St Jude's Armadillo Hunt-The Results are in! A deer hunt broke out along the way!

[gregg dudley]

Reed and I had discussed the situation in advance and decide to let Ethan sit "The Zoo" stand for the evening hunt.  My dad had sat a stand across the field from there on three previous evening hunts and watched deer walk out underneath that stand.  I was proud that Reed was such a gracious host.  

We were late getting to the woods in the afternoon and I was disappointed to see that there were already two deer in the field near the stand.  I directed Ethan to approach the stand through the woods and I walked Reed to a stand in the woods about 200 yards away.  When I got back to the field the deer were gone.  I wondered if that had been Ethan's chance for the evening and if we had blown it by being late.

Darren and I went on to our ladder stands on the hog sign that we had scouted earlier in the day.

A short time later I got a phone call from Darren.  Ethan had shot a deer.  I told Darren to sit it out and I would go check for sign before it got dark.  When I figured out what we were dealing with I would call Darren back.

Ethan was very excited when I got to him.  He had seen a bobcat, heard some hogs, and seen a doe and a fawn.  He had watched the deer for some time before he had got a shot opportunity.  He said the shot looked good. He had shot the deer at about 6:10 PM and since it was after 7:00 we decided to start looking for sign while we still had light to work with.  

It took about 15 minutes to find the start of the blood trail.  After a few yards we found this:

 

A yard or two farther we found this:

 

[gregg dudley]

Thanks to the text messaging tendancies of teenagers, Reed was aware of the drama.  Despite my advice to stay on stand in case we bumped something to him he wanted to be in on the recovery.  He joined us a few minutes later and we continued to track the deer.  We managed to make the trail for about 80 yards before losing it.  Darkness was falling and we popped a glow stick to mark last blood and eased out to pick up Darren.

We returned a short time later and took up the trail, but could not find any additional blood.  We followed likely trails and searched on hand and knees before finally resorting to a sweeping grid search of the surrounding area.  We walked four abreast in a semi-circle around the end of the last sign in the hopes of picking up the blood or spotting the deer. In the process we bumped several hogs and were serenaded by the local coyote population.  Both encounters had me hoping to find the deer before the competing omnivores did.

About 4o minutes later I looked back at the faint light of the glow stick and commented aloud to Ethan that he looked like he was on a direct path to the previous blood trail.  I had no sooner spoken the thought than he spotted the deer.

Ethan and Reed show off about $10,000 worth of braces as they join Darren in admiring Ethan's first traditional archery deer:

   

Preparing for the drag out.  She travelled about 140 yards from the shot.

   

The accomplished archer:

   

Hey!  I want to be in the picture too!

   

[L82HUNT]

   The look on his face says it all.

[gregg dudley]

That was the end of Day 1.  There are two more days to report on and there are more adventures to recount, but I need to spend a few hours with the family after being gone.

[Steve O]

AWESOME!

[Donnie Wilkerson]

Great job guys!

Donnie

[rastaman]

What a great start..thanks for sharing the pics and story so far Gregg!    Congratulations Ethan!

[Guru]

Wow, isn't that cool! Congrats Ethan    

[gregg dudley]

OK, Back to the story:

Everyone was really pumped that Ethan had killed his first deer.  The property owner came over and Darren and Ethan met him and thanked him for allowing me to offer a charity hunt in the property.  He allowed that it was his pleasure and that he was contributing a boston butt from a local charity fundraiser to our table for Saturday night.  Ethan and Darren said that the southern tendency to use bar b q as a fundraiser was an idea that they could learn to love.

Saturday morning rolled around and we rolled out of bed a little more slowly due to the late night of boning out Ethan's deer.  Reed was going to hunt a groundblind between the picked corn field and a pond.  On the way in to his stand we passed four deer that were pretty close to his stand.  As I walked him to the blind, I saw two deer about 40 yards away from it.  We tried to be quiet walking in, but I made a big production walking out in the hopes that deer really can't count.  Remembering Ethan's experience of the night before I was optimistic that they might not be too spooked.

I put Ethan in a stand down on the creek where we frequently see hogs then Darren and I drove down to hunt the stands that we had hunted the night before with all of the hog sign.  Darren hadn't seen anything the night before, but was optimistic about the morning hunt.

The morning produced game sightings for everybody but me.  Darren saw four deer that were too far to shoot.  Ethan saw two hogs.  And Reed saw four deer and had a nine yard shot opportunity at one of the does.

Shooting out of a blind is a skill.  The windows in this particular blind are small.  Reed leaned out to take the shot and thought he had a clear path for the arrow.  Unfortunately, the arrow caught the double stiched fabric near the zipper and kicked the fletch end around enough to cause him to miss the deer.  Fortunately it was a clean miss over the deer's back.  Reed was understandably bummed out by the experience, but soon recovered enough to make fun of the fact that he had shot a hole in his grandfather's blind.

Look closely at Reed's finger sticking out of the hole in the blind below:

   

[gregg dudley]

At mid-day, Darren and I left the boys to stump shoot and mess around the cabin while we went out to move a stand.  I put on shorts and flip=flops for the task at hand and encouraged Darren to do the same.  As it turned out, the creek was a little deeper, the bottom was a little wetter and there were more briars and vines than I remembered.  The result was two very muddy and cut-up hunters returning to the cabin.  We had, however, had a little luck in procurring ornamentation for the top limb of Ethan's bow.  This cotton mouth was killed in tue primative style-with sticks and stones!

 

Sorry about the sideways post.  Photobucket is not letting me edit.

[gregg dudley]

That afternoon, Darren went back to hunt in the vicinity of the stand that we had moved.  There was good hog sign in the bottom and he was hoping to get on a pig.  The boys and I loaded up n the truck and drove to a small tract of property that we are permitted to hunt that is about a half mile from the main lease.  I put Ethan in a hang-on stand near a fence crossing.

 

Then I dropped Reed off at a ladder stand near deeper in the woods.  I went a little farther into the woods and set up a climber in a gap in an old fence where a commercial hog farm had long-since been abandoned.

All three of us saw the same three deer.  In addition, Reed saw a raccoon, Ethan saw three turkeys, and I saw a gray fox.

This is a terrible picture of the fox:

 

[gregg dudley]

As the boys and I were gathering at the truck Ethan's phone rang.  It turned out that Darren had had some action.

 

[gregg dudley]

Darren had been walking out of the woods and nearly been run over by this young doe.  He had missed a hurried shot at ten yards, but had redeemed himself when she stooped again at 20.  The arrow did not pass through, but broke the front leg and shoulder and took out the heart.

This was Darren's first deer with a traditional bow and it was taken from the ground!

 

 

[gregg dudley]

Photobucket is killing me.  If someone can turn these pictures right-side-up it would be appreciated.

[swp]

Congrats fella's! Sounds like fun was had by all.

[gregg dudley]

The candle burned late into the night again as the deer was processed and bagged up for the cooler.  A plan was hatched to sleep in a little later in the morning and then put a stalk together for hogs on the creek.

The third morning of the hunt found us posting the boys in likely spots on either side of the creek and then driving a half of a mile to the other side of the property to walk back towards them.  We hoped to push some pigs their way.  

While we were putting the boys in place an opportunity presented itself to obtain ornamentation for the bottom limb of Ethan's bow.  Reed and Ethan both shot this cotton mouth in the head with blunts.  They die hard.

 

[gregg dudley]

Yeah, I know...

We should have cut the snakes head off before the picture.  They just don't know when they are dead.

[gregg dudley]

The hog drive turned out to be a bust.  They can't even drive hogs at market so it is not easy to predict what they will do when pushed.  We did jump a few deer and at least two hogs, but they all went the wrong direction.

It was a good morning for a walk though and the scenary was good.

 

 

 

 

[gregg dudley]

[gregg dudley]

The evening hunt was a good closing to the weekend and almost offered me a shot opportunity.  Ethan returned to the stand he sat the first morning and he saw three turkeys.  He managed to spot an armadillo, but did not get a shot.  Darren went to the stand on the creek where Ethan had seen the hogs, but he struck out there.  Reed returned to "The Zoo."  He had a fawn under his stand for about 20 minutes and saw the same three turkeys that Ethan did.

I sat the climber that I had placed the evening before on the smaller piece of property and saw four deer and three turkeys. A fickle breeze tickled the back of my neck causing a fickle word to cross my lips and an even more fickle shot opportunity to slip away.  

That is the way it goes.

It rained all night and into this morning so we slept in and cleaned cltohes, ate breakfast and packed up.  The Shues are fine folks and Reed and I enjoyed getting to know them. We are proud to call them friends and are glad that we got to be a part of their first traditional deer harvests on a charity hunt that benefited St Jude's Hospital through the internet community that we know as tradgang.  

 

 

As some of you may remember, Chris Surtees generously threw a couple of days hunting at Benning on to this hunt. Darren and Ethan are there now.  Hopefully there will be a few more adventures for them to write.