Who said reading is fundamental?
 

Last night I take my Omega out for the second IL firearm season as usual. My stands have cooled off since bow season so I tried a new approach. I knew deer were moving form one patch of timber to another by crossing a small pasture where I did not have any stands set up. I had my ground blind set up originallly but walked in Thursday morning to find it blown 75 yards away laying in a picked bean field with a broken fiberglass pole, but that's a different story.

So I decide to lay prone in tall grass along a fence line. I was facing North looking across the open pasture with the wind and snow flurries blowing out of the West. I draped a camo sweatshirt over the middle strand of barbwire to help conceal me. As I usually do while blind hunting, due to sitting longer hours, I brought along a book.

I am now laying prone reading The Last Juror by John Grisham, at 1535 hours, and feel as if something is watching me. I look up and there is a doe standing at 20 yards looking straight at me. With the lay of the land, she was basically eye level wth me. I hunker down a little so I can't see her and vice versa but she keeps walking staight towards me so she can get a look at what she can't smell.

I am now completely flat against the ground (did I mention I am right handed and had my Omega on my left side like an amateur). She walks to my left and can now see something laying there which she is not sure of so she runs about 40 yards and stops. I stand up enough to see her and her body is completely facing away from me and she has rotated her head like The Exorcist to look at me.

At this point, I am trying to slowly raise my Omega but it's too late. She blows at me and boogies off to the West flagging her tail. After seeing few deer the first firearm season with no shots (did not even read that season) one would think I would have been ready. Oh well, there is always tonight, which is my last time out this wekend, and then next week is the ML season. So in closing, I would like to lay the blame squarely on John Grisham for writing books that are hard to pull away from for even two seconds to scan an area for deer.

Yes, i agree, it is Grisham' fault.

Grisham is a fool in the field. He is never focused, and his lack thereof is contagious! But oh, the sweet worth of entertainment...

This is why I gave up taking books out with me...without fail, I'd get lax and that's when a deer would come in. Ditto for the one and only time I nodded off on a stand.

FWIW I never use blinds. I use a chair and sit against a backdrop, just inside some brush/grass, lay in the grass, or down inside the edge of a ditch. I'm more successful than when I was younger and used blinds. I've found blinds are only useful when you set them up so far in advance that the deer are always used to them being there. If it's a new shape in the environment, human or not, it draws their attention. One of my favorite spots in college was very similar to what you described.

You are quiet and reading and the deer don't hear you first I have seen more deer while reading than any other time.

You should have offered her loan of the book. They get bored too. ;)

Sat fifteen yards from the same spot tonight and shot a button buck at 20 yards at 1630 hours. Side note, I did read for about twenty minutes then thought better of it. Going to finish the book tonight at home.