Fluke's Tails

[flukemaster]

Well I guess I should get this thing started. What a great Idea.

I took my 3yo son to the hunting club with me yesterday. This was his first camping trip. He took to it like a fish to water. Oh how proud I am.

Found some great sign. A few rubs and some heavily used trails heading towards the oaks. The persimmons are falling good.

Walked out on the edge of a field just before last light and a doe was under one of the persimmon trees 115 yards away. Hit the fawn bleat and she closed the distance to 50yds. I couldn't get her to come any closer.

The buck sign is looking good. It looks like the last few years of passing up the small 8pt bucks might just pay off this year. We'll see.

[flukemaster]

Got a call from my Brother-in-Law. It seems as though he took the oppertunity to be the first one to hunt the stand I set up covering the heavily used trail. He saw 9 does and fawns. He shot the biggest doe. I am not sure what to think about it. I hope he didn't mess it up to bad.

[flukemaster]

Oct 17th
Went out in the afternoon not expecting to see a thing because of the full moon. I sat next to the apple tree field so I could watch the persimmons on the other side and have the wind in my favor. I had a young buck come in behind me and wind me. I got up and started walking back towards camp. On the way back I saw one big doe and two yearlings in the Pecan field. I waited for them to cross and headed back to camp.

[flukemaster]

Oct 18 all day

I decided to hunt my hanging stand on the other side of the creek. Man what a walk. That wind from all the storms this year sure knocked a bunch of limbs off the pines. What a beautiful morning I got up in my stand and after about 30 minutes it hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't know what I ate but it wanted out and bad. I bet I couldn't have fallen out of that tree faster. I dug a hole as fast as I could and after a few minutes I was better. I got back up the tree, strapped in and prayed that the wind wouldn't change direction. I saw my first deer at 10:40am a doe and her two yearlings. They were trying to get somewhere fast. Not running but moving at a clip.
I got down at 12:30 and went back to camp to get something to drink. At 1:30 I went to do some scouting around the fields. I was walking towards a small isolated patch of woods when I heard something. I caught a little movement in the thick stuff and made out a tail. Now this sucked. Here I was stuck out hear in a wide-open field and less than 30 yards away was some deer who are about to come out in the open. I decided that I would lie down and try to make it to the closest shade. Well I didn't make it to the shade but 35 minutes and a quart of sweat later the shade made it to me. One of the deer had a stare down with me for almost 15 minutes and they finally put there head down and started to feed away. I should have shot one of them just for the trouble. But I don't think I could have gotten 15lbs of meat out of the both of them. I didn't see any more deer the rest of the day, but there where plenty of scrapes and rubs and I found a place where two bucks had brawled just a couple of days before.

[flukemaster]

Oct. 25th

As some of you know, I tend to pattern the other hunters in my club before I pattern the deer. So the planning was what got me the deer.

On Sunday I printed up a copy of my hunting club on terraserver, 900+ acres in all. I took little stickers and marked the location of every stand location, both permanent and locations we have hunted recently. I noticed several large sections of land that no body hunts. I picked a couple of possible areas to hunt and let the wind direction dictate which one.

I meet my dad at camp on Tuesday morning and I put him up in my killing tower and headed down the road with my climber. My plan was to find a tree in the area that was big enough for my climber before it got light. That was my only option due to the fact that I hadn't had the time to scout. I stepped off the road and walked the estimated 400 yards to the area. The area is all planted pines that were 5th rowed last year so it is fairly open but thick enough for the deer to feel comfortable. At first light I heard a couple of deer move by through some thick stuff but I never got a look at them. Nothing else happened until about 9am. It all started when I heard a doe bleat about 75 yards away. Then I started seeing legs. I put my binoculars on them and saw a doe and a fawn. They were just milling around feeding on whatever new green growth they could find. Then the woods came alive. There were deer every where. At one point I had 9 different deer on three sides all within 50 yards. I let them all feed until 10am then they started working off in different directions. Then these two 1 1/2 yeard old does started working there way down toward me and I made up my mind to put a little meat on the ground. I drew back and waited for the first one to step out in the open. Just as she was about to step out she caught wind of the trail I came in on and got spooky. She took two steps back and was about to leave town when I found a hole in the brush to slide the arrow through. I shot, she ran and the other one followed. I heard her fall several yards away and then the other one turned and circled back below me stopping at 15 yards. I drew back and released. She didn't make it 10 feet before falling down.

This is for The Gobfather,
"The Rest Of The Story"
You posted last week about vocalization of deer. I'm telling you I have never heard more bleats and other sounds coming from deer than I did during this hunt. It seemed as though I had infiltrated their comfort zone. I bet I heard a bleat a minute for almost an hour. It seemed as though they were just trying to stay in contact with each other and the groups around them in the thick stuff. I didn't see any evidence that the deer were trying to call any other deer to where they where. It just seemed that they wanted to know who was in the area and maybe where the food was. I saw a doe feed in a spot then bleat and move off. Then a few minutes later another doe would move through that spot and start feeding on the same stuff. This is just my observation but man it was awesome.