Oct 14, 2006 - First day of season report:


Got settled into the stand early this morning, around 35min before good seeing light. As it gets bright enough to start watching several grey squirrelsand a red squirrel search the area for food(as if they even have to search). The wind is blowing pretty good to at times....sometimes coming up the draw behind me, and sometimes coming right through me....but a twig snaps after beeing in stand for over a hour....a nice but small 5-7pt buck appears on the wrong side of the tree I'm in.......he actually appears on the only side of the tree that prevents me from standing up or getting ready. So I sit still and range him a few times for fun...he looked likea 5 or 6pt, but may have had 7. It was tough to tell. Finally he mills on around the interstate fence and out of sight. So I hit the primos rubberneck grunt call a few times and start sitting again. About a hour after the buck has left I hit the call a few more times....about 15min later I hear some noise coming from where the buck left....another hunter. [:@]

I sit still and the guy packing a treestand, his bow, and some small case(maybe a bow case or a arrow holder?) gets to within 15 yards of me and starts looking around. I raise my mask and whistle. He looks up and I give him a wave. He waves back and goes back in the direction he came quiter then when he came in. I figure that was my morning but I sit tight as I'm supposed to wait for my grandpa to show up around 11am. I get settled back in and another hour passes when I get cold and stand up to stretch some. As I'm leaning on the tree watching the apple tree's behind me I see some movement. A tall spike comes in and feeds on apples for awhile before turning and heading up the hill towards my four wheeler. He was feeding on apples for approx 15 minutes and never had a clue I was in the area. I get settled back in once again and it isn't 30min since the spike left that two does come in and feed on apples for 30 minutes or so....strange thing is while I was watching them they came to full alert fora moment and watched behind me. I turned in time to get a couple glances of a red fox trotting along the interstate fence. Really neat to watch their reaction to the fox and how alert they stayed for the next 5-10min after the fox disappeared. They finally go up the hill towards my four wheeler and I guess they ran into my grandpa as he said he watched them for a few minutes as they crossed a sag and went into some deep brush to bed.

It ended up being around 12:15pm before I got back to the truck. We came in and cleaned up the few squirrels he got while hunting. I messed around the house and on the internet for the afternoon and I went back out with my fiance to scout a few area's to possibly set a stand. We ended up seeing 5-6 does and a small 6pt and a small spike(possible 4pt) while looking around and riding the four wheeler from spot to spot. I probaly should have hunted my evening stand where I got the pictures of the big 9pt, but I'm saving that for Monday evening.

So I'll be back in the same stand in the morning once again, and maybe setting the other stand in a location I found today for tomorrow evening. Then I'll have to figure something out for Monday morning, and hit the evening stand Monday evening. I was really saving the evening stand till Monday because I put out a deer carcass where I saw a bob cat in squirrel season and put the trail camera over it. A buddy of mine was unlucky enough to hit a deer last Thursday and he kept it with the cooler weather. He got a little meat off of the small doe, but not much and I took the rest to this location. I ended up wiring the carcass to a tree so it couldn't be drug off and put my camera over it....can't wait to see what kind of pic's that turns up. We'll know monday for sure..........anyway, I'll post another update tomorrow afternoon or evening pending on how the morning hunt goes.


Good luck guys, and keep on keep'n on.....we'll get on the score board soon....I can feel it.