TimHixson

I filled both my doe and buck tag this weekend. I hunt on 145 acres in south east Indiana. This was only my second year of hunting, and the experience has been great.

Saturday (opening morning) I get to my tree stand about 6:15, and it gets light enough to shoot around 7:00. My tree stand is 26' off the ground, so there was not a real issue with scent. I was concerned about my path to the stand have my scent though. Two does show up at about 40 yards at 7:30. The larger of the two is leading the way and stops at an open shot location, except I had to lean around the tree my stand is in to shoot her. I make the shot, and get a good hit in the lung/heart area. The bad part was that it was pretty damp/cool out and my glasses were slightly fogged up. I did not have my mechanics very good when I took the shot, and ended up with an idiot cut on my nose from the scope. My Rem. 870 kicks pretty good for a shotgun. Oh-well, I got a deer early on the first day. Life is good.

Saturday evening. With my doe tag filled, I am not hunting antlers! Just before the last light two more does show up in the field about 50 yards from my stand. They were eating and doing general deer stuff for about 30 minutes before I could no longer see them in the darkness. I got some practice holding my cross hairs on a deer.

Sunday Morning. back out in the same stand (I was questioning that decision at the time). About 7:45 I see a deer come out of a fence line about 250 yards away and proceed straight toward me very slowly. I finally saw that he had antlers about 20 minutes later when he got to about 150 yards out. He was eating and moving very cautiously/slowly the whole way. I watched him thru my scope for about 45 minutes until he got about 30 yards from me at the edge of the field. He turned broadside to me and started walking along the dirt path at the edge of the woods /field. I had to lean my gun against the tree as I was shaking with anticipation by now. I pulled the trigger, hit him, and watched him run and fall about 30-40 yards later. My hunting season was now over. He would have been an 8 pointer had he not lost one whole side of his rack.

Watching that deer come in to me from that far away for that long was the hardest thing I have done in a long time. I am pretty sure it was the Tinks #69 gell that lured him to my area.I took several rocks with me into the stand, and put the lure on them, then threw them to an area where I had notwalked to try to keep human scent to a minimum. I wore rubber gloves when messing with the lure and rocks. I was questioning myself about the rock stratagy, but it worked this year.

Parrot Head

Great Job. I was in SE IN too. I hunt Jefferson/Switzerland Co. It was slow. Every year I count the shots between 7-11 just for something to do. Last year it was 380, 2 years ago 340, this year 100. Several guys said they saw nothing at all at different hunting grounds. I saw 12 all weekend. During bow I was seeing 40-60 per weekend down there.

TimHixson

Thanks! I saw one button buck and about 6-8 does on saturday. I only saw one other doe on sunday. The other guys hunting the same property only say 1-3 both days. I feel that I was lucky to be in a higher traffic location.

jaybe

Tim: Great story - and what a great way to have your season go!
That's a pretty cool idea about using rocks with scent on them. As far as the trail you walked in on being a problem, in my opinion, I never worry about that. I've seen deer actually walk in on the same trail and not appear to be concerned at all.
"Scope nose" - welcome to the club! It's pretty easy to get your eye too close when you're in a different position than normal.
Congratulations again!