Merry Christmas - Late Season Plan
Posted By
Bill Winke
at
12/23/2011 12:00:00 AM
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Let's not forget whose birthday we are celebrating! Christ came to earth to be an example to us, but more importantly he came to redeem us. I have never found a power that has the ability to change lives (repair lives) the way this humble baby has (and can). You don't have to believe me. Ask God to show you! It is that simple.
I really appreciate all the support you have given us this past year and we look forward to finding ways to make the shows and the website even more useful in the future.
MY LATE SEASON PLAN
I started putting trail cameras out again in late November in the area where I had seen the Double G4 Buck back on November 9, when I shot the G5 Buck. He showed up right away and was on a nice daylight pattern. I am sure that I could have killed him fairly easily during the gun season but I didn't have a tag for that season. My tag is good now though and I plan to hunt him when it makes sense.
I knew I couldn't kill the deer with a bow very easily from a tree stand. The cameras told me almost exactly where the buck was coming out most often (it just happened to be pointed in that direction and when other deer were triggering the shutter, you could see him in the background). Getting a stand in there and staying undetected with all the does and fawns and smaller bucks (at least a dozen) before he came out out was the biggest challenge of trying to kill him with a bow from a tree stand.
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The first photo I got of the buck after I placed the blind on the field five days earlier. You can see him way in the background. The Bushnell was set to Field Scan mode to get photos every minute during the last two hours of each day. If you look right above the back of the nearest deer you will see him way back there. He is a careful old bugger, that is for sure! |
So, I started thinking about ground blinds. I was tempted to just put up a Double Bull and brush it in really well and call it good enough, but I have tried to film bowhunts from those things in the past and it is really tough. The hunter (me), the cameraman, the tripod and the camera all have to occupy the same space at the same time. It seems that both the hunter and the camera are always trying to "look" through the same hole. Then the footage is always abbreviated as the deer steps into and out of the window. This buck deserves better footage, even if I can't kill him.
I have been after this buck for so long that I want professional video of him almost as much as I want to shoot the buck himself. I want to be able to go back and watch it ten years from now and marvel at what a cool buck he was.
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I enlarged the section of the photo where the buck was. You can see him a bit better here. It has to be him because I don't know of any other bucks on the farm with frames that big. He is just standing there staring at the blind. This is the only photo I got of him after I put the blind out - five days later. He never showed up closer to the blind. |
It took a long time to build and finally we got it all brushed in and onto a trailer stout enough to transport it to the field last Saturday. Now it is sitting right in the middle of a two to three acre standing soybean plot.
If you watch the next episode, Monday morning, you will see the blind and where I placed it in the field.
HOW THE DEER REACTED
It is really brushed in. Though it looks like a giant Christmas tree out there on the field, it took the deer a few days to get used to it. I placed Bushnell cameras on both sides of the blind and put them on Field Scan mode to get photos every minute for the last two hours of daylight each day. It was interesting to see how the deer reacted to the blind.
The first day a few fawns ventured near it, but most just stood back and stared at it. Remember, it is sitting right in the middle of the food plot so the deer have plenty of reason be near it as they feed.
By the second day the number of deer near the blind doubled, but they still looked at it a lot. By day three it was almost as if the blind wasn't even there. They fed all around it without any cares. All of them, that is, except the big one I was hunting!
I knew that risk was real - that he would stop using the field after I moved the blind in, but that was the only way I was going to be able to realistically shoot him with a bow. So I felt I had to take the risk.
For the first five days he didn't show up, then on the evening of the sixth day I got a shot where you can see him (I think it is him) way off in the distance staring at the blind.
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| Here you can see the patch of hair missing from his rump. In another shot you can see that the spot extends all the way over his back to the other side too. |
I am going to keep monitoring the camera photos until the buck starts to show up near the blind. If he never does, I guess I learned another valuable lesson. My gut tells me he will eventually accept the blind, but it may be a few more days. He seems to like that area. I don't want to hunt another buck so I am just biding my time, shooting my bow every day in anticipation of when I can finally go after this buck.
THE TWIST
Every good story has a twist. The buck is looking very rough. The hair on his rump has completely fallen off. If you go back to the summer footage we had of the buck, he was constantly messing with his rump, rubbing his antlers on it and you could see the hair there was slightly different. Not sure if deer get eczema, but if so, this guy definitely has it, or something worse. Back in November you could see that the hair in that area was already turning black. Strange. Now the hair is completely gone.
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| Here you can see the other side of the buck. This is definitely not normal. I am not sure what it is, but it can't be good. |
I don't have an answer yet, I am still debating.
Here is the scenario I fear: He finally shows up, stays out of bow range and at last light a friend drives up to the field to run him (and the other deer) off so we can get out of there clean. The buck doesn't care for that and doesn't come back out during daylight for the rest of the season. It is a very realistic scenario. I feel we have one good chance at him.
I am still not sure if I will take the gun.
It will be very interesting to see how it all plays out.
