October 31, 2010
Very good moon phase and deer movement in the daylight soaring made this a day not to be missed. At camp I begged a good buddy to take a stand I hung in July that overlooks an oak flat beside a creek. He declined, so I decided to hunt it myself.
Walking in, freshened scrapes and a musky smell covered the old logging road. Reaching the stand well before daylight, I tied my bow and backpack to the paracord attached to the lock-on stand. Before I could attach the safety harness to the climbing rope, I heard heavy footsteps coming from the creek bottoms. The deer froze in it's tracks, but the wind in my favor and me hugging the round, I wasn't made. The deer turning and slowly walked back in the way it came, never blowing or acting spooked. It knew something wasn't right, but couldn't quite figure it out.
At daylight, I saw several doe moving through the flat. A nice buck moved through the creek bottom about 30 yards out of range, headed to a bedding area south of the flat. With the does thirty yards away, I didn't call to the buck, hoping that the hormones would drive him to stupid instead.
The does filtered over the flat feeding on acorns until they were out of sight. An hour went by before I saw another deer. Two does came in from behind me, but just south of the wind that would have busted me. I let them past and they followed the same path as the others.
When they hit the next flat over I could hear them and a buck become very vocal. They busted through into a thicket to the north and I readied for what was chasing them. A few minutes passed before he appeared.
He loped down the logging road and cut into the flat in front of me just before he hit where I had cut in to get to the stand. I had drawn while he was coming down the road (his head was down and sniffing around) and at six yards from the base of my tree I stopped him. A lay-up shot and a short tracking job, and the buck was mine.
I got to watch a total of thirteen doe and two shooter bucks that Halloween morning.
