I suppose it’s the way life goes sometimes.

While I was hopeful that I could manage to get out and hunt a few times before the end of our firearm season, it just wasn’t meant to be.  Everything has been against my hunting season this year – from a premie baby, to unseasonably warm and rainy weather, to a sick wife and kid the last week – but, thankfully, muzzleloader season starts this Friday.

Maybe that’s the reason that I purchased a muzzleloader this season – because God knew that there wouldn’t be time to hunt during the early archery or firearm seasons.  Of course, the cold snap that we’re supposed to have this weekend could really help to get the deer moving as well.

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While I keep wallowing in my own pool of deer hunting self pity, the SimplyOutdoors crew continue to have success – Justin shot this nice doe on film a few days ago, and our cousin, Ron, shot his second doe of the season on Sunday night.

Jeff and I went old school Sunday evening and sat together at a base of a tree – both with guns in hand – and Jeff with his camera in hand just in case as well.  Unfortunately, though, Jeff was shown what it’s like to hunt with me:  You can have perfect conditions, great weather, and an awesome spot, and still not see a deer.

If we were squirrel hunting, however, we would’ve limited out.

I’m off for six days in a row starting today, though, so hopefully I’ll have an encounter with a Thanksgiving buck or doe.  While it’s easy to be frustrated – and to say I haven’t been frustrated would be an understatement – I’m trying to stay positive, especially since my gun season will be extended for a few weeks now that I have a muzzleloader.

Now if I could just get my family healthy, so I could actually head to the woods.

Stay tuned!

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I’ll admit it – I haven’t exactly been keeping up with my blog duties lately.  Because of a few things – our premature little girl finally coming home, my lack of deers sightings, etc. – writing a blog post wasn’t really high on my list of things to do.  After a conversation with Jeff yesterday, though, I decided that he was right, and that I should post a few pictures of some of SimplyOutdoors’ successful hunts to date.

About a week ago, Jeff scored on a decent little buck.  Jeff has been holding out for quite some time, and trying to wait for a bigun’ to walk by, but self-filming and many hours of frustration finally got the best of him, and he arrowed a decent little buck on film.  It doesn’t matter that you can only lay a pistol in its antlers, the important thing is that he has venison in the freezer – which is definitely more than I can say.

Barry headed down south to do a little hunting, and ended up shooting the nice buck you see in the picture.  I’m sure that makes the time he had off well worth it, and I’m sure that it makes going back to work just a little bit easier as well.

Our gun season kicked off yesterday, but for the majority of us – Ron and Justin not included – the opener was pretty slow.  Chalk it up to the morning fog, or whatever reason you like, but the deer just didn’t seem to be moving as much as we had hoped, and the lack of gun shots in our vicinity was proof that we weren’t the only ones having the no-deer blues.

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Last Saturday morning found me fifteen feet up in a treestand.  And though I wasn’t exactly sure at the time, it was the only time I would be able to hunt the entire weekend.

After a few hours in stand, my phone started to ring.  Not knowing who could be on the other end, I made the necessary movements to answer the phone, only for it to be Jeff telling me that a few does were headed my way.  As he conveyed the information to me over the phone, and as I turned to look behind the stand, two of the does already had me in view and decided it was time to head the other way.

Thanks, Jeff.  And that is pretty much the story of my hunting life lately.

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With the new little one in the homestretch, and the buck activity picking up a notch in our neck of the woods, I did manage to sneak out hunting for a few hours on Saturday morning.

To start, the weather was perfect – low thirties, hardly any wind, and a little overcast. Soon, though, I was swearing at the weatherman from my treestand, as I could see that his prediction for a 10% chance of rain was a little off; it was getting darker and darker by the minute, and I knew that, in just a little while, I was going to be very happy that I was wearing my StormKloth II.

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