HOLED UP IN THE HUT AND DRIVES

The wind again. Bow season started with wind and gun season is ending with it. Only now it's 15 degrees without the 10 to 20 mph WNW bone chiller. There's a few ways to deal with it. Sometimes sitting works and sometimes drives work, but still hunting has not worked. So I bundle up in as many layers that I'm physically able to drag through the woods, along with the blind, gun and pack filled with blanket, pee bottle and extra clothes, and make my way to as remote a spot as i can get to and wait. I spent from 8 AM to 4:30 PM sitting on a stool in a little tent, looking out the windows. I froze my ass off, but the day went surprisingly fast. I never saw a deer.

So this morning I met Savage and Mupp over on Paradise Pond. Savage drove for Mupp and I. On the first drive I had three does sneak up behind me. I could've shot any of them but until Muzzle Loader Season-no doe permit in Sullivan Co. But on the second drive I walk the road up to where the stump dump is and Savage tells me to go in the woods there. But as I'm looking to my left to the tangle of stumps I catch movement to my right and immediately I see horns and a big back. I drop to one knee and put the scope up, but he's already got me and he's moving up towards Fred Rd. I scurry up the road on frozen puddles and try to get above him. It doesn't work and as i go in the woods another group of deer go out above me. Then ten minutes later Savage puts another six doe right to me. All in all I see 14 or so deer and a nice buck.

In the afternoon i still hunt Majestic and set up on a new spot overlooking an open hardwoods bowl, rimmed by an old logging road. Right before dark a big doe crosses the bowl. I spot her over 200 yards out and watch her come with 20 yards, never winding me until she hits my track. It supposed to be even colder tomorrow and the wind won't quit until Saturday. Savage swears that's the hot day for the second rut. So all you deer hunters that look at this blog for something other than the pictures- GET IN THE WOODS. It's heating up again.