The Calm, Midwest Whitetail Iowa, October 20th...
Posted By
iowa
at
10/20/2009 12:00:00 AM
Strap in, nock up, stay awake and get ready.... Things are on the verge of breaking loose and the time we as bowhunters long for all year is upon us. Just today I was checking trail cameras and noticed half a dozen fresh scrapes within a hundred yards of my camera location, not to mention a pile of fresh rubs.....
Rubs and scrapes are good sign to find, but rely on them more for sign that tells you a good buck has recently been there. Hunting scrapes and rubs can prove to be frustrating as the bucks tend to be sporadic in their visits to these sites. Hunting scrapes during the last two weeks of October is a good time to try this approach, but still might not produce consistent sightings. Pay attention to them, however, as they don't lie about a bucks presence!
Iowa's early muzzleloader season began this past Saturday. That season has traditionally been hit or miss yet largely dependant upon the weather. This year has been nice and comfortable, in fact down right chilly a time or two, however the infamous "October Lull" has taken its toll and induced frustration for many hunters across the midwest, not to mention several of our Iowa team members.
Team Patton:
We were out all weekend and a couple of nights during the week. As you know the weather was nice and cold most of last week but the action was slow for Team Patton. We had a ton of does feed past our stand on the 1st night with plenty of light but were shortly chased off by dogs so that also prevented anything else from coming out with light left. The next night out (Friday evening) was our best night as we had a NW wind and sat over a couple of hot scrapes. We had 4 bucks freshen the scrape after the weeks rain. Buck 1 - 120" 8 pointer,Buck 2 - 110" 8 Pointer, Buck 3 - Little Six Point, Buck 4 came in just after shooting light with no chance for a shot and was Ted Williams off of our hit list...140" 9 pointer, cruized past our stand at 18 yards and went out into the beans to feed. The next two nights were very slow as we saw a combined 5 does in 2 hunts.
Travis Rinner:
I dont have much of an update for you unfortunately. I went home this weekend and had a horrible weekend. Saturday morning my camera guy decided he couldnt get out of bed and stood me up, so I went out without the camera. Saturday evening we got to my tree and my stand had been stolen so we had to sit on the ground and couldnt really find a good spot where we could get any footage (which coincidently happened to be the best hunt I have had this year, we saw a ton of deer and a decent but young 8). Sunday morning the wind was out of the wrong direction for the particular stand i wanted to hunt, and Sunday evening we didnt see a single deer. Hopefully we have better luck next weekend, I have an early muzzleloader tag and i really dont want it to go to waste.
Jerod Schenimann:
Hunting has been extremely slow so far. Doe's and small bucks is about it. To be honest, we've even had a few hunts where we didn't even see a deer! Hope we arent the only ones. We've just been hunting the edges and a few lower key spots so far, trying to keep as much pressure off of the mature bucks as possible until the time is right. Still running trail cams alot trying to pick up our hit list bucks and narrow their fall ranges and core areas. Again, slow there also. Hopefully with this weekend being the 24th and 25th of October things will start to pick up. I am heading south this weekend to Taylor County to one of my farms to check out what's happening there. Temperature is going to be a little warmer than everybody would like I think but who knows!!!!!
Ben Sansgaard:
Well here we are already 3 weeks into the season. we feel like we are struggling cause the weather seems perfect but we aren't seeing the number of deer we were hoping to. our strategy to this point has been to hunt mainly fringes of food sources to make sure that we aren't putting to much pressure on any of our core areas. We know we need to be patient, it will be time to move in soon. our main goal has been to harvest does which we have successfully videoed 2 doe kills and had a few others slip threw our fingers. we've had some encounters with a few decent bucks ( unicorn and crab claw 10) that still need to mature.
Unicorn-
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Crab Claw 10-
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We also have a new deer to add to our hit list. The notched ear 9.
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Stay tuned as things are difficult out there but sure to pick up shortly!
Be sure to check out the latest edition of Midwest Whitetail, Iowa - http://www.midwestwhitetail.com/gallery/33/media/1493/midwest-whitetails-latest-show.html
