This morning’s hunt would be Richard’s final hunt. It was 33 degrees and very still when we left camp. By the time the sun started rising it was 27 degrees and the sky was clear. It was going to be a beautiful day to say the least. I felt sure that Richard would see deer today after such a windy day yesterday.

Richard decided to sit in his climber and put out the decoy in a field at 30 yards. A deer came up to the decoy well before daylight but Richard could not tell what it was. Once it was light enough outside to see, a small basket rack buck came in and under the stand. Richard seen several other deer at a distance, including the 8 point that I let walk before shooting my buck.

Meanwhile, I was in the truck on the upper field catching up on some typing and checking on my FaceBook community. I typed a Guru Huntress column entry and while I was working on the pictures, I noticed movement out of my peripheral vision to the right of the truck. I looked up and at 8-10 yards walking in front of the truck was a 5×5 mule deer. I quickly tried to unplug Crackie who was tethered to my computer as a modem for the internet which caused my arm to bump the side window alarming the buck. He stopped and looked at the truck and picked up my movement while I was trying to take a picture of him with Crackie. I got a quick picture of poor quality.

5x5 Mule deer that crossed in front of the truck

The last text message I got from Richard was at 9:20 a.m. I sent him a few but could tell that he had not received them. At about 11:20 I saw him walking to the truck. He was calling it a hunt because he said the day was pretty much uneventful. We had stands to pull, cameras to pick up, and the truck to pack for our trip home.

We were finished collecting all the stands and cameras and headed to camp before we knew it. Now the work started. I always hate the packing up to leave and unloading the truck when you get home. I sent Richard to sleep for a couple hours since he was going to drive the first portion of our trip home. I started packing the trunks and loaded the cab of the truck with the items that needed to go in the cab. In two hours I had everything ready, the house cleaned and had taken a shower. All that was left to do was load the trunks and all the stands in the back of the truck, put the Haul Hitch on the hitch and load the cooler on it.

Truck loaded and ready to head back to Alabama

We left Atwood, Kansas at 4:30 p.m. We had a 19+ hour trip ahead of us that we were driving straight through. Remember the turkeys serenading us when we arrived in Atwood? Well on our way out, the turkeys were on the side of the road bidding farewell.

Town turkeys bidding us farewell on our way out of town.

Sometime in the wee hour of the morning we swapped seats and I drove for a while; Richard drove the majority of the trip. We arrived home on Sunday at 2:30 p.m.; even after making a stop by the taxidermist and the deer processors. It was hard to believe that the trip was already over and we were back home. The computer on the truck reflected that we had drove 3470 miles round trip and we spent 64 hours in the vehicle. We figured up that between sitting in a stand and sitting in the truck, we spent 122 hours sitting in 8 1/2-9 days.

Tripometer reflected we drove 3470 miles round trip

We had the best time on our Kansas 2009 hunting trip. I so wish Richard would have been able to harvest a Kansas buck. We had made plans to return during the Thanksgiving holiday but there is a big possibility that we won’t be able to pull that off this month. I hope that my blog readers enjoyed reading along on this adventure and I hope you check back for the happenings of my next adventure. Will it be a filmed hog hunt, a duck hunt or a hunt with the girls…who knows???

© Nancy Jo Adams 2009