Up early with more than a few things on my mind, I consulted the great oracle that is the hourly wind directions from the Weather Channel. That site should be outlawed. It's addiction for the bowhunter is like a stimulant. Still East, but starting out SouthEast. I had one set that fit it and I had a guest here to think about. One of my oldest friends and mentors, an ER doc 25 years my senior (like saying that) and all around good guy trusts me to put him on whitetails here and I trust him on his home turf of Kentucky. We swap hunts, swap lies and partake in a little brown libation when we succeed as a ritual. My friend Mike and another Jack Paluh spend 5 days with me every fall. This fall Jack tore his biceps tendon a week before our time together, and I missed him a great deal. So this am it was Mikes stand and I knew it was a good place. He hunts with an alternate weapon and other than saying it was the right call as he found success, I'll leave it there.
I myself had a spot in mind, but it was iffy. I'd have to either hunt from a stand I'd have to hang or hunt from the ground. I know walking all the way back to the backside of the farm would be tough, potentially busting out all of my opportunities, so I elect to go for broke and ground pound it. Well, not really. I had an ambush in mind as I had been there before. Last October in this same ambush I had missed a whopper of an 8 point starting a cascade of confidence loss, a change to a lefty stance and back. It had been a long road since I last tried this spot, but the demons had been cast and I had killed a great buck on Thanksgiving last year. Having found myself since then on turkeys, a few coyotes and a doe the first day of November, It felt good to slip into the darkness with a steady Southeast wind in my face.
Arriving at the spot I turned my red headlamp on to organize my gear: Waldrop packseat down, leaning on a gum tree with a downed tree to my left as an obstacle to approaching deer so that they'd have to walk upwind from me to enter the field. I had dressed light for the walk in and had brought the Heater Body Suit. This was an all-day sit and I wanted no excuses. Heck I purposely ate light the night before and had no coffee this am so I wouldn't need to see a man about a horse
Honeysuckle around me as a back drop, I could look to the field edge, back down into a thicket of native grass and to my left a bottom of thick saplings. A pond nearby as a potential draw and the not so perfect wind to help. I like "almost wrong" winds when hunting on the ground. I believe it was Uncle Barry in his book "Once Upon a Tine" that said he'd rather hunt an almost wrong wind as a right wind because of the confidence it gives a buck traveling. For me on the ground I like almost wrong with some type of obstacle: a creek, a downed tree, a pond bank, etc giving me something else for them to have to walk around to stay out of my wind but remain confident, especially if I am trying to call them to me.
I zipped up my Ghilli and put my facemask on then zipped up the body suit. It reminds me of the jackets you see in pro football that covers pads when it is cold. The Frozen Tundra...no, this is So. Illinois and although a chilly 22 degrees it was overkill. I still stayed in it though. Pretty dang toasty!
Topic: A Good Start to Vacation (Read 1857 times)
