The Orion Syndicate (#12) - 2020 & 2021 Champions

I got it Brett. Thanks again.

 

Just out of curiosity, how many of you giant killers would pass on this guy?


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This is actually on the property my son in law hunts. He said he'd have a hard time passing on him. I told him if he gets a shot he'd better take it.

Sometime this month the owner is going to start clearcutting all or most of the timber. Then he will construct a dam and flood the entire thing.

This is the last hurrah for that prime hunting spot.

 

So, for those of you who don’t follow the LFTS thread, I had some excitement this morning. I love hunting the new moon, and this one didn’t fail to produce action.

I got on stand this morning at 5:30. I had left all my gear in the tree from the previous evening’s sit so I climbed and got set up with no light, as usual, and was covered up in deer immediately.

A few minutes before legal light I heard something over my left shoulder. I knew it was a deer but couldn't make it out. After a few minutes of staring it finally moved and I could see it and it was only 15 yards away.

It just stood there. Finally it started walking by at 10 yards. I still couldn't see what it was but it was big bodied.

It stopped with a small leafy limb between us so I slowly raised my binoculars and could make out the antlers.

It was him. The big boy from last year. He's bigger now and with more mass.

Now it was just a minute or two into legal light so I could barely make out what he was with my own eyes.

He started slowly feeding so without taking my eyes off him I slowly lowered my binoculars, reached down, turned on the light on my sight, grabbed the bow, hooked on my release.

He's there at 12 yards broadside sniffing where I walked in.

I kept my eyes on that buck the entire time, so it wasn't until I raised the bow and started to draw that I noticed that I had never nocked an arrow.

I tried to sit the bow down and get an arrow out of my quiver but it was hopeless.

He bounced out to about 30 yards, stood there for a while and then walked away.

I feel sick about it. Also, I know I just lived one of those moments I’ll replay in my head hundreds of times and regret my stupidity every time.

Im not sure if he saw me move or just spooked at my scent left from walking in, so I’m trying to decide whether to move to a different tree or stay put.

 

This morning was another eventful morning. Oh, I remembered to make sure an arrow was nocked. Another buck walked by but he was a bit earlier than the one yesterday morning. I could see just enough with my Leupold binoculars to tell it was a buck, but for all I knew it could have been a spike. Fortunately, yesterday afternoon on my way in to that tree I took my only two trail cameras and put them both on the same tree, a small white oak 10 yards from my stand. I faced one north and one south.

This guy walked almost right under me this morning and then fed in a circle around that tree on the side that the StealthCam was on. He was 30 yards away from my tree when the pics I'll attach in a minute were taken. He's not as big as the one I saw yesterday. Yesterday's buck looked to be a mainframe 12 point. It was too dim to see if he still had the stickers from last year.

This morning's buck, just like the last one, went towards the southeast corner of my property, so when I got down this morning I moved my stand as far southeast as I could. That ended up only being about 80 yards and might buy me an extra 5 minutes if I'm lucky.

My son in law gave me an idea though. He suggested putting a salt block out in the open by that trail. Plain salt blocks aren't illegal here and I'm thinking that even if they don't use it right away that white block will at least get their attention and hold it for a few minutes while they figure out that it's not dangerous. Hey, it's worth a try, right?

 

This is the buck from this morning. He doesn’t look old, but I’d shoot him.



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I walked in to that same patch of woods this morning. Like I said, yesterday I moved my stand to the southeast. I saw two does and could have killed either one since the stupid lead doe tracked me to my tree.

This morning I went back to the same tree. Almost as soon as I walked into the woods out of my plot at about 5:25 am a single deer bounded off and didn't blow. I thought that it was probably one of the bucks and I was thinking I'd blown it. I didn't see a single deer this morning. I carried my stand out and I'm going to leave that spot alone until the 24th and the 25th when the movement is supposed to peak during the am and pm sits.

At 1:00 pm I did take a salt block over. I dug a pit about 6" deep, put the block in it and poured some water over it. When I was finished I checked my cameras. There were no big buck pics, but I do know that the deer were definitely moving between 2:30 am and 5:30 am. I also am almost 100 percent sure that the deer I bumped walking in was a single doe. At 5:23 she walked in front of the camera and that camera is only 20 yards from the trail I walked in on.

I feel confident that I haven't messed that spot up at all.