I'm not optimistic about modern gun deer season.
I'm at least three months behind in my site preparations, but I don't think it's going to matter.
Usually, my food plots are in good shape by Nov. 1, and deer visit them in the mornings and evenings. For a number of reasons, including a lingering drought, I didn't establish or renew any plots this year. What's the point if they're not going to sprout?
One of my hunt club buddies established what should have been a fine plot on our club. It looked like a lost cause until a smidgen of rain late last week gave it reason to persevere.
That stand overlooks a big cutover. My friend let me hunt that stand a couple of times last year, and it was most instructive.
It was early on a cold, windy morning, and there wasn't a sign of life beyond a few dickie birds flitting around the frosty grass tops.
I glanced down to read a few paragraphs from a book and then gazed back across the field. As if by teleportation, a doe browsed in the middle of the cutover, about 160 yards from the stand. Evidently she bedded in the tall grass, and she rose when the sun braised the teeth off the blue-tinged air.
A truck came through the gate and passed the stand. The doe lay down in the grass and rose again after it rounded the bend out of sight.
I saw another deer in the distance, and then another. The first doe walked straight back across the cutover to the distant woodline. The other two skirted the woodline, peering at the stand the whole time.
They're like ghosts, these deer. They can be right under your nose, and you don't know it until they choose to tell you. As happened on the last day of muzzleloader season.
My daughter, Hannah, and I sat in a stand for nearly 90 minutes and saw nothing until Hannah stood to stretch. A doe boiled out of a brushpile and bounded to the deep woods.
Back to the food plots.
As always, I prepped one of my autumn plots at the first of September. I used a Groundhog Max, a disc that attaches to the receiver on the back of my four-wheeler. It's good for woodland food plots because its turn radius is narrow. It also enables you to weave among pine stumps, which I can't do with my tow-behind disc.
The Groundhog Max turned the soil, but it was so dry it was like powder. It hasn't rained enough to matter since then, so I didn't seed, fertilize or lime it.
When rainy weather comes, I'll plant some winter feed.
The plots at my old stand in the hollow are tired. I established them over two years with a mixture of Whitetail Institute's Secret Spot and Pennington's Rackmaster. It provided a diversity of food, including chicory and several types of clover, which finally faded away.
It's pointless to mess with them right now, but I am delighted that logging activity has opened the entire southern side of that stand and created lanes for new plots. Until now, the longest shot possible from that stand was 74 yards. Now I have several lanes that offer clear lines of sight for about 125 yards.
On Tuesday, I activated one of my feeders and set it to throw feed for eight seconds twice a day. Corn was untouched Thursday, which probably means deer are still in the hardwoods munching acorns. I halved the distribution times until deer find it and clean it up.
All four of my mineral licks are full of leaves and pine needles. The minerals hang in burlap bags from trees and require rain to leach them to the ground.
This spot should be prime if conditions are right. Recent logging activity removed all the big timber to the south and created a vast clear-cut. A 3-year-old thicket is coming up to the west, and a dense thicket to the north is a main bedding and refuge area. I'm in the only good stretch of woods in the vicinity.
Not that you can tell by looking, except for a new, wide, well-traveled game trail that passes to the south of my stand.
Tall weeds obscured my view of the south end of the lane, so I cleaned it up with my Stihl "Destruct-O-Matic" weed whacker.
I've done all I can do. Maybe I'll get lucky.
Sports on 10/30/2016