After writing the story the other day about about the picture of Tyler and his steelhead, I came up with an idea. I normally don’t do weekend posts, but I know that by doing weekend posts, it helps to maintain readership. With that in mind I came up with this idea. From now on, on the weekends here at SimplyOutdoors.net, we are going to be featuring a new series entitled “Inside the Frame”.

Inside the Frame will be posts that show a picture from our archives, and attempt to tell the story behind that picture. While all of the facts might not be exactly right, since our minds are not as young as they once were, I will do my best to tell the story of what is “Inside the Frame”.

I hope all of you enjoy this series, and this weekend we will kick it off with a story about Hunting in the North Woods.

———————————–

A few years back Jeff and I decided to embark on somewhat of an adventure. Our Uncle and cousins had spent some time living in Wisconsin, and although at the time they were living in South Carolina, they decided they wanted to venture back up to the Dairy Capital, and try their luck with some whitetails. Since Jeff and I were closer, they wondered if maybe we wanted to make the 9 hour trip as well and join them.

After a few conversations, and realizing that our room and board would be pretty much free, we were in. My Uncle still had a friend up that way who owned some acreage that butted up to some state land in the area. Plus, this friend offered up his cabin for us to stay in as well. Bonus! So off to Fence, Wisconsin we went.

We got up to there a few days before the firearm season started and checked out the place, and I decided that the first place I would hunt would be on the state land that was next to the property. My one cousin, who will be part of the Simplyoutdoors staff soon, decided that he would join me there as well.

Right at first light I had a few does pass by and of course I decide to let them pass because it is only the first morning. If only I had known that those would be the only deer I would lay my eyes on for the entire 5 days. I had them right in the crosshairs of the scope and decided at the last minute to let them walk. Oh well. Hindsight is 20/20 isn’t it.

The week held many surprises and challenges, one including a little disagreement about some property lines, but that story will have to be told another day (you know what I’m talking about Matt). The other surprise in store was deer drives.

Now, I’m not a big fan of deer drives, but in this area of Wisconsin they take this deer driving stuff seriously. All of the gentlemen you see in the picture were involved in the drive. There is so much wilderness in this area of the state that you need quite a few guys to cover all the escape routes for the deer. It was a mass of gun-toting individuals and I honestly loved every second of it. While they do take their deer driving seriously in these parts, they also took safety seriously too. Everyone that was a “shooter” was stationed high on a hill, and were only allowed to shoot towards the base of the hill in front of them, while all the “drivers” pushed the deer from the other side of the hill. It was a great setup-the only problem was that there wasn’t any deer.

We sat for our first couple of days of hunting and did the drives for the next two, and out of the twenty some guys that were there, only one deer was taken-a tiny little doe that made for some good eating. It didn’t matter though, because just being Up North was awesome and I had a great time.

From the cabin that we stayed in, to the food, to the hospitality that we received from our hunting party, the whole trip was just great. The cabin was awesome, and something I wish I owned myself. The wilderness was spectacular and Jeff got to have his first encounter with a fisher. Plus we all got to enjoy good company and had a great time. Of course the minute Jeff and I had to head home the deer movement kicked in and a few deer were taken including one by my Uncle. Go figure!

So there is the first story about what’s “Inside the Frame”. I hope you all enjoyed.

One last note. When we got home from this trip, Jeff asked me if I wanted to do a stalk with him behind the house he was living in at the time, and of course me being me, I opted to go home and try to catch up on some things I needed to get done. I wasn’t even home yet (I had a 35 minute drive), and Jeff already had a deer on the ground. Just my luck.

Popularity: 1% [?]