Friday, November 9, 2007

November 9, 2007 All Day, 28 degrees at sunrise, High of 45 degrees, Wind from N/ NW most of the day at about 5-10 MPH. Sunrise 7:02 am (Hunting opener 6:32 am) Sunset 4:51 pm (Hunting close 5:21 pm) I went to the Rock outcrop bow stand and Lon went to his gun stand. I decided that I was going to sit all day, which was awesome, but I should have changed my location for the afternoon. Lon went to his gun stand for the morning hunting and stayed until 9:45 and didn’t see a deer. At first light at about 6:30 I heard something to the NE and I saw a nice buck coming through about 50 yards away. I was reaching for my grunt because I thought he was veering off and the buck ended up spooking off to the SE. I am not sure how big his rack was, but he appeared to be a mature deer. At 8:50 am, a basket racked 8 pointer appeared to the NW of me. He ended up spending the better part of 15 minutes trying to figure out way a plastic decoy doesn’t move and doesn’t smell like a deer. (See attached video) All I can say is that he was very entertaining. While he was looking at the decoy, two does (may have been 3) were down in the valley to the NE. I think these same deer circled up from the NW and ended up near the stand about 15 minutes later. They saw the decoy and split up quickly to the NE and NW. At 9:40 two does came off the switch back to the east of me and ended up coming down to the main trail and went south. At 10:00, two nubbin bucks came from the south on the trail and worked their way north until they were under my stand. I have never seen this before, but one of the nubbin’s actually mounted the other nubbin. (take a look at the video). I guess they are all about free love and experimenting. At 11:20, a different nubbin cam through from the north. It circled my stand for about 10 minutes and kept mewing and bleating. I was really cool. At 1:45 pm, I had another nubbin and a doe worked from the south to the north on the main trail right under my stand. That was the last deer that I saw. I can say that the afternoon was pretty disappointing. Lon ended up going back to his gun stand and got in at 2:30 p.m. He did see a decent buck that had 4 on the right and 1 on the left. He did say that it had a bow wound on his right side that was high up above the lungs. If it had given him a shot, he would have taken it, but it was out of range. Totals: 14 deer, 12 Does/Nubbins (4 nubbins) and 2 bucks. Lon 1 deer, 1 buck.