Below, I’ve outlined a few thoughts and realizations I learned or witnessed during the past two days:

• It’s very small world.  At an outdoor hunting show you can run into a tiny little girl you used to know, who is now a grown woman.  Man….am I old!
• You CAN shoot an arrow through an “iron buck” at 50yds.  Those were two incredible shots gentleman; I was glad I left my bow at home, so I couldn’t be humiliated in front of everyone, and watch my carbon arrow turn into splinters.
• Going with your gut instinct can pay off.  And the trailcam picture in this post proves it.  He’s not huge, but he is there (and, if you look close, you can see the rope from my treestand).  It just proves that sometimes the best  hunting spots are those that are right in front of you.
• Getting comfortable with long-range shooting is quite a process.  I’m getting better every day, and I love the gun, but it definitely takes practice.  Hopefully, one day, I’ll feel as comfortable shooting my muzzleloader, as I do shooting my bow.
• While muzzleloaders are extremely accurate, they are quite a pain in the you know what to clean.  In fact, cleaning them brings out every bit of OCD I have in me.  How can a gun get that dirty from only 8 shots??
• Shooting a pistol always makes me feel better!
• It’s only a few weeks until we can head out into the deer woods, and I can’t wait!

It was an action-packed outdoor weekend, and I loved every minute of it.  Shooting felt awesome, hanging out with a bunch of outdoor junkies like myself was a blast, and planting a food plot in my backyard with my daughter was a great time (okay, so maybe we were planting grass, but – since I don’t have my own property where I can really plant a food plot – I’m calling it one).

Now…..it’s off to bed, so I can put in a good day’s work tomorrow.

Have a great week everyone!

“Well……we’re on our way to Battle Creek Outfitters to hunt for a few days. Jim, of BC Outfitters, has been watching a few bucks during the year, so hopefully we’ll have a chance at one of them in the next few days. We’re gonna get a shower, head into our stand, and hope for the best”.

What they really should be doing is telling the truth – something like this:

“Well….we’re on our way to Battle Creek Outfitters to hunt for a few days. Jim, of BC Outfitters, has been checking trailcams and scouting all year for us. So…..since he’s been doing all the work, and has even hung the stands, all we have to do is show up, hunt for awhile, and put an arrow through the first giant buck that walks past. We don’t even have to hang stands or anything, because all of the work is done for us before we even get here”.

I was thinking about this very thing, as Jeff and I were pushing through the overgrown weeds in order to check a trailcam and move a stand on Sunday morning. I was soaked to the bone, since the morning dew still covered all the vegetation, and it was really starting to feel like work. Of course, it’s work I wouldn’t trade for a minute, but, seriously, when was the last time you saw an outdoor personality trudging through the briars and moist vegetation in order to move a stand?  Hmm…I’m thinking the last time was probably…um….never!

All the effort was worth it, though, because we managed to retrieve the stand Jeff wanted to move, and we captured our first trailcam buck of the year; he’s not big, but after only a week at that location, we were still happy with the results.

And the trailcam results made me glad that we’re not outfitters – just regular, average hunters who put in some effort and hope for the best.

It makes us appreciate the kills, and the entire experience, that much more.

Well………..my faith is beginning to run out.

All of us experience frustration at times when we’re hunting – it’s something we can’t deny.  And I’ve been trying to keep an optimistic attitude this season, but considering I haven’t seen a deer from a treestand yet, my patience is beginning to run out.

I’ve never experienced a deer season like this before.  Sure, most of my seasons have had their ups-and-downs, but at least I was actually getting a glimpse of a brown body making its way through the brush.  This season, though,  I’ve only actually laid eyes on a whitetail twice – once while making my way to my stand, and another time from within a ground blind on Jeff’s property.  Every other time – and I’ve always sat for at least three hours – my sits have been deerless.

Maybe I’m over thinking.  Maybe I just need to go with the flow a little, and see what happens.  Whatever it is, though, I hope by this weekend that things start to turn around, and that I can actually write about some deer sightings; as the trailcam picture shows – though I was starting to believe otherwise – there are deer still on the property.

And I’ll keep trying, of course.  You have to be at the right place at the right time ONCE – and that is what keeps me going.

My sister’s boyfriend captured these pictures on his trailcam recently, and after seeing them we were trying to decide if the start of the season shouldn’t be moved up a little bit.  Haha!  I’m sure he wasn’t expecting these pics when he checked the cam.  I’m sure this young buck was just “practicing”, but I still think these are once-in-a-lifetime shots, especially during this time of year.

Hopefully this little guy gets a chance to pro-create later in the year, and hopefully this doe gets a rest before then.  I’m thinking she’s probably a little annoyed at him at the moment.  Although, maybe she needs the practice too.:):)

Upcoming posts: This week we’ll have some more camping escapades, along with a post about shooting the 3-D course.  And maybe we’ll do a post once Jeff gets his new boat as well.  Stay tuned!

Unfortunately, Mr. Big didn’t make a return visit, but we did catch a decent little buck on camera.  And if any of you are keeping score, there have only been two pictures – in the entire three weeks that the cam has been out there – that did not have a buck in them.

We decided to leave our stands where they are for now, and we’ll play it by ear as the season progresses.  We also moved the camera closer to where Jeff’s main stand on the property is, so hopefully that produces some good trailcam pictures as well.

In a related story, one of Jeff’s friends – who hunts a property near Jeff’s house – was out scoping some fields in the area a few weeks ago, and captured some footage of a few nice bucks.  The video quality isn’t the greatest, but trust me you wont need any better footage to see exactly how big these deer are.  For those of you who don’t want to watch the whole video, skip ahead to about the 2 minute mark – that is where the action really starts.

The season is only a few weeks away, and Jeff and I will have to make the decision that every hunter dreams of:  which big buck property should we hunt tonight?

A very distinguishable feature of this buck is his uneven brow tines, and if you notice they are uneven in both pictures, and look pretty similar.  Jeff, myself, as well as a few people on a forum Jeff’s frequents agree that the buck in both pictures is the same buck.

The other part we’re very excited about is that the buck had a nice-sized body in November of last year.  I can only imagine what he’ll look like come November of this year – sporting his nice new head gear, and all bulked up for the rut.

Now if only one of us could pull off being able to have a picture taken with him, we’d complete the series.  I’d love to wrap my hands around those antlers, and I’m sure Jeff would too.

On my way to the location I was fighting the awful humidity – even though it was only 9:30 in the morning – as well as numerous mosquitoes and one huge horse fly.  My jeans were soaked from the dampness on the foliage, I was sweating something fierce, and didn’t have one spot on me that hadn’t had a mosquito land on it – I was wondering what in the hell I was even doing out there.

I swapped out the card on my trailcam, grabbed Jeff’s trailcam that he wanted taken down, and headed for the car.  After a ten minute walk, I jumped back in the car and headed home to see what we had.

And that is when I remembered why I put myself through everything I do in order to scout and check trailcams.

After flipping through the trailcam photos I was pretty pleased at the buck-to-doe ratio in the pictures.  I had a few fawn pictures, and a couple pictures of a doe and her fawn, but overall I had a lot more pictures of bucks then does.  These bucks weren’t huge, but I was still pleased with the results, and then I stumbled across this picture…….and somehow all the hurt and turmoil I went through to check the cam went away.

Isn’t he a beaut?

All of the pictures you see in this post are of him, and I hope I have an encounter with him at some point this year.  I literally made so much commotion upon discovering his picture on the SD card that my wife came running in to see what was going on.

Hopefully I have a date with him later this year.  And the picture of him made all the effort I went through in order to check the cam completely worth it.

I love this time of year!  And you can bet that I left the cam in that exact spot, and Jeff and I will check it again when we move a stand to that location this weekend.

“It’s 100 acres that hunts like 4.”

We did get through most of the work, but I can’t say that I wasn’t completely soaked with sweat when we got back; and the mosquitoes were absolutely horrible; they were everywhere – buzzing your ears, clinging to your back, and landing on your face.  We toughed it out, though, and managed to check on 3 stands – made sure they were still secure, and in good workable shape – and put out two of our trailcams.  We even managed to find a new stand location, and one of the trailcams is set up there and is doing some “scouting” for us before we actually move a stand to that location.

One thing that really struck us last night is how much property can change from one season to the next;  this particular property doesn’t look anything like it does in the fall, and you wouldn’t even recognize it as the same place if you walked through it in the winter months.   Plus the property is so thick – at all points of the year – that it makes it a real challenge to scout and hunt; as Jeff said last night, “it’s 100 acres that hunts like 4″.  The property is so thick that you can only pattern certain parts of it, and can’t watch from afar like you are able to in many hunting locations.  I’ve had properties in the past where you could pick a stand location, hoping it was the right one, and then sit on watch to see where the deer moved through from your perch.  If you were wrong, you simply moved your stand to where you seen the activity; not so on this piece of property.

This year will be the fourth year that we’ve hunted this particular property, and for some reason I have a pretty good feeling about the outcome.  I think we are starting to get a “feel” for the place, and I think it is going to pay big dividends this year.

I hope the possible new stand location pans out, and that the trailcam that is in the area produces some pictures of some heavy-antlered deer.  We will be checking that camera – and another camera that is in an area where Jeff has one of his stands – this weekend; and we will be sure and share the results.

How many days until season?

I am jealous, considering I haven’t even put my trailcam out yet this year (shame on me!).  I’m hoping to get mine out soon, since Jeff and Justin are making me look like a slacker.

Justin is off to a pretty good start, and as you can tell from these pictures, so is Jeff.  Hopefully, by the end of next week, I can get myself in on the act as well.

Take a look-see, and enjoy!