Hey fellas sorry haven't been on here bow season for us started back on the 15th but have not yet had a chance to get in the woods had to make and unexpected trip to FL last week my wife's father passed away unexpectedly. Just got back early this morning and tommorow right back to the grind of work and of course while I was gone the weather was perfect and this next week it will be back up into the high 80's low 90's so don't know how much I will even get out.

palmergt3, Sorry to hear about the Father-Inlaw. Family comes first. There will be plenty of days left to go hunting. Good luck to you when you get a chance.

Pope94/IA, How did you make out this past weekend?

I'm starting to get excited. Trying to get everything together. We are headed out to Ohio Friday for the Season opener on Saturday.

It had its goods and its bads.. It was just opening weekend of youth season so its hard to expect a to see a buck. No bucks in sight but I did see well over 50 does in the three times I went out hunting.
My plans were to go out friday night after the football game and hunt saturday morning but instead I felt like sleeping in. :D Plus it was raining like crazy. It rained all weekend. Thank god for hunting blinds. :D Saturday night I went out, note that its still raining... I saw probably 6 or 7 does but no bucks. Sunday I woke up at 5:30 and the wind was howling with rain pouring down so off to sleep I went. Woke up at 9 and wind died down and it was just misting so I went out for a three hour walk. Scared up about 30 does and a coyote. I was gonna shoot the coyote but the only shot I had was a straight to the face head shot and I didn't want to make that kind of shot. Even if it is a coyote... I got back to the cabin at 12 and me and my dad worked on our addition to the cabin. Then I went back out at 3 and sat in my blind until 7:30 and it rained/misted off and on the whole time. I saw a few does but thats it.
The weather guessing guys say this next weekend is going to be a nice one.. but what do they know...? 70% chance of rain last thursday but never rained... hmm?

Tonight I had a JV football game and we won. Both our jv and varsity are 4-0. That would put my class of 2013 at a 13-0 winning streak since the start of our freshman year.
For any of you from Iowa or following Iowa high school football. We are ranked #1 in the state for 3A.

Hey guys, the season opened this past weekend and I was out in the woods for most of it. The temps were great but it rained on and off all three days. I saw a few deer but nothing in range. One doe at 400 yards and a 6 pointer at 150 yards. I also kicked up a small buck and another deer (too dark to see) on my trail back to the car these past two evenings. Thats frustrating and encouraging at the same time. I will be hunting a new spot tomorrow and Wednesday and possibly a new spot on Thursday and Friday before I head back out to this spot next weekend. Its supposed to warm back into the upper 70s and bid 80s and continue to rain this week so I am not to optimistic about my chances. We will see though.

Glad to hear the stories of your hunts guys.
Deer movement here in PA has definitely changed in the past couple of weeks.
We have an over abundant crop of acorns this year and they are falling everywhere.
With that being said the deer don't have to move very far to fill their stomachs.

I'm jealous of you guys that have already been able to get out! Sounds like you at least had some activity Pope, and congrats on the football too! Phil, a good friend of mine hunts in Rusk County, and it was pretty quiet this weekend for them too, not a lot of activity. He's got a bear tag too, so he's kind of doing double duty this week, keeping one eye for deer and one for bears. I have the final night of fall 5-spot league tonight, pick up my arrows and get them all dressed up this weekend, then just one more week to wait! I booked my Montana bird hunt on Sunday, so i'm suer pumped about that too!

I did some scouting this past weekend and for the limited time that I had, I saw quite a few deer. In one area I saw 2 pretty decent bucks, a spike, and 7 doe. They were all muleys. In another area I saw three decent whitetail doe. I managed to see them on 2 different days right around the same time so I may have to set up and pick one of them off.

Schu, can you shoot either species?

Yes I can. I have a Any deer tag and an any anterless tags. We are allowed to shoot either species. On the east side of the state is pretty much all whitetail and on the western side it is pretty much all muley. I hunt in the central part of the state so there is a mix of both. I am lucky enough to have access to plenty of land that has large amounts of both.

Well tonight actually here in about 30min I will be heading out to my tree stand for the first sit of the season. temps aren't to bad and it has been raining off and on all day so hopefully tonight will be a good night

and Dmax thanks I appreciate it

Good luck man!

wow guys sorry its been such a long time since i was able to post on her. ive been really busy with school, work, and all the stuff inbetween. season is aproaching faster then ever and opens up saterday here in Ohio. it sounds like those of you thathave been lucky enof to get in the woods are at least seeing some deer so hopefully u boys can connect. i will try to be hunting hard saterday and sunday but cant really garentee that as of now. well good luck to you all! hopefully i'll be back with a big ol' buck!

Good luck to you guys that can already get out there. I'm going to check my camera again tomorrow, so hopefully Hole-in-the-Horn wandered by and he's on there. Going to try to get all of the fall yard work done this weekend so I don't have to worry about it once the season kicks in. I also need to do one final look at all of my camo to make sure that there isn't anything I don't have, which is unlikely, but better safe than sorry!

well didn't fare to well the other night only seen 3 does and two of them were out of bow range and the one that I had at 25yds winded me. Oh well guess that is why they call it hunting and not just killing!!! not sure when I will be able to make it out again and just found out they are going to be switching my hours at work and I will be working 3pm until 11pm so that shoots any of my evening hunts. Guess I will just have to suck up the lack of sleep to get out in a tree in the mornings. Hope all of you are doing well and if your season has started already you are getting to see some deer. happy hunting

just pulled the card got a couple more bucks on the property that I will be chasing after this year

Wow the last guy is a monster! And the first one! Hopefully you can get one of those guys!

palmergt3, That's some great looking bucks. Good Luck on getting a chance at one of those.

I'm pretty pumped. Headed to Ohio this afternoon. I can't wait to get out there. I'm hoping that passing on a lot of 2.5 year olds last year pays off this year. There was even a 3.5, 8 point that passed last year. I'm definitely due. I'll be back Monday evening. I'l try and post then or shortly thereafter.
Good Luck to everyone else this weekend!

I am thinking now that I look at them more the first one and the last one are the same buck. Hopefully he will make a mistake this year and get an arrow right through his boiler maker!!!!!

great looking deer!
Openign mourning didnt go too well for me, didnt see anythign. I think that is only becasue of the full moon last night though. I could see the deer were into my corn the night befor because the whole thign was covered in leaves, except for one portion of it. I didnt not get out this afternoon because of work, but tomorrow mourning am heading to a great spot. About a half hour away, so hopefully it is worth it! The property owner has been seeing a 12 point running around freakwently. so hopefully it will happen! Good luck to you all!
PH

Well guys... I let some lead fly this weekend. :D Sadly I missed. As far as I know....

Friday night I got out to the cabin after the football game and stayed up till 12:30 talking with my dad about hunting and our cabin addition. I got to bed and 5 hours later my alarm went off waking me up for the morning hunt. It was nearly a full moon so I didn't use a flashlight going to my stand. I still ended up scaring a couple does out of the field. Got in my stand and sat there waiting for the sun to come up. The sun wasn't even completely up yet when I looked behind me adn their was two bucks coming straight to me. One got around 60-70 yards away and was broadside and he was just getting ready to go behind a big brush pile. So I steadied my gun on him and pulled the trigger. He didn't show any signs of being hit and he ran behind the brush pile following that other buck. Then they took off. He didn't seem hit or anything so I got down and went to go look for blood. Not a single drop. We walked around the area for about an hour just looking around just incase but never found him or any blood. It also started raining when went to go look for blood.

It rained/sprinkled the whole day. We got all the support done on the cabin and the decking on it. I got pictures and everything to show you guys. Ill upload them later.

Saturday night me girlfriend came out after work and went out even though it was raining. We went to the blind and sat their till dark and it rained the whole entire time. Never saw a single deer.

Woke up sunday morning and went out and saw a couple deer when I got into my stand but then I got cold after sitting their a hour or so so I got down to walk through our timber and ended up kicking up like 10 does and a small spike.

Me and my dad worked on the cabin addition some more and then sunday night I took my sister out hunting with me. It was her first time going out and she had a blast. We went to a new spot and right away we had deer by us. We just sat along a fence line and their was probably 4-5 feet of tall grass that hid us in their and we had deer walking 8-10 feet by us. She thought that was awesome. We probably saw 15 differant does and right before dark a HUGE bodied buck with a nice rack showed himself and he started running straight to us with a doe with him. He stayed probably 80-90 yards out but never got broadside. He just had his head up looking at us while that doe came to check us out. The doe got about 10-15 yards away and she caught our scent and took off with the buck behind her.

It was a pretty good weekend I would say. We got alot done with the cabin and this was the most bucks and deer in general, that I have seen this early in the season in all of my 6 years of hunting.

Pope sounds like you had a good weekend. Atleast you were out and got to see some deer. I spent all weekend finishing up a kitchen for a buddy of mine!!! the pink counter tops are the old and then the new ones

Well, I got back from Ohio last evening but, unfortunately all I saw were does and fawns. I saw one year and a half that has a fork on one side and the other goes straight down beside his eye. Strange looking thing. I think the full moon had a lot to do with deer movement this past weekend.
PA Archery season comes in Saturday, so maybe something will happen here.

Sorry about your miss! At least he's still there to be taken with the bow. Headed to the UP on Friday to bird hunt a little, go to the Packer game on Sunday, then back down here Monday. Depending on what time we get back, I may have time for my 1st IL sit of the year.

Looks like the next time I will be able to go hunting will be on monday. The temps have been in the low to mid 50's here in nebraska in the mornings. My buddy cut the alfalfa field that we hunt on last night and said he seen a bunch of scrapes along the field edge. Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come. If any of you have the chance to get out in a tree this weekend I wish you the best of luck.

I hung a trail cam today & snugged up one of my hang ons.
I won't get out for the opener but after 54 years of Bowhunting I wait that 1st week & then it's LOTs of stand time all through till end of Nov...good Luck all.

Oh, I'm picking up a new "used" Darton Sunday on my way to DesMoines to watch my G-son play football. I saw it in a shop yesterday (1 1/2 hrs from where I live) & have no idea WHY I did not buy it then. Got home & decided it was to good to pass up. Called them today & put my name on it.
I've been shooting Dartons about 35 years now & my newest is 7 years old. I have 3 currently & 2 of them are 21 & 22 years old. Still being used by relatives.

By looking at the Scoreboard it doesn't look like anybody is having any luck yet either.
Good Luck to all this weekend who have the opportunity.

I am leaving in a couple hours to head out for the weekend. This will be my first time out bowhunting so I am pretty excited.

Good luck to all you guys this weekend! Officially open here in IL, but i'm headed home for the weekend. Hoping to get back early on Mon and have the first sit of the year. Looks a little warmer than I like for next weekend. Again.

Well I got out here later than I had hoped yesterday. My dad and I ended up having to go to a town about 30 mins out of the way to work on a scraper engine. We made it out here and were about 2 miles from my grandparents house and saw a really nice, old mule deer buck sitting about 200 yards off the gravel road in a pasture. We watched him for a few mins and decided to call the guy who owns the land and see if I could go out there. We got to my grandparents and a guy who is helping them harvest corn called and had a problem with his combine. We ran over there and worked on that for a bit. Then we headed back to where the deer was and he had moved about 20 yards in the direction of an area that I can hunt. He had about 300 yards to go. We decided to let him be for a while and hope he would continue moving. We went back after about a 1/2 hour and he was bedded down and we only had about 45 mins of light left so we just let him be.

This morning I got up and saw him in the exact same spot. I decided I was going to go hunt an area and when I came back, if he was there, i was going to try to get permission. I went and hunted one area of ours and saw 5 decent doe and a small spike buck. I watched them for about a half hour before they walked off. When I went back, the one buck wasn't there so I will have to keep an eye out for him for a while.

So far I have seen 9 doe and 2 bucks in the time I have been out here so I can't complain too much.

Well guys what a great weekend. Some friends of ours came down from south dakota and they had a blast hanging with us at our cabin.

Hunting was good. Nothing dead but had good weather and saw some. Nothing shootable.

But!!! I checked my trail camera today and WOW!!!

http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/trai...y-monster.html

Pope94,
That sure is a strange looking rack. Very unique. My father shot one last year that the one side kind of looked like that.

Nice buck! Tell him congratz for me. If only both sides looked the same. Its still a great looking buck either way. I bet he was excited.

So that big buck that I talked about in my first post? I got permission to go on the land. I ended up putting about a 400 yard stalk on him and got about 20 yards from him. The hill he was on was fairly steep and where he was laying was even steeper than the rest of the hill. I couldn't see him until he stood up and ran. He ran out to about 80 yards, looked at me for a second and then bounced off. My cousin took a few pictures of him and he was really nice. When I get ahold of them I will put them on here.

I know I saw over 35 deer on land that I have permission to hunt while I was out this weekend. I am not going out this coming weekend but the next is pheasant season and because you cannot pheasant hunt until noon, I am going to try to do some deer hunting. The weekend after that and the weekend after that I am also going out. Hopefully I can get one.

Sounds like an exciting weekend Schu, hopefully you can connect on one of those big muleys.

Very cool rack on that buck Pope, is he on the hit list?

Got back from the UP around 230, and with about 60 miles left in the trip I decided I would get home and head to the woods. Well, I took a look around the yard, and noticed the length of the grass, the shabby appearance of most everything else, so I decided to stay home and get all of that stuff done to not have to worry about any of it this coming weekend. We did get a few grouse back home, which was fun, no deer hunting, just didn't have the time. I'm going to hunt at least once this weekend, but i'm less than excited about the weather being near 80 degrees.

Yeah it was pretty exciting. It was my first time bowhunting and I had a blast. I got a pretty good idea of what is out there and where they are. I have a group of does and a couple small bucks patterned pretty well. Once the snow starts falling I have a couple pretty good areas of where I can set up blinds and hopefully have some success.

SchuLace,
Can't wait to see some pictures of the buck you were stalking.

It's been raining here and isn't supposed to stop until Thursday. I only seen a spike and two does last night. I haven't seen a shooter yet but they usually don't start showing up until the first week in November.

Been gone awhile fellas. Got out my 1st time yesterday afternoon & drew a blank.. Was good to get into the woods. ALL the crops are up around my area but that should change soon.
Good Luck to everyone.

I see someone busted a Monster in Ia. already...

Only seen two does last night.
We are heading back out to Ohio tomorrow afternoon. Hunting Sat., Sunday and Monday morning. Hopefully one of us will connect this weekend. I just looked at the forecast and it's supposed to be 82 degrees out there on Saturday. Not looking forward to that.
Good luck to all this weekend!

The weather certainly doesn't have me very excited for the hunting prospects this weekend. I'm going to go, but if i'm sweating like a hog, i'm likely just going to bail out and wait for cooler temps. Winds look good for the stand I want to hunt, and it's the shortest walk too, so it could work out. Good luck to you guys this weekend.