Had a neat experience this past Sunday morning.
I walked into my stand site well before light, I obviously try to be as stealthy and quiet as I can, but with a climbing stand and pack on my back along with very dry crunchy conditions its pretty noisy in the still darkness. Anyway I get to my tree, drop my pack and start preparing to climb. After a few minutes I hear a deep grunt, I immeadiatley recognized it as a deer grunt. Then there was another and foot steps, then a grunt with each step. I had my head lamp on red beam, I turned to my left and looked in the direction of the noise, all I could see was two big eyes coming directly at me through the dark. I quickly reached up and fumbled with my head lamp to get it switched to full white beam. When I finally got it switched I was staring into the face of a nice 8 point buck not more than 5 yards away. I'm thinking he is probably going to bolt any second, but to my surprise he stood there almost curious trying to figure out what was behind the light. He milled around in front of me for probably 5 minutes, even coming a couple steps closer at one point. Then he just sauntered off to my right and faded off into the darkeness.
While this was all going on I could hear serveral other deer close to me, I glanced briefly with my head lamp and saw two doe inside 15 yards just strolling by. After a while I decided if they weren't going to go away I would just get up in my tree and settle in until shooting light came. The whole time I was clanking my stand up the tree, pulling my bow up...etc I could still hear the deer walking around close by, none of them ever snorted, stomped or took off running, they just eventually wandered off before daylight and I never did get a shot opportunity. Weird but fun morning.
Topic: Fun in the dark (Read 334 times)
