Private Land

(Note: there are no pictures in this post due to a really big buck tricking me into leaving my camera on my truck seat. Yes, they have that effect. I'll try to post pictures later this week).

About a month ago, a very generous friend offered me access to her land. I've been itching to hunt private land since moving to NY three years ago. Still, the timing of the offer was off. School was ramping up, deer season was well underway, and any time spent scouting a new spot and setting stands meant less time hunting the Remote 40 spot I had worked so hard to find over the summer. 

But I'm not dumb. Obtaining permission to private land is probably the single greatest thing you can do to ensure a full freezer. So, in mid-October we did a walk around the property. It's about seventy acres, but only about eight acres are wooded. The rest is agriculture fields, save about five acres of abandoned & overgrown field. The ag fields were harvested, but the farmer had applied a clover cover crop. 

As any hunter worth their salt will tell you, where there is clover there is deer. On the walk around, there was plenty signs of deer, but most of the rubs were a year old and the main trails were in wet areas, which makes it difficult to tell just how much the deer are actually using them. Plus, the land surrounding the property was almost entirely cornfields and they had already been harvested. 

Here was my initial thought process:

1) Clover = Deer
2) No cover (due to harvested cornfields) = Nocturnal Deer
3) Damn. Life story. Day late and a dollar short. No point hunting nocturnal deer. 

Well, I returned today (as should be readily apparent from the lack of posts, school has won the annual college vs. hunting bout, as it usually does). Not that I'm still not buried in work, but I had an itch to go hunting.

Here's a timeline of today's events:

2:00 -  Arrive

2:02 -  Huge buck standing 150 yards from the house. He's either a really big eight point, or       a big ten or twelve pointer. Big-bodied deer. I decide to try an circle out ahead of him.

2:15 - Forty yards from truck, kick up doe.

2:30 - Decide its best to leave the buck alone and get my stands set. Best not to spook him in some stupid attempt to stalk him. 

2:45 - Reach the back woodlot. It's loaded with about 15 scrapes and countless rubs. Some of the rubs are on trees larger than I can get my hands around. They're high on the tree too. The scrapes are bare of leaves but look a little old. Maybe the rut has passed?

3:00 - Spot deer in field. Move to get a closer look and wind in face.

3:20 - Deer hundred yards off. Wind in face.

3:22 - 3 more deer in field. All does. Decide four pairs of eyes are too much to stalk.

3:45 - Deer leave field. 

3:50 - Another deer appears about 150 yards off. Doe. It leaves within 5 minutes.

4:00 - Set stands at field edge where deer were. More scrapes and rubs. 

4:01 - Kick self for not hunting here all season. Not that I could have due to school work, but what a missed opportunity.

Anyway, now I got a really bad itch to go hunting. Like a drop out of school itch. Due to a design competition and general lackadaisical approach to the semester, I'm behind in just about all my work. 

But here's what they say in the hunting world: You can't eat horns (delete "you" and say it with a country twang for the full effect). 

And here's my rendition:  Can't eat grades. Let's hunt!