In my previous post, I eluded to the fact that my miss last Sunday morning was only the beginning of a very memorable morning.  Here is the “rest of the story”.

After my miss, it was still only a little after 8am, so Jeff and I decided that we might as well stick it out for a little while and see if any other deer decided they wanted to eat out of his food plot.

And that is when the weirdness started.

As we sat in the blind, reviewing the film footage of my miss, off to my right I heard what sounded like a large clump of snow falling from a tree branch.  As I turned to check out the sound, though, I was astounded to see a deer lying on the ground.  At first, I figured that maybe this deer was the dumbest deer on earth, and that it had actually just bedded not 20yds from our blind.  After another look, however, I knew something wasn’t right, because the deer couldn’t hold its head up and it was making sounds like something was definitely wrong.

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Though I had only been able to hunt a handful of times, the fact remained that I hadn’t laid eyes on a deer since around October 8th.  It was making it pretty difficult to head into the woods, because I honestly wasn’t sure if I was ever going to see a deer again; I was starting to wonder if I had a deer whistle permanently embedded within my body that was preventing them from coming within a half mile of me.

And that made it pretty easy to sleep in on Saturday.

But, since Jeff texted me emphatically on Saturday afternoon, I figured I’d brave the cold weather and make him happy by hunting behind his house on Sunday morning.

We sat in the cold, and the nasty, southerly wind, which was blowing right in our face, settled into the blind and waited.  I honestly didn’t have any expectations, and considering we bumped one deer as we headed to the blind, I really wasn’t anticipating anything worthwhile.  It wasn’t half an hour into the hunt, though, when Jeff noticed a single deer making its way from our right to left.

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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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