Pre-Season Scout Report

Ok, it's less than two weeks out til' the opener for Michigan whitetail bowseason and I'm having a hard time focusing my mind on anything else.

I've used this blog for lots of things and much is happened at church, with friendships, and in my own spiritual journey since I stopped posting. Weird, I just noticed that today is the one year anniversary since my last post. Too bad I forgot to send a card. I plan to try and post regularly throughout the fall in order to log a record of my hunting encounters. I may stray from that from time to time, but I don't expect to.

Hunting Spots

I'm VERY excited about the possibilities this fall. I will again be hunting with Josh Herzog up at his place. I really enjoyed hunting with a buddy last year. Also, I had a great opportunity at a nice buck up there and completely blew it. As I recall, I think it was a 7 or 8 point, out about 25 yards or so, and I shot right over his back. He ran away about 15 yards, stopped, and then slowly crept back in to the same spot to check out what just happened to him. It was buck fever in a bad way. I lost it. I was apparently thinking that the distance was further than it really was. When he came back in the second time, I didn't even shoot because I decide to wait to see if he would come even closer and present a better shot....totally stupid. Funny things happen to men when a nice buck steps out in to view.

Also, just this week I was given permission to hunt on 44 acres of private land just about 7-8 minutes drive from home. It's beautiful deer habitat. The owners, Doug and Stephanie are becoming friends of ours. Their daughter comes to our house every week to recieve piano lessons from Doris.

Doug is a bit of a work-aholic and maintains a FT job and also harvests crops every fall, so he's really not able to bow hunt. He reports that he has downed a buck on opening day of gun season on this property every years since he's owned it (7-8 years now). He seems excited to let me use the land, and I am certainly VERY grateful. Doug said, he's seen a nice 10-point and two matching 8-points in the last couple of weeks on the property.

Last night I sat in one of his tree stands (yes- I'm even able to take advantange of using some of his gear already in place) on the NW corner of a corn field that edges up to hard woods on two sides. I saw three does, a very tall spike (maybe 12 inches straight off his ears), and a long bodied 8-point. The eight was an especially nice deer. The rack was perfectly semetrical, fairly tall, and perhaps about 13 inches across.

I've hunted a fair amount on the Ionia Rec. area state land near my home over the past several years. This year I'm hoping to not have to. I think there are some nice deer in there, but I've had some bad experiences with other hunters and lost a tree stand in there too. One example, last year I had my stand set up of a nice trail and I sat all morning opening day. I went home for a couple hours over lunch, and when I returned about 4:00, someone else had move in and set a stand about 20 yards away from me, and I didn't realize it until I had gotten up in my tree and they were clearly upset and starting to descend from their position. I just left frustrated.

I sure hope that I don't screw up the shot this year. It seems quite likely that I should get a good chance at a nice buck. I've been shooting my bow several times a week for the last couple. Some days it's on the money, other days, not so much. Ten more days to get it down.