***Official LIVE from the Stand Thread, 2019***

Tracking Dog.

 

I like it when I can see the deer coming aways out. Heart starts racing, but i can take several deep breaths and then start visualizing my process, sight picture/placement and the squeeze of the release trigger.

When they just pop out of nowhere its tougher cause it's all adrenaline and instinctive practice based muscle memory.

 

Afternoon was a cool sit, we saw 5-6 deer, just nothing came in range. Deer numbers are definitely down or the deer are still very nocturnal as I've seen 40-60 deer in the 10 acre cut corn piece we hunt in years past. Didnt see anything bigger then a spike in the field yesterday afternoon.

Pouring rain right now. Switching to a quick burst of snow at 0900 and a 10 degree temperature drop. Letting James sleep and then we are in the blind by 0830-0900. I'll stay there till 1200. Then switch kids and be in the cut corn stand by 1300 for the eest of the day.

Temp starting at 49. 39 by 0900, dropping to 30 by end of shooting time with 12mph NW wind.

 

Well I must be crazy but I'm out here. We had about 5" of snow and wind chill is in the single digits. But hey, it's November and I figure I'd be out here with the rest of my crazy brethren. Apparently the deer haven't figured out what month it is though. Stupid deer! C'mon, SOMEBODY CATCH SOME DEERS TODAY!

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Bottom X is the deepest stand, one above that is the stand i have been sotting this year fir the most part. Deer head icon is where I found my buck last year at his bed.

 

I’ve never been able to find anyone with a tracking dog around here and not sure if there’s something I look up or what but I’ve contacted a lot of people asking if they know someone and no ones been able to get me a name or anything


2016 bear escape
Black eagle Spartans
NAP Double Cross
Ohio

 

Time to buy one... May be a decent side gig

 

https://www.unitedbloodtrackers.org/find-a-tracker/
might give that a try

 

Good luck today everyone! I'm not hunting today due to the rain/snow crap happening. Tomorrow should be an all-day hunt for me. Originally, I said I was going to go to a military crest in deep. With everything icing over covered in snow and the number of rocks I need to climb over, That will not be the smartest move @0345 in single-digit temps. I actually think I might make a plan to sit on the ground, in case the trees have ice on them.

 

Oh the rut stinks, im not seeing any deer, this is so hard, I give up....

 

That gets gayer every time I see it!

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Well we got hammered with maybe a whole 2 inches of snow. I guess that’s enough for a 2 hour school delay. You got to be kidding me so I probably won’t get out till close to 11 by time the kids get on the bus. 2 friggin inches.

 

Yet, it's still better than work!

 

I'm out. Let's try this again.

Yesterday no snow, today 4 inches and a lot more headed my way we r in a winter weather advisory. Not sure if the deer will be moving with that.

23 degrees

Climber was tricky this morning. Slippery,took me longer to climb up. I tried to climb when it was locked to a tree. Hopefully that isn't a sign of today's events

 

Hhhmmm Ma nature got busy last night. Dusting of snow then a layer of ice then 7 " of snow. Though she wasn't done yet we are still snowing with 10 mph winds. I'm doing what the deer are doing... Hunkering down in a warm place until things calm down a bit. They have 2 red pine plantation to my south and a big block of Mature Norway to the north along warmer swamp areas. They'll be out later.

 

Heading out around 11am today, figured with 16° the deer would opt to bed until this afternoon. Wind is going to change direction at noon so I'm thinking they will get on their feet and move, hopefully..

 

This is the day you unleash an arrow

 

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it ina stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the
bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should notbe difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope.
The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well
back. They were not having any of it.
After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up -- 3 of them. I
picked out.. ..a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw.. My rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so
I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little
tension on the rope and then received an education.
The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may
just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.
The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer
is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer-- no chance.

That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was
no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.
A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me
a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing,
and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where
I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to
recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility
for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder -a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could
get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million
years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head --almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts. The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably
to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning
that claim by now), tricked it.
While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal
-- like a horse --strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards
the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you
can escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such
trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.
The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will
hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does
not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger
has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.
So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring
a rifle with a scope to sort of even the odds.