We were in the stand and settled by 5:45 a.m. It was 41 degrees with a mild South wind. At 7:15 a.m. I heard rustling in the bean field behind me and turned to see a doe loping through the beans. Right behind her was a buck in tow and two smaller does, possibly yearlings. The buck was a REALLY nice 10 point with white horns, tall tines and crab claws that curl in at the front. He followed the doe into a trail about 45-50 yards from us and we didn’t see him again.

Shortly thereafter we had a little 6 point come in and bed down 30 yards from our stand for about 20 minutes; until a doe came in. He walked over to her and ducked his head and they circled each other tightly and the doe bristled up and darted up the hill. The buck circled back and came within 10 yards of the stand shaking his head and bucked and trotted a little like a playful juvenile deer. He then walked 40 yards from our stand and laid down between a brush pile and shrubbery. He stayed there 2 hours and left when we got out of the stand.

Our afternoon hunt was pretty much eventless…we had a small buck and a couple does come out on the soybean field. Other than that, the only other thing recorded was me sleeping in the stand…ooopss!! Thanks Marti….Here is to paying you back….I just didn’t get all the “grunt” calling you were doing on video…LOL!!

Marti snoring away...oops I meant grunting us up a deer

All joking aside, Marti should really think about filming professionally. She has a knack for this. I am amazed at watching her work the camera….I think she may have found a calling. She has done a super job and has been a great inspiration to me and an awesome mentor. Thanks for all your hard work Marti–you are awesome.

Since we have been bumping and pushing deer out of the field walking in for the morning hunt, we are going to sit in lock-ons in the morning on the North end of our assigned area to see what is moving there. We have not done any scouting since the stands were pre-placed and were on known trails and high traffic areas-but this is the first time I have ever hunted a piece of property un-scouted and feel I am not doing the hunt justice by not getting a lay of the land and a feel for the deer traffic on this parcel. Tomorrow is calling for rain mid-morning so what better time to do the scouting. Instead of having down time from hunting we are going to use that time to scout and we will also have the advantage of the rain washing away any of our scent.

I am going to take the Garmin Oregon 550T out with me and try the Geotag feature for scrapes and rubs with the GPSs built in camera feature. I am excited about this feature. It allows me to take pictures while scouting and down load the track to a mapping program, I use GoogleEarth, and to see the trail and waypoints where the scrapes and rubs are; you can click on the icon and it will show you the actual picture of the subject.

For those of you interested, I am posting a picture of our hunting area and the GPS coordinates for our first stand that is marked with a green star is N 37 57.319 and W 088 02.590, you can enter those in GoogleEarth for a birdseye view. The field East of our stand which shows up white on the aerial map is planted in corn that is 7 feet tall and unharvested. We already eyeballed the pinch point funnel in that field but with the corn still standing it is not a good place. Our new stand which we will be hunting in the morning is the blue arrow, high on a ridge. This is the same ridge that I seen the big buck go up on Saturday evening while glassing the fields.

{I will have to post the map on Tuesday…the cell service is sketchy right now.}

Oh, before I go, I have been introduced to an Illinois “stick-tight” and I swear they have legs. They started out on my fleece outer layer pants bottoms and by the time I got back to camp–they were clean up to my shoulder. Holy weed, these things are nerve racking and can cause madness in removing from being burrowed deep in fleece…aargh!! I think I even found them in my hair, yikes!!

More tomorrow….

© Nancy Jo Adams 2009