Just a little something to share.

This last firearms season here in IL was 11/21,22 & 23. We went down to the farm. Had 4 guys hunting Friday, 5 guys on Saturday & 4 went out Sunday early with 1 guy leaving by 9am. It was much colder than usual and opening morning (Fri) was very windy. I think it really kept the deer down. One doe was taken in the early morning by one guy. About the same time another guy shot one of 2 coyotes that kept running all around his area and then shortly thereafter shot a small buck.

Weusuallydo alot more than that on opening morning.

At dusk Saturday a spike wasput onthe pole with a single 190 yard shot.

Now we were seeing alot of deer so that really wasn't an issue. Some really big bucks, chasing and fights. Shot opportunities just weren't happening.Either the deer popped up in bad places or moved thru so fast.

Here's the part I was getting to.Sunday morning brought no activity except a lone dog beating around the place that was granted another day. We had basically just wrote off the day for hunting. Sundays are typically very slow for us. So we decided to drag some oak up to the barnyard to cut for firewood which entailed several hard pulls thru the property with an ATV as well as having other ATVs back in there. In addition wehad an extra (new) 16 ft. ladder stand in the barn so we popped it together and put it back on the east side where we had seen the most (unexpected) activity. Of course this was brought out there via ATVs. Afterwards we tore up the first crop field with the ATVs pretty well.

The 3 of us decided to sit on stands for awhile just for the heck of it. I climbed up, buckled up and devoured a nutty bar quickly to get the noise of the plastic out of the way. With the plastic shoved in my pocket and chewing my last bite (nutty bars are great) I have a big doe walking along the creek edge. I hadn't been up there but about 5 minutes. She was none the wiser and I watchedto see if a buck was trailing her. When I was satisfied there was nobuck I dropped her.

A few minutes later another guy scored areal nice doe too from the brand new stand. He said he saw a few deer move into the woods behind him and asmall deer had come and laid down right under him exactly where the ATVs had been parked. When he had a shot at the big doe he took her.

I think those deer were laying on the property the whole time we werescooting around on the ATVs. Cause we weren't any threat to them they just watched us go by - crazy boys. When things settled down they decided to move on to quieter surroundings.

Maybe? Thoughts?

And today the grinder and stuffer are getting fired up and most of those 2 does are becoming various sausages.