kennym lease hunts begin!!

[Crittergetter]

Y'all don't need to be trying to pick on fat boy! I got a reserved meeting with him in December!

Good luck to all your hunters, Kenny!

Bisch

[Bodork]

I need to back up a bit. I forgot I spent the afternoon in the blind the day we made it. Hoping to catch a turkey walking by or a deer looking for a mid afternoon snack. There is a nice white oak at the end of the tree row that is starting to drop a few acorns.
 Sat down at about 1:30. Was plenty warm. By about 2:30 the sun had dropped down far enough that the cab of the tractor had me in full shade. A welcome relief.
 Nothing moving except the squirrels that never sit still and a myriad of insects. Watched the grasshoppers, spiders and ants on their daily routine. The mosquitoes were more annoying than hungry and thank goodness none of us got into the chiggers.
 Used my phone to help pass the time texting the others, checking e-mails and and adjusting my fantasy football roster.
Maybe not my smartest move...
 Thanked God for the opportunity to spend time in this place. Watched the woods go to sleep and listened as the birds finished their songs while the crickets started theirs. Every evening the coyotes performed their choir of locating each other. Always felt like we were surrounded.
One thing I love about this place is the clarity of the stars. The milky way is an awesome sight that I took for granted as a kid but rarely see because of all the light pollution.
 Looking forward to the morning as a cool front is approaching,

[kennym]

Great having you here Mike!!

Ol fat boy is around, but not moving much in daytime. Have seen him once.

My niece from SC was here and wanted to go bow hunting so we ghillies up and sat a couple hours.  Saw bobcat with 2 near grown kittens, a buck and a doe. Not bad for first time out!!

[kennyb]

Good luck to all your hunters Kennym! Keep 'em safe!
I'm gonna get down there one day! Lol

Kenny

[kennym]

Thanks guys! Mike needs to wear faded Allis Chalmers orange camo next time.  :D

[Terry Green]

[bow loving man]

What a trip we had! The lease has had lots of rain and the beans are tall! This make for some interesting hunting this year! And as always it was great to see Kenny and spend some time with him.  My first two sits on stand were on my favorite place, the N farm. Although they were uneventful ,I just figured the deer were moving late due to the heat.  But I had great hopes with the impending cool front headed our way!  Kenny had placed a new stand in an area called the cross roads, Mike and David had scouted it out and from the sounds of it I knew I wanted to take my newly built double shelved bow and sit awhile....

[Roy from Pa]

Ol fat boy? Thought yinzs was talken about ol Kenny for a second..    

[kennym]

The other one Roy, this one is out more in daytime....  

[Bodork]

Got to the blind around 6:00 and watched as the world woke up around me. Nothing moving and as usual after about 1-1/2 hours of sitting boredom consumes me. So I get back on my phone and check texts from the others hoping to hear of some action. Check my e-mail and making the usual rounds in my cyber life when a noise and movement to my left brings me back to the woods. My reaction was to move my head to check the movement and I alerted a spike buck that was mere feet from the tractor blade to my left. He eyed me over for a moment then proceeded towards the oak tree all the while looking back to try to detect movement from my blind. I didn't have an arrow nocked so I slowly placed one on my string. As I lifted my bow into shooting position he decided he'd had enough and ran back down the lane to my left. I leaned out over the blade to see where he was headed and saw a bigger buck follow his lead. Maybe I need to leave technology back in the city and get in tune with where I am. Here is a pic of him as he ran off. Yes, I had my phone in my hand.

   

[bow loving man]

Well I checked with Mike and David and. Neither one was going to the crossroads that evening so I grabbed my newly built double shelf bow, "Double Duty" and I headed to the Crossroads stand! I parked the 4 wheeler a good ways from the top of the hill that leads down into the crossroads area and began my quiet walk in.... As I turned north to go towards the stand, I stopped and just soaked in the evening.... the air was cooler, the smells of moisture and cedar were in the air ..."this going to be a good evening", I told myself.

I got to the stand and climbed up and hooked in. What a view.... a 70 yard lane to my left surrounded by woods both North and South. Directly in front of me, was a dirt path at about 15 yards and then the woods were pretty thick across the path to the north and east.   The wind was blowing from the NW.... almost right in my face.... I liked that.... I sat and enjoyed the evening as the light slowly faded on this little draw of paradise. Then I heard it... a twig snapped to my left ....

I sat real still as I fixed my gaze on a deer slowly coming out of the woods to my left into the lane which was grown over with tall weeds and such. As I looked I slowly reached to my right for an arrow in my quiver and waited for her to put her head down in the weeds so I could nock it on the RH side of my new bow.....
That worked like a charm now if she would just come within my 20 yard shooting range I'd have a chance to let "DD" do her job...She moved over to a tree 15 yards from my stand and began to eat some leaves off of it .   " Lets just see how close she'll get...." I was ready.... I'd been practicing shooting RH even though I'm legally blind in my right eye and have to use my left one to pick a spot with...

Then it happened....she twitched her ears while still munching on that tree and I saw them!   She was really a He!!!! 4" inch antlers stuck up between his ears... About the time he started making his way closer to me , 10 yards.... then 7 yards... then 6 yards.... he put his head down in the grass to eat and I slowly lifted my bow into position to shoot.... tensioned the string, picked the spot, took a couple deep breaths....

Today is your lucky day young buck.... I decided to let him walk.... as bad as I wanted to kill a deer with my new bow, this was not the one!

So I just eased the bow down and let him eventually drift back into the woods off my left shoulder....

The sun was starting to move to the horizon and I just knew the next hour would be quite eventful.... I wasn't wrong....

[kennym]

tap,tap,tap  :D

[bow loving man]

Sorry guys, Sunday is workday for me... where was I? Oh yes the sun was just hitting the horizon and I heard it.... putt putt ... could it be? I slowly, very slowly moved my gaze over my left shoulder where little spike had exited and I verified what I had heard... Turkeys.... they were walking right up the path where that little spike had been. If they just kept coming north I'd have them at 10 yards, the big tree I was in kept me from taking a much longer shot than that over my left shoulder.  They kept it up... putt putt... it wasnt an alert just a hey I'm going this way kinda thing....
right as I thought they'd keep coming north they bowed out of sight right behind the big tree I was in...  dang first the spike now the turkeys.... there was still time to hunt left... I hoped it would finish well....

[bow loving man]

I watched the sun finally drop below the horizon... I had 30 minutes left of legal shooting light.   As I sat listening to the sounds of the dusk that were upon me, I heard an animal take what sounded like a deep breath. Light was fading and night shadows were turning trees and bushes into imaginable deer.... I looked straight to the north where I heard that breath and I saw a glimmer of moonlight flash off what appeared to be an antler.... 22 yards to the north in the woods next to a fairly good sized cedar tree, I could make out a nice size set of antlers rubbing a small tree next to the cedar... it was that dusk light where my vision gets hazy and I have to shift my gaze and verify what I was seeing! Sure enough a throat patch, a set of eyes and a nice set of antlers! He was giving that tree fits.... he was outside my range by a little bit and as I watched I knew time was flying by.... I left DD  in my lap and just enjoyed the show. I made the decision to sit til complete dark so as to not advertise my presence. I admit it was a little disappointing that neither the bigger buck or the turkeys presented a shot but I was thrilled to have had the chance to sit and watch a dang good show of nature! This would not be my last time in this stand....

[kennym]

Deer seen, bucks passed up, all is well!

[kennym]

Deer seen, bucks passed up, all is well!

[Cyclic-Rivers]

I'm loving the stories thus far....

[bowhunterfrompast]

   

[Bodork]

Meanwhile David had been in the gap 2 stand the entire hunt. He had spent last year in the same area alternating time in a pop up blind and the stand. Seems whenever he was in the blind the deer were by the stand. When he was in the stand, deer were mere feet from his blind.
 He expressed interest in seeing some new ground so after the morning hunt we met by the tractor and I showed him the original gap stand, the new north stand and the cross road stand. His first choice for the evening hunt was the tractor blind and since he had helped me pick it out and construct it I reluctantly gave it up. I was ready to do some wandering anyway and wanted to check a few big oaks I had found last year by some nice trails to see if they were dropping acorns. Found the trees but they had no acorns so I retreated back near a trail where I had seen several rubs and a few scrapes. No deer to be seen by me that evening but David saw a few just out of range.