Early rut action?

Young bucks spar over a scrape

12/21/2015

      I am seeing a lot of scrapes in our woods and have been since late November. I have eight cameras spread around the property, mostly all watching active scrapes.  What I find interesting is that what I see mostly working these scrapes is one and two year old bucks. The occasional buck that appears three years old will breeze by but almost never do I see an older buck working a scrape, especially at this point.
       We also saw several small bucks pushing does on a greenfield Saturday afternoon.  What we witnessed seemed more like a mid January day than a mid December day.  There is little doubt that much of this has to do with the younger age structure of bucks are working to establish the pecking order of their generation.  The older bucks are well suited in their dominance and they will stay out of the fray until the action really heats up.
        I tend not to believe that the actual rut varies much from year to year.  Sometimes I, as a hunter, get a clearer look at it than in other years, based on the days I get to hunt and the weather that greets me on those days.  What I do know is different this year is that the scrapes appeared early in the fall and most have been tended regularly since then.  I did not see that last season.  

Scrape action

A buck for Andrew

Cabin weekend

Alexander, a voracious reader

12/21/2015

     The cool front that brought a brief but welcome change in temperature to south Alabama was well timed for our family.  In what has become a tradition for us, we all spend a night at our little cabin a few days before Christmas.  We settled in on Friday night and kept warm by a big campfire, listening to Christmas carols streaming on Pandora.  Andrew was dressed in his Auburn jersey and football pants and retreated from the heat of the fire to throw and catch the football deep into the evening.  My oldest, Alexander, stayed glued to his book as usual.  He is the intellectual of the crowd and will hopefully invent something great one day so we can all retire. (Wouldn't that be nice!)  

Campfire at the cabin

      At daybreak Saturday morning, Andrew and I headed out through the frosty hardwoods for a little squirrel hunting.  He dropped three in three shots with his single shot 410 before he started talking about the bacon that he was sure was being cooked by his mother and brother back at the cabin.  So an hour into our hunt, we were on the way back to camp. 

Andrew and his morning's harvest

       Alexander and my wife, Daphne, returned to town for the evening and left Andrew and I to enjoy one more night at the cabin.  For the afternoon we planned to sit in a stand and hope for a deer to show that might become Andrew's first deer.        

Daphne and Andrew preparing breakfast

      At seven years old Andrew had just learned to ride a bike earlier in the week.  It is not that he couldn't learn, but we had not pressed him or helped him enough to catch on until now.  He was instantly hooked on his new skill and wanted to ride his bike to the stand as I followed along behind him on foot.  

Biking to the stand

     We crawled into our largest shooting house stand on our largest greenfield around 3pm.  It would be coolest Saturday afternoon of December and the deer began to come out soon after we arrived.  It was a far cry for the warm afternoons we had endured on recent hunts, swatting mosquitoes in our shirt sleeves.  I knew this hunt would be far more productive and Andrew fed off my excitement and I off of his.
       We watched a half dozen does feed in the patch and they were joined by several spikes, a four point and a six point.  As fate would have it, the bucks were all at the far side of the field, a good 200 yard shot.  And so we waited patiently.

       Finally two of the bucks began to move closer and closer to our end until one got to within 125 yards.  Andrew steadied the .243 and began to ready himself for a shot.  But the buck would not turn broadside and give him the shot that he wanted.  And so we waited patiently.  

      About fifteen minutes until dark a larger buck, a 7 point that would weigh 180 pounds, charged out of the pine thicket and into the green field.  Andrew immediately recognized his larger size and turned his focus onto this newcomer.  

       The buck stopped and offered a 125 yard, broadside shot and Andrew took it.  At the shot the buck lurched forward and I knew he was hit.  He ran farther into the field, stopped, and then fell over.  Andrew proclaimed, "I got my first buck!"  

        We watched a few minutes to make certain the buck was down and then we headed out to see him.  Andrew stopped twice on the walk to give me a big hug and say "thank you."  Times like those will really melt your heart.  

         After a round of pictures we got the truck and took the buck back to camp to field dress him. We spent the evening grilling supper and staying warm by the campfire, reliving the hunt over and over as the buck hung on the pole nearby.  

Andrew's first deer, a 180 lb. 7 point. 

Endless Summer

11/30/2015

     Our endless summer in the south continues to roll along.  We are now a week past our first frost of the season and have seen just two frosts thus far.  One benefit has surely been the food plots that I was as late as ever in planting.  For the first time in my memory, I did now sow seed until November had appeared on the calendar.  The warm days have provided the wheat and oats a great head start before cooler times surely arrive.

     My little hunter Andrew and I chased squirrels and a few deer over Thanksgiving.  We had much better luck with the squirrels than deer.  The warm weather has just stifled the deer movement.  On the other hand, I have seen more scrapes for this time of the year than normal.  I have several cameras watching over scrapes and trails at this point and have gotten a look at numerous young bucks working them.  

       The hogs are scarce.  Movement on the cameras has been almost exclusively at night.  We have a bumper acorn crop which is mostly going untouched except by the squirrels.  The hogs are rooting in the pines and making brief runs through the hardwoods in the darkness.  All that will change if and when the mercury falls.  

        Andrew is determined to kill his first deer.  We have a few small bucks and one quality buck coming to our best greenfield.  Hopefully we will all arrive there at the same time on a cold day in the near future.  Stay tuned...

South of the Border

Rancho San Enrique - Mexico - 12/26/15

10/27/2015

      Last December, on the day after Christmas, I joined Leigh and Travis Creekbaum on a trip south of the border into Mexico for the deer hunt of a lifetime.  They had first hunted this property known as Rancho San Enrique the prior year and returned to tell tales of the most amazing deer hunting they had witnessed in all their travels around this country.  

      We flew into Laredo and met the outfitter, Patrick Starnes, and the ranch owner, Wyo (spelling may or may not be correct).  After eating lunch we drove across the border and then drove northwest, somewhat parallel to the border and the Rio Grande River for about fifty miles, before turning off the highway onto dirt roads that led through various properties for miles and miles until we finally reached the ranch we would be hunting.  

       The entire property, 45,000 acres worth, was owned by three siblings.  We would be hunting on a third of that property during our stay.  The landscape was mostly flat, with some hills and overlooks, and was filled with every type of cactus and thorny bush you can imagine.  And deer and javelinas.  And lots of both.  

        Friends George and Ann Morris, from Birmingham, also joined us for the trip as well as Jeff Ensor, Rusty Camp, and Joseph Maier who would be running the cameras for a few episodes of The Chase tv show.  

         There were four of us hunting: George,  Travis, Leigh and myself.  The first afternoon Joseph and I settled into a ground blind alongside a road that ran through the endless expanse of cactus.  A little corn had been dribbled along the road and a few piles dumped in front of us.

         In the first hour we heard javelinas and soon they were in front of us.  Javelinas are often confused with a cousin of the wild hog but instead they are of the rodent family.  They have big teeth and smell like a skunk, which leads to their nickname of "skunk pig."  They have a very good sense of smell and very poor eyesight.

         As a group of them came into view out of our blind window I drew my bow as Joseph rolled the camera and an arrow quickly found the sweet spot on a javelina.  We heard it crash just a short piece away so we exited the blind and recovered the javelina, then returned to the blind for the remaining two hours of the evening.  

        We saw several nice bucks meandering through the catcus, in and out of the road, as the evening progressed.  Just as the sun was starting to set I raised up and peeked out the window to see a big bodied buck in the road just twenty yards in front of the blind.  We were instructed to shoot nothing less than a 5 to 6 year old buck and when I saw this one I felt we had a shooter but I wasn't sure.  Joseph, half my age but having filmed since he was 17 years old for Buckmasters and having seen way more mature bucks up close than me, quickly confirmed that the buck was indeed a shooter.  

         Moments later I sent a Wasp Jak-Hammer through his shoulder and he jump high in the air, giving a mule kick, and then he disappeared into the cactus.  

          It didn't take long for Patrick, the outfitter, to come for us and we found the arrow in the cactus, with much help from the lighted nock still glowing.  We found  blood and began to follow.  After a while we decided to back out and give the deer a little time to make sure he was dead before we risked pushing him deeper in the cactus.  

          George had also killed a great buck on the first afternoon and we celebrated with him over dinner and then all returned to look for my deer.  It did not take long to find him and indeed he had been dead since I shot him.  

          The trip and hunt of a lifetime was just beginning for me.  Since I had my buck I was able to spend time exploring the ranch with Patrick and Joseph, shooting more javelinas, and taking in a piece of the world that I had never seen before.  

          This hunt with air on Tuesday, October 27, at 6:30pm CT on "Scentblocker's The Chase" on The Sportman Channel.  It will air again on Thursday, Nov. 5, at 9am CT as well as two more  times later this fall.  

          If you have ever wanted to take the deer hunting trip of your life, I can not say enough good things about this destination.  See www.patrickstarnesoutdoors.com for more information or send me any questions you might have.  

Arrow with lighted nock strikes the buck

First Squirrel!

Andrew and I waiting on squirrels

10/14/2015

       Sunday afternoon my six year old son Andrew and I sat down beside a big oak on the edge of my uncle's property alongside the Alabama River.  He was determined to kill his first squirrel and I promised him that if he would be quiet and patient, an opportunity would likely present itself for that to happen.

       Typically a young hunter cuts his teeth on small game before moving up to big game, but Andrew took the opposite approach, having killed two hogs already.   But our two previous squirrel hunts had been unproductive mostly due to the limited patience of a youngster in waiting for the woods to settle down and come alive with the forest critters.  

        We had ridden through a pine plantation to the edge of the hardwoods that bordered the backwaters of the river and as we walked toward the big oak, which looked like the perfect spot to sit for a while, we saw plenty of fresh acorns on the ground.  Twenty minutes passed and we saw our first game, two turkeys that flew into a nearby tree and apparently began to find something to eat there.  It was too early for roosting and they jumped and flew from limb to limb in search of whatever suited their fancy.

        Forty five minutes passed and Andrew's patience was wearing thin as the sun was not far from setting over the water.  And then in the stillness of the afternoon I saw a branch, high in a tree, move. Then I saw the squirrel and Andrew did too.  For the next few minutes we watched the squirrel go from a tree on our left, run across a series of limbs and a few other trees to a tree on our right.  He would stop briefly and then go back in the other direction.  Andrew steadied the 410 on a small sapling and tried to get a shot but the squirrel would not stop long enough in view for the trigger to get pulled.  Eventually the squirrel darted off through the pine thicket nearby and was gone.

      A few minutes later another squirrel emerged from the treetops and began to work his way along the lower limbs of a nearby tree. We moved closer and the squirrel ran down a cypress tree to the water's edge.  Again, Andrew steadied the gun on a sapling and worked to get the little 410 pointed in position to shoot.  The squirrel stopped on the ground and then ran back up the trunk of the cypress to a height of around ten feet and stopped.  Andrew pulled the trigger and hammer fell on the little gun and so did the squirrel---dead.

      My little hunter handed me the gun and rushed forward to claim his first squirrel.  He was mighty proud.  I was too.

First squirrel!  

     

An Evening with the Coon Eliminator

9/28/2015

      You can not live in the country without partaking in a coon hunt from time to time and on Friday night, three little boys enjoyed their first one.  We were honored to have local legendary hunters, Clyde Ray Pearson (aka The Coon Eliminator) and Roger "Bobcat" Sheffield take us out to our swamp for an evening of fun.
      The boys were particularly excited to get to shoot at the coons themselves but they quickly learned the difficulty of such when the coons tree high in huge oaks that are still full of leaves.
       The air was a little cooler than the recent humid evenings we have endured but the full moon and dry weather was expected to make the going difficult.  It did, but not immediately.    
       As soon as the two hounds hit the first hardwood bottom they caught the scent of a coon and it did not take long before they treed.  We moved in and Clyde Ray finally saw the coon and was able to get a shot.  Again the dogs were turned loose and again they treed for another successful kill.  We continued to hunt for another few hours and they treed several more times but these were unsuccessful attempts as the oaks were simple too large and offered too many hiding places for the coons to elude us.  Just before midnight, we called it quits.
      We all got a stronger appreciation of just how hard it is to see the coons in the tree and how well they can hide.  Clyde Ray and Roger had much better trained eyes than the rest of us for picking out the coon on the limb, but even they struggled in the large, leaf filled oaks that provide refuge.  However, the boys are looking forward to the next adventure with The Coon Eliminator and it will sure happen as soon as the temperatures begin to fall.  

The Edge of Autumn

Youpon Plantation - Canton Bend, Alabama

9/22/2015

      Dove shoots, pig roasts, football games, and hog hunting are all signs of autumn on the horizon in my corner of the world.  I checked a few of those off the list in the past week.
      Friday afternoon I was invited on my first dove shoot of the season and it left nothing to be desired.  We entered the field of sunflowers around 2pm and endured a warm few hours before the birds poured in around 4pm.  I missed, very cleanly, the first six I shot at.  I finally got in my groove and I mourned the fifteenth that fell as I was just starting to really have some fun!
      Saturday evening my wife and I attended a pig roast party at a beautifully restored antebellum home right outside of Camden.  The pleasant weather was a great setting for food, music, and fellowship through the evening hours.  The event has become an annual affair is is yet another enjoyable event to mark the turning of summer into autumn.
       My hog stalks were unsuccessful on both Saturday and Sunday mornings.  I saw very few hogs and none within range of an arrow.  The acorns are beginning to fall and those hunts will improve in the coming weeks.
       

One for Andrew

9/17/2015

      As late summer and early fall arrives in the swamp the potholes and ponds are drying quickly.  The hogs are becoming more easy to pattern and find near the existing sources of water.  One Sunday afternoon recently I found a group of a dozen feeding in one of our favorite locations to shoot hogs in dry times---our Duck Pond.  Knowing they would likely return each evening for the near future, I knew exactly who I wanted to get the first crack at them.   

       During the next week my 7-year old son, Andrew, and I planned our hunt  It would be a relatively short walk from where we would park in the pines of the property, walk through a stretch of hardwoods, and into the willow bushes surrounding the pond.  There he would take aim at the group and hopefully get his first of the season.  The stage was set and all week we discussed our hunt.

      Friday arrived and as I headed home from work I called ahead and found out Andrew's friend Harrison also wanted to join us.  So the three of us headed out to the swamp in time to reach the pond about thirty minutes before dark.

       It can be difficult to sit in one spot for long as the wind swirls and alerts the hogs to human presence.  For this reason our plan was to let the hogs reach the pond first, before we stalked close. 

       As soon as we got close, I saw them.  The hogs were there in a force of at least a dozen.  We crept to within 50 yards and I steadied our .243 on the shooting sticks and handed it over to Andrew for the shot.  When I told him it was time to shoot, he reached for his chest to feel his heart that I knew was racing.

       He settled down, took aim and fired.  The hog stumbled but did not fall.  It ran in the opposite direction, into the grass and the willow bushes on the opposite side of the pond, heavily favoring its left front leg.  After a few minutes of discussing the events that just took place, our team of three charged ahead to search for blood and we quickly picked up a good trail.
        I was proud of the boys as they followed the blood with just a little help from me.  Within ten minutes they had successfully followed the trail to the downed hog.  There was much excitement in the woods that evening.  Andrew was mighty proud of his hog.  His daddy was too. 
     

Hogs by bow

9/17/2015

     I've started off the fall hunting season having a lot of fun with what I enjoy the most---hunting hogs.  On my first venture in mid August in search of hogs I took along my .270 and got three on a morning hunt.  Since then I switched to my Mathews ChillR bow and have killed 6 on three hunts.  

      I've been fortunate to take two good sized boars including the one shown in this picture.  On this hunt I was slipping along through the hardwoods when I spotted him feeding under an oak that was beginning to shed a few acorns.  He circled and circled around the tree, feeding, as I crept closer and closer.  Several times I cracked sticks with my steps and he froze and looked my way, only to settle down and return to feeding.

     I crouched behind an oak and hoped he would circle a little closer to me so that I could make a 30 yard shot but he seemed to be gradually moving in the opposite direction.  The light wind held steady in my favor but one shift in its direction would blow my stalk.  I knew time was short.

      As he made a circle in the other direction I crept closer until he began to move from right to left.  I drew and he stopped and I let the arrow loose.  

       The Wasp Jak-Hammer tipped projectile struck the hog, piercing both lungs.  He whirled and ran toward me at an angle and stopped 15 yards away, paused, and fell over.  

        Returning to the truck I ran across another group of hogs that included a sow in heat and a very big boar.  I nearly got a shot at him before the big group got wary and ran.  They didn't go far but I had no time to pursue. I'll save them for another day and that big boar is tops on my wish list.  

        Stay tuned for more tales from the Swamp as we move into my two favorite months of the year---October and November!