5 pines farm 2012 semi live

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

today I stayed on stand from before sunrise to just after sunset. It was painful! It was rewarding!

I chose the stand on lower coffee cup trail . This is the little bowl on the back corner of the farm that sits just above an old homestead. There are very old apple trees here. With a pond ( now with a little water after the big rain we had)oaks, hickories, chest high blackberry and of course  lots of buck thorn! This is the area I try to leave as secure cover for the deer. I have only hunted here once the entire year and got skunked that time.
Here is the view I had to suffer with all day today .
 

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

You have to be very careful here not to push the deer down onto the two neighbor's pieces of ground. Especially today since both have got gun hunters present.

I don't know if it is the rut, the presence of others in the adjacent woods or both , but man did I see deer today! Stopped counting at 20. Just after first light i hear running coming towards me. A small buck is chasing a doe. They run though the little opening below me and blow up and down the sides of the bowl and disappear finally to the south. An hour later just after I had done a series of tending grunts I hear a deer coming from the south. Its taking its time but its coming directly at me down the bluff. Its a buck! its a big buck! But something doesn't look quite right. Its the big crab claw buck from last year! But he has broken off all the points on his right side except for the claw at the end. The left side has four tall tines! He is coming directly at me and is not on any of the deer trails. So none of my trimmed shooting lanes are going to help!

He stops below me a meer 8 yards and stands looking for the source of the grunts!  I am trying ti find a way to put an arrow thru the cedar tree his chest is behind.
 
His head was in the open but nothing else was!! The cedar on the right is blocking the shot!

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

Not seeing his adversary he turned to leave and passes thru this opening ( I trimmed it after he left)
   
That big branch at the base of my stand prevented the second chance for me. As he walked away I grunted at him stopping him twice. But now he has picked up the scent of that hot doe and he is not going to come back.

At 10 am seven does in single file come down from my food plots but are on a trail 40 yards down. Then two more and two more after that.

11 to 2 pm I saw zero deer and at 2:30 a doe appears 40 yards down in the thickest brush with an 8 pointer by her side . They spent the better part of the next 3 hours below me .

At 3 pm  a hunter on his quad went up the adjacent bluff. At 4:30 he shoots and kills something as the deer gave the loudest death bellow I have ever heard. Just after the shot another deer comes running down the bluff from the direction of the shot. It ends up on my logging road above me about 75 yards and then turns down hill onto the deer trail I walk in on. Its a small 5 point buck, and it walks right down the trail and stops in all three shooting lanes I have prepared! Murphy's law! Why don't the big bucks do that! Ha!

Another close shot gun blast and more deer run by. I have now been on stand 11 full hours and fatigue  has got me. I make a small noise at precisely the wrong moment sending two does I hadn't seen back down the hill.  They were coming up the trial I needed them on too!

So the day ends and I am glad to climb down and head home to dinner, some conversation with the Mrs and a warm fire in the yurt. Tomorrows another day!

[ron w]

As I have said before....great job on this post...you are keeping us on the edge of our seats....well done. Hope'n it's going to all come together shortly for you! Keep us posted!!

[Hopewell Tom]

A long day, for sure. I've never done that, but you had just enough activity to make it doable.
Too bad about the neighborly "blasting". That's hard to take.
Man, I'm envious of your effort. I've got a bum hip keeping me close to home, but your "saga" is balm for my frustration.
Thanks for sticking with it. And us.

[coaster500]

Man Jim you are working it to the max!!! These old bones start screaming at me after a few hours in a tree stand....  all day is a killer!!!

Is this the crab claw buck... you sent a trail cam picture last year.. It's hard to see in this pic but his right side looks like a crab claw...

   

[mb bowman]

Really cool Jim. Good luck!

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

Kip That's him! That is one of the last photos i have of him! Until yesterday i thought for sure he was dead.

I put in another very long day this time split between two locations.

I ventured down to the hole since that has the most rut sign on the whole farm. It was another extremely still morning. the kind where you can hear everything and everything can hear you.

I didn't see the first deer till almost 9 am (we set our clocks back last night) A small 6 point buck came into the biggest scrape and tentatively worked the branches but did not scrape in the dirt. He followed the fence line up the hill at about 40 yards from me. Then at 9:30 I hear deer in the leaves above me. Three does are working their way down the bluff behind me. The trail they are on will take them way down into the bedding areas. I watched and hoped for more. At 10 am i hear a buck bellowing down in the thick blackberries and buck thorn on the other side of the neighbors fence line. Two more times over the next hour he makes that noise.  I had packed a lunch and was determined to wait him out. But by 12 :30 i'd been on stand for almost seven hours and I needed to stretch my legs, get a hot coffee and shoot a few arrows. Finally that's what I decided to do. I slowly came down the tree and pussy footed it up the hill as best as I could. Nothing spooked behind or in front me all the way to the yurt.

It was most likely the wrong decision and may have cost a good 10 point his life to the neighboring slug throwers.

I headed up to the stand Andy and I set up in the creek bottom below apple alley. I have been getting pictures now regularly of that nine point I posted previously at this spot. My nephew had him at 10 yards in the ladder a little further up the alley last Friday and let him walk.

I decided I would kill that buck if I was given the chance. When I got to the scrape I checked the camera and he was on it again just yesterday at 5 pm. I got all set and then the wind switched. Down again I went. My only option now was to go further up the alley to the stand Justin was in last Friday. Its close to the property fence line but the wind would be blowing up hill and would be perfect. I was in the stand less than 15 minutes when a shot gun roared above me twice. Hell he was 75 yards up the hill and I hadn't seen him . The buck was a big 10 pointer. I watched as his buddys arrived in a quad and they struggled to load him up. I want to believe I didn't push him up the hill but i may very well have.

After it quieted down I saw one more little buck and a doe and a fawn that let me walk up to within 15 yards of it in the dark! It was lonely and looking for company I guess!

[tradtusker]

well it was sad to leave 5 pines once again, love hunting there and always look forward to going back.
Thanks again for a great hunt Jim, I really appreciate it all.

I have been flat out, Jim and I saw no deer movement the last day and as always I decided I would still hunt the morning even though I had a log drive back to Colorado. I sat the last morning up where i had the nice 10point come by. Saw nothing but was just great to be out there.
Got back to Colorado late and have been out the last few days after elk, with 5 days to go, and try get my dad onto a nice bull.

I have a few pics from the hunt that ill post when I get back to my computer.

Just a matter of time Jim until a big one walks by! you certainly hunt hard and deserve it. Look forward to the updates.

Andy

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Keep at it Jim!  

[coaster500]

8 yards and no shot, Dang!!!!! If I were you I might have just picked out my Christmas tree at that point    :mad:  

8 yards!!!!!

[Horne Shooter]

Great thread..one of the best I've read on TG and that's saying something!

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

before we get started with today's hunts, here is the view I enjoyed from stand last night
 
nice huh?

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

OK so I left the yurt this am with a renewed sense that good things happen to those who work for them ! So I was going to keep on working for another encounter with a big buck!

I decided to go up in the 23 to the stand where the season started. It had been roughly 10 days since i'd been there and with the East wind we had today It would be perfect.

At the edge of the timber, I scented up a drag and slowly worked my way upward grunting softly every so often as I moved along.

I got to the stand with out bumping anything ( at least to my knowledge) and climbed up just in time to enjoy watching the color start to lighten over the Eastern bluffs. Quiet in the woods again today. Not nearly as much gunfire too! After about an hour i noticed a doe and fawn moving slowly along on a trail below me about 60 yards. They crossed the logging road I was on and I made mental note as to where they crossed. I have been thinking of moving this stand down the road a bit. It hasn't panned out like i thought it would and it seems that most of the deer I have seen while hunting here are down there. The morning came and went and before I knew it, it was 9:30 am and time for me to go in and do some neglected office work. Just as I had decided to get down, an 8 point buck is on the logging road about in the same spot the does had crossed it earlier. He has his nose to the ground and i don't know if he is smelling my drag rag or the does or the two scraps that are down there. He is a nice buck but not one I am interested in killing this season.  He walks up onto the cliff side above the logging road and lies down. Shoot now i have a buck I don't want to shoot, don't want to educate and its time for me to go. I decided to try and sound like a bigger buck and move him off. I grunt loudly, no visible response.  I wheeze snort. He is looking around but still laying down. The tree next to me is dead and has a shingle sized  bit of bark hanging within arms reach. I tear off the bark , throw it on the ground and wheeze snort again. That does it he is out of there. As I walk past where he appeared and the does crossed I made note of the tree to move the stand to. Perhaps tomorrow at noon it will get done

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

My good friend and neighbor calls me at 1 pm. He is a bow hunter only too. Only still using wheels. Any way he brings me up to date on which hit list bucks are no longer walking this earth. Sad to hear the big droptined buck we have been trying to kill met his demise today about 400 yards from my yurts door!

I slowly walked up the logging road letting it get to me. Damn the gun hunters were having a mega season and its only their 3rd day!

AS I walked past the Ivy stand , I stopped to pull the SD card. By now I had stopped feeling sorry for myself after reminding myself how good i have it. I checked the card and saw that a big dude walked by just last night.
 
It's not a very good photo , but trust me this is a buck I will gladly shoot if I get the chance!
I continued on up the hill to sit the little food plot that always produces at least deer sightings.
Except for tonight! But i did get to watch the most amazing sun set, twice! There was a heavy band of clouds , then a band of clear sky and then the horizon. The sun seemed to set, then rise as it cleared the cloud , then set again as it sunk below the horizon. Pretty cool!

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

woke to rain, then sleet and now snow. AS you can see i am typing instead of hunting. Hopefully I'll be out and about some where this afternoon.

Got my bear rug back, my yurt wall is too short!    ( its 6 feet btw)
 

[coaster500]

Great buck!!!

The bear almost lost his head!!!

 

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

kip you are going to need to teach me how you edited that photo, cool!

[coaster500]

I opened it with paint. Cropped it then resized it all using paint. I saved it then up-loaded it to photobucket, rechecked the size then copy and past the link to Trandgang. There is probably a better way to do it but the only program I have is paint...  soooooooooo.....

That is a very nice buck!!!!

[LITTLEBIGMAN]

The rain changed to snow and back to rain, then to drizzle and just fog by the time it was time to go out and hunt!   I decided since the upper bluffs were socked in to hunt half way up in the Squirrel tail stand. After all the last two times I was there I was treated to glimpse a big buck.

But the the third  time was not a charm and my post in this spot today was not rewarded.

As I came down the the hill in the fading light I could just make out three bodies in the turnips below. I snuck down just close enough to get a better look. I couldn't see any head gear but it was clear from the body language 2 were bucks and 1 was a doe. Suddenly one charged the other and let a loud wheeze grunt wheeze! the other wheeled and ran out of the turnips. I moved a little closer to try and see antler and the doe caught the movement and ran up into apple alley.

Think I might hunt there in the morning.