J.O. has lost a great deal of money in his timber over the last few years due to this vandalism/arson, and it is now probably pretty much finished off our season over there. I am still waiting to find out exactly how bad it was and were it actually came in from. I hate to say this, but it is just a shame that one of these fires has not gotten way out of hand and  just burned down a few of the houses around us over there. I bet then they would think a little harder about doing this crap.

You just have to understand that the Blount Place has a rural neighborhood running down one side of it, and that is where the fire comes from every time. And while most of the people living there are very good people, there are a few BAD apples hanging around too. They are the ones that just hate that someone has something that they DO NOT, so they steal your stands, joy ride their ATVs on your lease and poach deer – Not to mention start fires!

And what is worse, is that the residents know who they are… Nothing goes on around here without someone seeing it or hearing about it. We live in a VERY small community where the internet can not compete with the grapevine when it comes to gossip, dirt, etc. People here know more about you than you do! Don’t get me wrong, that is what makes this place what it is. And it is often a good thing since people around here will do anything for you, and since they already know what the problem is, they will most likely help you without you even having to ask.

However it also works the other way. People know things, but they do not want to get involved. Most likely because they have to live here and see them every day. And when the police will NOT do anything to anyone anyway, I am sure most people wonder “why bother?”.  And we can’t forget that almost everyone around here is related somehow, so no one wants to turn in a family member. So these two reasons together make it almost impossible to get any crime solved, or if it is solved, to get anything substantial done to the perpetrators.

Well, once again, the idiots of this world have made their mark… I sure hope they are happy. Merry Christmas MORONS!

That pretty much put an end to hunting over there

Will came back with us, and we have tried to use these last couple of COLD days to hunt hard, but with no luck. We sat until 10am yesterday morning in the 21 degree weather and did not see a thing. And last night was more of the same – sunny and cold, but no deer. We just knew they would have to get up to eat in weather like this, but I guess not. The four months of hunting pressure probably does not help either.

We did see quite a few fresh scrapes over the last few days, so we were hoping to catch up with one of the late rutting bucks. Chip had one chase a doe by him on Cubbedge Hill this past weekend in the 80 degree heat, and then saw two good ones during midday chasing over at the Blount Place.  So we figured that the cold would really make them move for us. However just like the rest of the season, the deer have not done anything that they are supposed to.

We are getting Will on the road this morning back to Florida, and then I promise to get a few new posts up including one to fulfill my MEME TAG!

Fortunately the deer thought it wasn’t too bad, and I ended up seeing one buck fawn, two spikes and a medium 6 point.  But NO DOES. Kind of made me want to bag the decent 6. But since in one more year he could be really nice, I decided to let him go – all 140 pounds (give or take) of his nice, tasty, succulent flesh… ooohh, maybe I should have hammered him.

Just kidding… If I am patient more of those darn skinheads will come by. And who knows, the weather man says that a cold front should move in by this weekend; possibly the bigger bucks will get up on their feet too.

I’ll let you know!

The season is almost over here in the Lowcountry, and after passing up tons of does all fall, I now need to make sure we have enough meat to last through the summer.  We eat deer 80% of the time around here, so it is very important that this task be accomplished, therefore I am after a couple of fat does between now and Jan. 1st.

However it is very HOT right now, causing low deer movement. The long season is also taking its toll, so any deer is hard to get out in the open. That is why Friday night when a whole family group came by, I just knew it was time to get busy. I waited until they were very close so that I would have an easy shot on the lead doe as well as possibly another shot on one making its escape.

This is where theory meets reality…

My stand is in the middle of three trees, and I leaned out to the side of one of them and pulled the trigger as the first deer hit the road leading out the clearcut. She jumped straight up and kicked her feet out, then let out a loud bleat. However before she even hit the ground, I spotted antlers running off with the rest of the pack. I quickly shoved another shell in, leaned to the other side of the tree, and tried to pick him out of the group. By then, most were getting deep in to the bush, and I couldn’t find him. I did however find another doe that had stopped running about 150 yards away, and was now trotting.

I got on her, and pulled the trigger again. I saw her bound off with no problem… That’s OK I told myself since I already had one down. I then hurried over to where my deer should have been. It was not there! So I started looking around, but with no luck. I then started back at the beginning and tried to find the blood trail. Still no luck.

So I went up and down every path I could find as well as looking all over in the tall grass and dog fennel that surrounded my stand. NOTHING! I looked for almost 45 minutes until the sun dropped out of the sky making it even harder to find my deer.
I was pissed… at myself. Instead of killing one nice deer and coming back another day to get one more, I had tried to shorten the process by getting both at the same time. And to do that, I had taken my eye off of the first wounded deer to shoot at the second. And normally that wouldn’t have been too bad since I should have been able to still watch her out of the corner of my eye – except for the tree the completely blocked my view. Now I had no idea even which trail she had run off on, and in a dense clearcut like I was hunting, that was a sure way to lose one. And sure enough, that is what had happened.

I told myself to just calm down, go and get my truck and pick up the guy hunting with me. We could then come back and look some more. However my newly fixed truck took a s..t about half way back to the front of Cubbedge Hill, and I had to walk on to get him. The two of us then walked out to the front gate while I tried calling everyone I could think of to come and get us (when my wife did not answer, I knew the kids had turned off the ringer again, so she wasn’t going to be coming to get me anytime soon).

I finally got a hold of my cousin, and he and J.O. came to get us about an hour later when they finished picking cotton. By then, it was getting pretty late. I decided to go ahead on home, hope the temperature dropped enough in the night to keep my deer from spoiling and come back tomorrow. Unfortunately it did not, so I just ended up feeding our coyotes…I am now so bummed with myself.

Of course that is only my human emotions talking, since whatever ate it surely did not think it had gone to waste. And it is not like we don’t have one of the highest deer populations in the country. But, again, I DO NOT like to lose a deer. And if you count my lost/missed buck early in the rut, that would make two. And I usually do not lose one, much less two.

The lesson here: no matter how good of a hunter you are, there is always something new to learn. And even if you have learned that lesson before, you may forget it and have to be reminded.

So remember -  Never take your eye of off the deer you are shooting/have shot! We owe it to these wonderful creatures.

Lesson learned – AGAIN!

Jeff

My wife had been asking to go arrowhead hunting for a while now, so yesterday I finally gave in.

Of course I love to go, however we have been very busy with deer season and our members. And certainly no one wants to see our crew show up to hike around before they arrive to hunt. However no one came up this weekend.

J.O. had also plowed some of the fields and roads to put in our wheat/oat blend a few weeks ago, so that took care of the weeds that usually hide anything good. Finally we got a rain last week to wash away some of the dirt, also helping to expose any hidden artifacts. So things were looking good for a hike, but I had still not committed to it…

Then Thursday night, I was trying to catch up on my reading of some of my favorite blogs, and I found this post over at Tobacco Road Outdoors. It was a nice piece on, not only not forgetting about your significant other during hunting season, but to take them too! I thought to myself that was the last straw – we would go ASAP.

So we loaded up the van yesterday and headed over to the Blount Place for an afternoon of family fun… and it was. Our kids ran around like little maniacs, throwing dirt and trying to get in the stands. We only managed to find one good piece, but that is always just a bonus to the QFT – Quality Family Time!

And even if you do not have any good areas that hold indian “rocks” as our older boy calls them, you will NOT be disappointed with an afternoon in the woods with your significant other! You truly never know what you will find until you go – maybe some closeness that your family has been missing.

Jeff

We had 8 hunters up this past weekend, and everyone saw some action for a change! Because after Chip missed a tall-racked monster TWICE Saturday morning on the new road in Cubbedge Hill, we decided to take things into our own hands and go in after the deer.

Sunday morning at 5am, we met up at the clubhouse and made plans to load up the Blount Place while I walked through the bottom. Then Will and I would team up and go through the ultra thick cutover that surrounds it if that did not produce enough movement.

Well, except for not shooting a monster, it worked perfectly. We had deer running everywhere! And we did push one shooter around that they just could not get a shot on, while the guys knocked the does down. We ended up killing 6 big does and one button buck (inevitable if you shoot does period, much less doing it during a drive). Since we pass on does for most of the year, this culling of female deer was a must to help us achieve our Quality Deer Management program’s goals.

You have to keep the herd within the carrying capacity of the land as well as reach/maintain a good buck to doe ratio to have healthy deer as well as good hunting, and one of the best ways to achieve this is by shooting does. I think that sometimes people think that you only shoot trophy bucks under QDM, but killing does is one the cornerstones of the program.

In the pictures, the top one shows Herb’s son, Daniel, with the 3 does he and his dad teamed up to kill during the drive. The other two show a great buck that is still working his scrape at the Big Oak, and the does that are still checking them.

As for me, I promise that I am caught up on my work, and I will keep up with my posting! Sorry, Jeff

Fortunately I am making a full recovery. And we have quite a few members up this weekend as well as a camera full of pictures ready to be checked, so that should allow me to provide some new reading material here at LowcountryHunting over the next few days…

As for me, I did feel well enough to make it out to the woods tonight and decided to go down in to the bay on Cubbedge Hill. Right off of the bat, I bumped a medium (I think, it was a quick look) buck going in. I could see him tip toeing around trying to locate the source of the sound he heard, so I just kept trying to get the cross hairs on him to get a better look at his rack. I could have shot him, but I just could not ever tell for sure what he had on his head, so I passed. He finally got spooked and trotted off; I then snuck on to my stand.

I settled in and figured after that, the deer must be moving. I also heard distant shots all night, so I figured the deer must be moving. Plus it was a perfect night in the woods, so the deer should be moving… The air was cool with a bit of fog, and it was gray and overcast. I just knew something huge was going to come by me.

However the night passed without another single sighting until, with just a few minutes of shooting light left, I heard something responding to my grunt calls – running quickly my way! I jerked my 30-06 up and quickly turned off the safety. Here he comes I told myself! I prepared for a snap shot as the sound of the crunching leaves got closer.

Just then, a beautiful doedillo (for those of you who do not know, that is a female armadillo) bounded in to my sights followed by a monster buckdillo. The rut was in full swing, and this guy was giving her a run for her money…

I almost threw up as my adrenaline rush vanished!  Oh well, it was a great night in the woods…

I asked over at Webb to see if any of their hunters had ever complained that they had lost a HUGE buck anywhere near where the rack was found, and they said no. And I thought we had only lost one big deer, and that was our old member Earl who wounded a monster down in the bay during late Nov. about 750 yards from the rack’s pick up spot. So I thought that possibly that deer had made it up and out of the bay to lay up on the thick pines near the avenue.

It is definitely not out of the question for a deer to make it that far since we have tracked them hundreds of yards before on bad hits – plus you figure it would only take a buck about 20 seconds to travel that far at a good sprint. In addition, Earl searched the bay (and it is open late in the year, so it is easy to see) for a day, and I did for several more later on, so we knew that buck had gone somewhere, but was it up to the avenue???

Well, Raymond goes the whole year without saying anything about his theory on who shot the deer until he came up this week. And he dropped a bombshell! He claims our dear friend Will Castro did…And I am afraid he is RIGHT!

Early on in the rut, Will took a shot at a buck right in that EXACT spot J.O. found the deer from a ladder stand we had in the area. He could only see the deer’s head sticking out making it a tough shot, so when he did not find blood or the deer, he just assumed he missed. He told me about it, but by the time the buck was found, I gave it no thought – again because Will’s was a miss, not a wounded deer lost.

But Raymond had been in the stand right next to him, and he had not forgotten! So he lets us go on believing that we had found Earl’s buck until he had a chance to talk to Will in person to jog his memory. And after getting some more details without saying where he was going with the questioning, Raymond just kicks Will in the nuts by telling him that the avenue buck is his deer!

Now Will is in just a complete frenzy…He has been trying to kill a monster for several years, and when he finally does – he loses it! Then worse than that, when the buck is found, it is not by Will. And we all know that possession is 9/10ths of the law. So now he can hardly speak, much less sleep and eat, knowing that his deer’s rack sits just across the street just waiting to be put on a nice cape and hung in his NEW house.

So we are trying to work out reproduction rights as I type. And I hope we get it soon before Will has a heart attack. And you just have to know how much fun we are all having with Will now – ragging him that this may not be his deer (even though we all know it is). I call it the O.J. buck since he most likely shot it, but probably could not be convicted of it in a court of law!

Also, you just have to know how hard poor Will has hunted for the past few years – only to have the proverbial rug pulled out from under his big feet every time! The first time he I brought him up to hunt, his crappy bushmaster’s firing pin did not go when pulled the trigger on a nice buck. It of course ran right off when he slapped another round in trying to get it to work. (later at the range, that same gun went off when it was chambered! He sold it immediately – with a warning of course to fix it).

His luck then got worse… The next season, he missed two great bucks when his detachable scope rings went bad. The screws literally stripped out of them from the 300 rem mag recoil and this let the zero wander all over the place. He fixed this problem just in time to then gut shoot a nice buck that we searched for with a trail dog to no avail.

Finally Will did manage to shoot a good buck two years ago, so that kind of helped. However he immediately started last season off with a miss on two monsters at the Blount Place when his seat squeaked as he prepared for the shot! Then add a few more monsters that did not allow for a shot when they ran by him chasing does, and you have a series of very SAD hunting stories…

Therefore we are all very happy that Will finally got his monster. He hunts harder than anyone I know (except for myself of course), so he deserves him. Congratulations Will!

Like I have been saying, if you want to kill a big buck right now, you have to be in the woods during the midday hours. The big ones just do not seem to be moving until at least 8:30am, and often much later. I believe that most of the mature bucks are tending does right now, and the only times they are moving are when they are chasing the doe they are with, or when they move around during the midday looking for a new doe.

As for the weather, it is like summer here. And it is not supposed to get much better over the next week. About the only thing we can look forward to is a small cool down this Saturday. However the cold weather did not help us last weekend, so I am not counting on it now. I think everyone just needs to accept that the abundance of acorns still in the woods along with the heat is KILLING the deer movement… and is going to for the rest of the season!

So just remember it is the RUT, and hunt hard especially during the midday, preferably as deep in the woods as you can get, and you might just luck up. If you are not willing to do that, then just go ahead and cut on the Outdoor Channel because that is as close to a big buck as you are going to get.

And as if I needed more proof of what is going on with the deer movement, two friends of J.O. were down last weekend hunting on Palachacola, 6500 acres of prime WMA land. And one of them had this to say about his hunt:

Jeff,

Buddy and myself were down this weekend staying at the house hunting the Palachacola Drawed Hunt. Just dropping a line to let you know it was terrible. There were 21 hunters hunting 3 days, the result for the whole weekend equaled 7 does, 1 button buck, NO antlered bucks. The weather was bad Thursday night with 22mph wind but Friday and Saturday the weather was no excuse. I have read your notes and you are probably right, the bucks are in the woods with the does. I saw 3 bucks Friday night but they were small basket racks. Mr J.O. invited us back in December to help you guys take a few does out of the herd when yall start doing so. Have a good week and good luck

   Thanks, Bryan
So there you go… Now suck it up, get up here and hunt like you mean it!

The weekend hunt did not produce any big bucks or big buck sightings. Hell, it only produced a couple of deer sightings period. The big bucks seem to be hunkered down with the does, and only the small ones are moving. I saw three spikes Saturday morning, and C.J. passed on the 6 point in the first picture over at the Blount Place. He also saw a 6 point standing in the new road when he went to pick his dad up at 10 am this morning.

And that fits the pattern I have seen lately. Many of the bucks I have spotted have been later in to the morning, and while they are not monsters, these two bucks pictured show that. Like I said, the big 6 point was on the camera at the Blount Place several days in a row at various times during the day. And the smaller 6 point was in the bay on Cubbedge Hill every day at different times during the daylight. Of course I also did not shoot my buck last week until close to 9am.

So to help everyone get through the tough times, I thought that I would post a picture of a button buck trying to mount a doe – demonstrating how strong the urge to breed is for a whitetail. Combine that with midday movement (when most of our hunters are long gone) – and that shows why no matter how hot it is, how slow the deer movement, how tired you are – during the rut, you should be here sitting in a stand waiting on a monster!We also finally have proof that we occasionally have hogs on the Blount Place. I knew I saw their prints every once in a while, and Chip and I definitely heard one squeal two weeks ago, so it is no surprise. But it is nice to prove it…