Foggy Mountain Meanderings: October 2010

With another week of work in the books and not many days to take off, I am mainly restricted to hunting on Saturdays, also due to West Virginia laws prohibiting hunting on Sundays. The day started out the same slow way that the previous Saturday had started, but this time I didn't see any bucks. The first deer is saw were a group of does behind me on the hillside above Jay's tree stand, he said they didn't even make it close enough for him to see. Although he didn't see the does, he did have a spike walk in close, but considering he was already tagged out on bucks with a bow for the season (his hot streak continued into the early part of this past week), he passed on this buck to let him grow another year. That was it for the morning sightings. The afternoon started off quickly, but then died down soon after spotting a doe and yearling cutting across the log landing I had saw the bucks in on the previous Saturday. A very slow down, with few sightings and none in range, but it was still a beautiful day to be in the woods for sure. I'm going to leave you with a picture of the buck that Jay got on Monday of this past week. He harvested it from the blind I showed everyone earlier in the post "Apples Part II & A Walk in the Woods". This deer scored roughly 115", and is currently Jay's largest whitetail taken, replacing "1&1" taken only a two days previously.

The opening day excitement wasn't lost on Jay or I, as it seems that every opening morning we get to our stands at least an hour before we even need to be. It is nice to be ready and waiting, just even being in the woods after waiting 364 days to be right back here on opening day was amazing. After we got parked and ready, we started walking in, of course as normal we bumped a few deer out walking down the main entrance to the property. Once we reached the path leading to my stand Jay and I wished each other good luck and he proceeded to his stand. Now the fun part of climbing up into the stand, getting everything unstrapped, re-strapped, make sure the safety harness is tight, and the bow is hung in its proper place. As quick as Jay is at moving throughout the woods and getting in his tree stand, I thought he'd already be ready and shooting something by the time I got the last strap tightened, but I was wrong, I looked across the valley to still see his headlamp glowing in the last bend in the road before I lose sight of him, come to find out later that he was bumping deer out of his stand location as he was trying to move in slowly enough not to spook them. Now I know what everyone is thinking, that we're not getting into our stands soon enough if we are bumping deer out, but we have the deer on trail cameras at all hours of the night and it was near impossible to walk in there and not bump at least one deer out. So we just had to go in as softly as we could and try not to spoke them to bad.

Well you would think that with all these deer being bumped up that for sure we'd both have a buck on the ground by breakfast. Well we did too, well at least we were hoping to have the option to have passed on a buck by then. How wrong we both were. It started out very, very slow, then around 7:30AM, right on schedule with our scouting a few does walked in by Jay, but we were holding out for a buck on opening morning. He did see a spike with that group of does, but it was no where near in range and was acting kind of "spooked" as Jay texted me. Later to find out the buck we referred to as "1&1" was trying to push him out of this area, but the spike still cared more about trying to tend to the does. Jay thought he saw a larger buck behind the spike, but could never get the buck to step out in plain view. We found out it was "1&1" because later in the morning around 9:30AM, he presented himself at my stand. Let me step back for a minute and explain how he got here. After Jay had been seeing deer all morning I had gotten a little discouraged, because I hadn't seen nor heard a deer all morning even though some of these deer were leaving Jay's stand on a direct route to mine, but needless to say they didn't make it there. Around 9:15AM I started to get out my water bottle, but I didn't even make it to zipper before I spotted a small, busted up 4-point using a licking branch and scrap about 100 yards from my stand, I wasn't planning on taking this deer, but I still had my bow ready, just in case something else presented itself. I watched him clean out his scrap and then proceed through a log landing while heading straight for the top of my food plot, right as he reached the end of the path, ready to step out at roughly 50 yards; The buck did an about-face and exited the same way he came in. Wondering why he did this I started questioning if he winded me, but he wasn't down wind, I hadn't moved, and I was left puzzled for a moment. As I watched the buck head back across the log landing I spotted another, much larger buck at the licking branch and scrap where I had started watching the first buck, but this one I knew, it was "1&1" and he was right on time from leaving Jay's stand and heading to mine, but sadly enough he didn't make it within a 100 yards of me before they both ran each other off. By the time all this was done it was close noon and was warming up so Jay and I decided to head back to my house for a quick lunch.

After a quick lunch and a rundown of the morning with my grandpa, we were back on the way up the mountain to get back in our stands. The afternoon was slower than the morning even was, I ended up not even seeing a deer, but come to find out Jay was a little luckier than I was. At 6:10PM two does walked in under him and not more than 30 seconds later, "1&1" the buck we'd both had a look at today, was stand right under him less than three yards away. As the deer wondered around Jay's food plot, he drew back on it once, but he could never get a clear or steady shot at him, he said he thought it was over. As luck had it, as it normally does with him, "1&1" presented himself broadside at a perfectly clear 20 yard chip shot. He didn't even make it 35 yards before he had bled out and dropped. So the opening day of bow season ending was a "real drag"... Needless to say it was dragging out a deer we had been watching for a while now, I'm was slightly sad that I didn't get to harvest a deer on opening day, but I was more than ecstatic to see the fruits of our labors finally paying off. This was only the buck taken off the property in the last four years, we have been trying to be selective and start trying to add some food plots and minerals year around. To see the other buck taken off the property you can go to the "About Me" page.

This picture will hopefully help explain why we called him "1&1", as you can see by this picture he had one small brow tine on the left side (if you are facing him) and a small G3 on the right side.