cam out.  Here is our main attraction for this summer so far:

One thing we have seen consistently is the presence of does on this property.  We have some that are distinguishable and quite a few more that are present all the time.  One of the groups that was at our camera almost every day, was 2 Baby Momma and her fawns:

We also have 1Baby Momma who has appeared on our other cam as well:

Last but not least, we have Rosie and Ellen who appear a ton of times and always together:

All of these pictures are from the one camera over looking Eric's stand and the first food plot we planted.  Needless to say, he is extremely excited to get out and hunt these deer.  We also put a camera out over our second food plot to start patterning the deer on the other side of the property.  We didn't get anything as nice as Crabby or BookerT, but we did get a full compliment of does yet again, and a couple of younger bucks that will easily be passed up this year.  First off we have the Broken Y buck:

This was the only picture of him for sure.  When we put out this cam it was for scouting purposes, not for great picture taking.  It is facing into the sun, but we wanted to see what time of day deer were coming out this trail and through this area.  A lot of our pictures ended up getting washed out by the sun because of this.  Another young buck we got a couple of pictures of is a small just starting to get a Y called the Rookie:

Finally we had just one pic of this guy that may be the broken Y buck, but I cant tell based on the angle.  

We have quite a few does again on this camera including a single fawn and doe that might be 1Baby Momma.  This camera was only about 20 acres away from the one by Eric's stand, so I expected more crossover.  Here is what could possibly be 1Baby Momma and her fawn:

Pretty sure Rosie and Ellen make an appearance over here based on the multiple pics I have of these two:

Overall I am extremely happy with the work we have done over the course of this summer.  As you can see it is panning out and it should make for an exciting year.  If I get time I am going to talk about our strategy for hunting these bucks in the coming week.