October

The fourth week of October is here, and so far it has been a great season. I have been out bow hunting three times and even though I haven’t seen very many deer, I wouldn’t change anything about them. Every time I have gone out I have learned something new, I have came up against different challenges, and I have enjoyed every minute of it.

One of the challenges I have occurred one my first few sits in the woods is pressure. It is great that the farmer lets me hunt his land, but he also lets anyone hunt his land and its worse than being out on public land. It doesn’t matter the time of year, everyone feels free to just drive their truck out into the woods, no disregard for other people hunting, most of the time it isn’t even for something that you need to drive back for, its just out of pure laziness. I have been guilty of it myself as well, driving back into the woods when I didn’t need to, but usually I make it around noon, when I’m not going to ruin someones hunt, and usually not in October when people are out in the woods. On Saturday I had the perfect wind to sit on a small oak flat that had been getting hammered with deer while the acorns are dropping. I see a car pull into the field at 5:00pm and figured of someone must be checking a trap line when I saw two guys get out of the car with a rifle. I also didn’t think they would booger anything up for me when I was watching where they went into the woods, but as time went on they popped out about 100 yards in front of my stand, pretty much blowing my hunt for the night. I climbed back out of my XOP and headed to the truck, waited for them to come out and bullshitted with them about their hunt, come to find out they were looking for squirrels. They felt horrible for blowing my hunt, but it isn’t my land and there isn’t anything I can do about it now, on the brighter side they know where I sit, and said they don’t plan on coming out for the rest of the bowhunting season. Its always little unexpected stuff that happens out there, but all in all I got to sit and enjoy Gods country for the afternoon and I’m not complaining about that one bit.

While I love bowhunting and chasing whitetail deer, the birds need some attention too! I have been out goose hunting with my Uncle and some of our friends and it is always a blast. I can’t get over how much fun it is no matter the hunt, getting up before the sun is up to set decoys is always worth it, no matter if we go out and don’t see a bird fly, you just can’t beat the being out there with good people. I have learned so much about goose hunting in the last two years, and become so much more passionate about it. I always thought it was easy, the birds just fly in and shoot them, I never realized how smart the birds are. I used to brush my layout blind half assed thinking “its already came why do we need to put so much grass on it” but have slowly realized these birds aren’t as dumb as they seem and will pick out anything that is off. We have knocked down a good amount of birds, I got to see my first banded goose, and I have laughed and joked every time we go.

As the colder weeks approach I am trying to get more and more time off of work on Fridays and Saturdays to get out in the woods. I have a couple bucks on camera that are going to keep me motivated to be out there, and some new techniques I’m going to have to try. This weekend I’m going to try some ground hunting on a piece of public land that doesn’t have much for trees and see what I can make work. Thanks for reading, hopefully the next season update is me telling the story about killing a buck!    

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Late October Weekend Plans

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XOP, Season Prep, Casual Rambling