Saturday, November 19, 2011 Wisconsin Gun Opener

Saturday, November 19, 2011, Temp 33 degrees, Wind S-SE 5-10 mph, mostly cloudy, some sprinkles Sunrise 7:06 am, Hunting opens 6:36 am. Sunset 4:36 pm. Hunting closes at 5:06 pm After not sitting in Everest the entire season, I thought that I should give it a try for the opening day of gun season. We all stayed at Copper last night and Don and I drove up this morning. I was in and all set up by 6:00 am. Don was out off the field to the east of the powerline hunting from a ground blind about 70 up the hill. At 8:15 am, I had a hot doe come off the the top of the hill to the north of me. She came down the hill and passed my stand about 10 yards to the east. 50 yards behinf her was a really nice 3 1/2 year old buck. He came down to 30 yards away. I was close to shooting him as his right side was a perfect 5, but his left side was a bit broken up. He had a small crab claw, but his G2 and G3 were broken. I hesitated too long, as he ended up taking off back up the hill. The doe was still 15 yards to the SE of me and I looked down at her and there was another nice shooter about 60 yards away to the east of me. I was checking him out through my binoculars and he sensed something wasn't right and took off to the east. I might regret not shooting the first buck that I saw. Oh well. I did hear a shot at 8:20 am that I thought was Don, but I wasn't able to reach him on the walkie talkie. At 11:30 am, I saw two more deer about 100 yards to the west of me heading up the hill. I am not sure what they were. It rained pretty much the entire afternoon; fairly hard at times, but I stayed and fought through it. At 2:15 pm, I looked down to the SE and saw a deer about 100 yards away. I am pretty sure it was a doe. That was it. Totals: Bob - 6 deer, 2 shooter bucks.