Broke my arrow..... YEAH!..changed color too...

[Zradix]

[Over&Under]

The best kinda broken arrow...  

[Longbowlogan]

Congrats!!

[maineac]

Looks like you got some sort of red goo all over it too.

[Zradix]

First off I'd like to thank the members of Tradgang for being the prime source for all of my Trad archery knowledge.

Without this site and it's members, I'd be completely lost.

I've had a good time trad hunting the last 4 years…but no deer.
I've missed a few over the years…so at least there was some excitement..but not bringing home some meat was getting a little frustrating..lol

[SAM E. STEPHENS]

Did you step on it , did it fall out of your treestand and hit a rock , how did it get broken...
,,,,Sam,,,,

[Boomerang]

[Iowabowhunter]

[Zradix]

I've been having to look for new spots to hunt lately.

Some private land was sold…can't hunt there now.
One public spot has been blocked off..grrr
and I had to come to the hard realization that some public land I had been hunting is just too far to drive. $13 in gas there and back…just can't be doing that.

So I starting searching again.
Found a nice little public spot about 8 mins from the house.
I wasn't able to scout it a lot. But I was able to find a few decent trails.
The hardest part was finding a spot that didn't look to be "claimed" already.

I picked a spot and built myself a little blind.
 

View to the hopeful trail. Arrows are about 15yds away.
 

View from the trail to the blind..had my orange vest hanging the blind just to see if I'd be concealed well enough..
 


I was able to hunt it all day the first couple days of the season ( Oct 1,2)
Didn't see anything except birds and squirrels.

The second day I decided to spend from noon till 3 scouting for another place to set up.
Found one nice spot that had some good trails and quite a few rubs.
I decided to sit there for 45mins and get a feel for the the place.
..lol...While sitting there, I watched 2 separate groups of 3 people come right to the trail and talk about how they're going to set up "in that tree" next weekend.

I didn't feel like adding wood to that fire and figured I'd better keep scouting.....

[Zradix]

I headed out down the road a little farther.
Found quite a stand of mature planted red pine…rows and rows of telephone poles..lol

They were on some nice rolling hills with some scrubby oaks here and there.
So I figured "why not see what's over in there".
Went back in a few hundred yards and started finding pretty decent, recently used trails all over the place.

Followed a few to see where they went and found a nice little bedding area with a lot of ferns in a really pretty little valley…hmmm

I didn't see any "smoothed out" trees for climbers.
So the hunt was on for a spot with some cover to try to make a blind on one of the trails radiating out from the beds.

I normally don't particularly like hunting pines.
They're so darn quiet.
I'd prefer to be able to hear the deer walking around.
I have had my best luck hunting in pines however…go figure..lol.

Now at this point, it was about 4pm.
If I was going to make a blind I had to do it quick.
The tricky part was trying to find a spot with a couple trees to sit against that were the the right distance apart so I could have 2 people hunting in the blind….and some cover around the spot in these barren pines.

There really are a lot of criss-crossing trails out there.
I was going round and round / back and forth …kinda going out of my mind.
…"this is the best trail..but there is NO cover", " lots of trails over there..with some cover, but my range will limit me to only one trail anyway..just can't get in the middle of them"….HELP

So I decided to pick a spot with the best cover that happened to have two good trees to sit against and also had 2 sorta 3 decent trails within range.
Figured there's no reason to sit on the best trail just to get blown as soon as I twitch from there not being any cover.

So the the hunt changed gears to finding brush and limbs…

[Zradix]

There sure wasn't much in the way of deadfall to scrounge up.
I found a few "poles" and lashed them up for a horizontal bar to lean my meager findings on to make my blind.
Never did get a good pic of this blind…it isn't much anyway.
But luckily I have some little expandable turkey blinds I carry with me.
They fill in the gaps pretty good.

At about 5 a called it good enough and sat down for the evening.
I was going to be pretty surprised if I saw anything after stinking up the area during my search for a spot and wood.
No surprises that night.
But hey, It was only the second day of the season (tues) and I had a new, fairly promising looking spot.
So I packed out….looking forward to that coming Sunday (yesterday) that would be my next chance to get in the woods.

[Zradix]

wed,thurs,fri,sat(grrr) goes by at work.
My goodness weekdays are looooong during the season...

[TxAg]

come out with it  

[Big Ed]

   

[longbowben]

Whats up with all these broken arrows,I cant find any thing to break them on.  

[JamesKerr]

[Zradix]

The plan was to for my hunting buddy and I to meet up at place we could park at 6am Sun.
...hoped I gave him good enough directions.

Sure enough, 6am on the dot he was there.

The morning was kinda miserable weather really.
Rainy and low/mid forties.
In a couple months those temps will feel like a heat wave, but I'm not used to it yet so it feels a bit cold.

We said our hello's and talked about whether to set up the pop up somewhere or sit  in the drizzling weather in the new blind.
After hemming and hawing, we decided to sit in the ground blind for a while.
If it got too miserable we'd go with plan B and sit in the pop up.
Neither of us particularly like the enclosed feeling of a pop-up.....

[Gen273]

   

[Zradix]

We headed into the the pitch black, moonless, cloudy, wet morning.
Trying to walk quietly without tripping over the stumps and basically unfamiliar terrain….at least the ground was damp and quiet…lol

To my surprise, I led us straight to the blind without a waiver of uncertainty.
…at least that's how it appeared..lol

We got our legs over the top of the makeshift blind and quickly decided which tree(seat) would be who's.
Then just to keep the peace, we always decide which shooting directions belong to who.

So we put up the little turkey blinds around the perimeter and got comfortable for the wait to sunrise.
We would chuckle a bit as the rain would start coming down harder from time to time…both of us thinking "this could be better…do I want to be the wimp who brings up the pop-up?"

Then the all too familiar feeling of the cool down just before dawn was felt.
Seemed to be a little more of a drop in temps than normal do to our damp condition.

I was welcoming some light.
Knowing we were in pines and that the deer would scarcely make a sound my ears were in overdrive.
All the drops hitting the leaves and the occasional sound of a falling leaf was making my imagination paint vivid pictures of old mossy horns just out of sight in the shadows.

Just as the light was finally giving us relief we both saw some movement…
Both of us peering into the pre-dawn with whatever form of night vision we could muster…

turned out to be a skunk.
We laughed a bit.."At least we didn't get skunked in the new blind etc"..lol..

[Shedrock]