How'd you do this (last) year....?

G

gedenke

New member
Well, since it's now 2010 and most of our hunts are over with, let's hear some success stories from '09! AND I WANT TO SEE PICS!!! I'll start:

I had a great year this year! Nothing spectacular, but man, did I have fun! Started off with a cougar. I called in a young tom to 12 yards with a cow elk call! Way too close for comfort!

Opening day Fall Black Bear has me and a buddy killing two bears in two minutes on the same hill! Here's the story on that one:
http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=375120

Second day of the deer hunt I get a small forkie Blacktail.

And last but not least, I got my first elk! Tagged a nice cow on the last day of the year....12-31-09. That's what I call a new year's eve party!

And now the pics:

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My season in pictures........

This'll take a few posts as the pic limit is 6 per so bear with me......

I started off my typical hunting season slow. Went on one dove hunt (on public land) and got so frustrated with the number of people crowded around one field that we left in short order. I fired one shell, killed one dove, gave it to the guy next to me and left. Only bird hunting I did this year.

Then on to archery deer season, which here in NC opens mid-Sept.

I can sum up my archery season with one picture:

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I saw deer nearly every outing. But they were always WAY OVER THERE! My usually successful archery setups failed me this year. I tried making some adjustments and moving some climbing stands but it didn't pay off. Moved one stand to where the deer seemed to be funneling through an area and lo and behold they moved back to their old pattern and walked right under the tree I'd just left. Them's the breaks sometimes.......

This was the first year (aside from 2007 when I broke my back) in about 8 or 9 years that I've been completely skunked with the bow.

On to muzzleloader season. This is where it started to get interesting.......

Opening day 8 pointer:
This one walked up within 30 yds of one of my stands (I finally found the deer!). Chip shot with my CVA Optima shooting 250 gr. SST over 2 777 pellets. Dead in his tracks.

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closeup:
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Couple days later......Doe: 85 yd shot down to the creek below my other ladder stand. DRT.

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Couple days later.........'nother doe: This one was again about 25-30 yds from one of my ladder stands (where were these deer in archery?). She ran about 30 yds from where I shot her to where she folded.

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To be continued.......
 
Regular gun season started off a little slow for me. I saw plenty of deer, but they were all spikes and I didn't want to spend my second antlered deer tag just yet. I'd seen a nice deer earlier in ML season and couldn't get a shot at him.

One evening in my stand overlooking the creek I took a fox:

Foxfrom2009.jpg


90 yds with a headshot from my .30-06.

Probably the coolest thing that happened in gun season was that my 4 year old son got to come with me for the first time:

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He had a dentist appt one morning so I took the day off, we got the dentist out of the way and then went hunting. We were sitting in a 2 person ladder stand in a little patch of woods and I'm looking over my left shoulder for deer on one particular trail. I feel a little elbow in my ribs and hear a whispered "Daddy, there's the deer". I look to my right and sure enough a doe is walking not 50 yds from the stand. Try as I might I couldn't get a clear shot with my .243. She was weaving in and out of the brush and briars and I didn't want to take a bad shot. She walked on, but it was cool to share that experience with him. I expected him to be bouncing and all over the place as he's usually a little hyper. He was quiet and still and engaged in the hunt. Looking forward to taking him more next year.

The second coolest thing that happened this year was that one of my nephews FINALLY killed his first deer. He's hunted with us for several years and has had some misses and some missed opportunities. He finally got the monkey off his back.

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A couple weeks later I took my first deer with a rifle for the year, 3 point buck:

Buck2from2009.jpg


60 yd shot from the ground with my .30-06. This deer literally stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me, giving me a perfect broadside shot. I took it. He fell right where he stood.

The last week of the season I took this good sized doe with a neck shot from 40 yds. Again, dead in her tracks. I haven't done much tracking this year :D.

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All in all we had a good season. My family and a couple other guys have pretty much exclusive access to a large dairy farm. The landowner has one rule. Get deer off his property. We managed between the 9 of us who hunt there to take 43 deer off the property this year. With MANY more left behind to replenish.

This is the first year in several where we didn't kill a coyote. We saw a couple but always as a grey flash and gone. I've seen a ton of turkeys there this year and have evil plans for them for April.......
 
Now if I can just find the time to get all my gear cleaned up and stowed I'll be happy :D.

I've still got a backseat full of camo and ammo........
 
Gedenke,

What rifle did you shoot that cat with?

It looks like a 22 and if that is the case it is probably a magnum and if that is the case then that took some stones.
 
Had a really good deer season, seen alot of good bucks this year but not the one i had my eye on, shot 1 doe early in the season, took a 100 pound boar hog with my bow and a 80 pound sow with my rifle. Rattled up a nice 11 that my girlfriend shot, she had never shot a deer so i let her shoot him. Id rather sit with other people and show them the experiance and thrill that takes over when that bigun walks out. Today is our last day of the season so ima be lookin for them squillers till turkey season!!!
 
What rifle did you shoot that cat with?
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I knew someone would catch that! Yes, it is in fact a Marlin .22mag. Not my first choice for anything bigger than squirrel, but I wasn't actually hunting for cat...just kindof happened. I was out exploring and saw some fresh kitty tracks, so I figured, "what the heck", blew a few cow calls and here he comes. This opportunity doesn't come along very often, so I took a headshot...

rantingredneck.....nice looking fox!
 
Don't have pictures ready but here goes (and this doesn't include waterfowl hunting on the potomac, cause thats a daily occurrence)

Went to NC for a deer/hog hunt in October and took 4 deer in two days (A 6 pointer, a 4 pointer and two does) - we hunted evening and next morning. Didn't see any hogs in the stand.

Went to PA with the ruffed grouse society for a two day grouse hunt, buddy and I hunted about 20 miles of forest, flushed 45 birds, and shot 3 including a big 'ol bird who is getting mounted.

Two weeks later I went to S. Dakota with folks I work with on a 3 days pheasant hunt. Its a big party hunt - with 20 of us - hunting wild birds (many of the preserves out there that run lots of trips are flush with pen birds, we didn't go to a hunting resort, we were hunting around a few feedlots and a hutterite colony with folks we know for years). We limited out by 2 pm each day (ie: 60 birds) and then spent the late afternoons walleye fishing on the Missouri. I saw 3 big mule deer and had the biggest whitetail buck I've ever seen jump out of a food plot I was blocking on, and run straight at me, passing by about 5 feet to my right)

Then I went Sika hunting in Maryland on the eastern shore. I didn't get one, but my buddy shot and missed a 6 pointer.

Got out another day in Virginia and shot a spike buck.

Went back to NC with 5 members of our armed forces who had just returned from Afghanistan and took them on a bear hunt on a friends property. We ended up shooting a 500 pound and a 300 pound bear. Then right before Christmas I got a doe and a huge (165 pound) spike buck.

Season isn't over yet though, as we have an extended antlerless season here in Virginia, which I've been using to hunt a new piece of land I just got rights too. Saw a ton of sign, but so far no deer. I am also heading back down to Carolina in mid February to hunt feral swine with dogs. And will be heading to Utah for an American Bar Association meeting in March. I have an invite from a client in Utah to hunt coyotes on the Utah/Nevada border and have an invite from another guy just over the Utah border in Idaho who wants me to come hunt Mountain Lions then. I need to decide which to do.

Disappointments??
I was supposed to go on a dove hunt in East Central Oklahoma but work got in the way, had to cancel a trip to Western Oklahoma to hunt Mule Deer, and missed the Minnesota deer rifle season on the trip to SD by 3 days (and couldn't shoot some deer my buddy showed me on his game cams). And my traditional Christmas Week trip to hunt Quail in Georgia was cancelled because of a family medical issue (it was the same one that cancelled the OK Mule Deer trip).

Anticipation for next year?
I've been invited to Africa (Need to get wife's ok), and will be returning to Oklahoma for the dove hunt, a quail hunt and that Mulie. And the Idaho folks are trying to get me to hunt "real game" as they call it.
 
I knew someone would catch that! Yes, it is in fact a Marlin .22mag. Not my first choice for anything bigger than squirrel, but I wasn't actually hunting for cat...just kindof happened. I was out exploring and saw some fresh kitty tracks, so I figured, "what the heck", blew a few cow calls and here he comes. This opportunity doesn't come along very often, so I took a headshot...
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As the other gentleman said. That took stones..........

rantingredneck.....nice looking fox!
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Thanks, It was the fourth one I'd seen that evening. We've been hitting the predators on this farm pretty hard the last few years. It's starting to pay dividends in that the quail and rabbit are coming back hard. Saw one covey (among many sightings) of 11 quail this year. Unusual in this part of the state to see even 1 wild quail.
 
It's starting to pay dividends in that the quail and rabbit are coming back hard. Saw one covey (among many sightings) of 11 quail this year. Unusual in this part of the state to see even 1 wild quail.
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Good news. Where in Carolina are you?
 
Not a good year, but it wasn't all bad. Crops were late getting harvested and then we got hit with about 30+ inches of snow.....tough hunting.

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Archery....
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Gun season....
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Total strike out as far as animals on the ground, but I got to hunt, got away from the blackberry (satan's handcuff...), hung out with people I like, sipped a little of the good stuff at night by a big campfire. I could whine about it, but it would be a bunch of BS to say it wasn't a good year.

Bowhunting elk this year, I ended up in a fog bank. Elk so close to me I could hear them chewing. Puff of wind cleared the fog enough to see at the same time it pushed my scent to them, so it was a mad stampede. One nice bull in the group, but I would have taken a cow no problem.
 
Had a very rough year, due to the economy and personal issues I didn't get out at all, not even to bird hunt. Finally caught a break Thanksgiving weekend, went out to my usual spot and shot this spike at just over 300 yards from the blind there in the background on top of the hill. Was in my blind for all of 30 minutes, it was just light when I spotted him on a food plot I had planted a couple of years ago. One shot dropped him on the spot, my longest shot ever.
That really is 300 yards, I had GPS'd all expected shooting areas a couple of years ago and know all the distances. I'm always amazed at what depth of field does to distances in photos. And the best part of all, I got to take my 9 year old son out a couple of times that weekend. Great times!
Custom Savage 110 in 7mm Rem Mag, 150 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip handloads.

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I haven't bagged any deer yet. Only been out only a few times and the only times I seen deer, once it was way out and my buddy wouldn't wait for me to get on the second one of a pair before he shot his. Once I seen 2 but at max distance in a rain and scope was wet enuff I didn't feel confident in the shot.

Brent
 
Got a decent 8 point with the muzzleloader and a doe with the new 7 MAG. I bought. I let a young 8 point walk the last day I hunted, guess maybe if he makes it he will be bigger in 2010. Going to deer camp tomorrow to get all the tree stands and the camper. Thats always a sad trip because I know deer season is over for sure.
 
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