OT: So far, a terrible hunting season...

[bigbore442001]

I took three days out of work to hunt the first three days of the Connecticut rifle season. Dad and I have been spoiled in the fact that we usually shoot two to four deer each season in Connecticut on this small honey hole. Well the honey hole dried up. The landowner for some reason decided to allow another person to hunt during the bow season. The problem is that we're on 21 acres and most of the hunting was done on this one 5 acre patch of mountain laurel. The deer saw it as a sanctuary and would go into it . Well this gentleman hunted every day since September 15th and shot three deer and wounded at least two that we know of.

During the three days of hunting all day we saw nothing. We heard some shots off in the hills and we noticed that someone was shooting nearby on the property owned by the landowners father. The deer would come from that area and filter in. No more. In addition, the landowner cut a horseshoe road into the laurel patch. So in effect the laurel patch has lost it's cover.

Friday I took a walk and checked the property very carefully. Not one bit of sign anywhere. It is basically shot to hades.

Friday evening I decided to bowhunt in Massachusetts and so I went to one of my spots. Although cold and windy at least I spotted a buck that appears to be a large spike or small fork horn. It was about fifty yards from me and through some thick stuff. I was hoping it would meander towards me but no such luck. If it was muzzleloader or shotgun season I would have been able to take it. But not with the bow. It may sound funny but I said a silent prayer. I asked God if it is meant to be that I take this deer. I guess it means that something else will happen. Maybe this is a way to let me know that I need to change and not rest on the past too much. Maybe I should be thankful for the opportunities of seeing wildlife and being out in the woods in the fresh air? Time will tell. In the mean time I will rest this morning and then go out for the last day of the Massachusetts archery season at a new stand site. I spotted three does from that stand but I had to move it since they were not in range of the bow where they meander.


Next week I will hunt another farm in Connecticut with the rifle. Hopefully someone will get a deer on Thanksgiving . After that Massachusetts shotgun opens up. It is tough because most of the deer are taken on opening day and after that it goes down hill.

[AJMD429]

I finally decided to get in debt up to the eyeballs of whoever is standing on my shoulders, and move to a place with some acres of my own. Hopefully either my children, or my life insurance, will eventually pay it off. Some years we'll see tons of deer, and other years very few. We have four or five friends who hunt here with us, and sometimes it seems like 'they' get all the deer (but 'they' may be out in the deerstand 4 times as many hours). Other times we actually wish more people were hunting neighboring property to send the deer our way, but then those same people may wander right onto our property and hunt where we were going to be hunting that day.

Even if you actually own a few acres, there are STILL problems - most weekends there are at least two carloads of 'city people' who've driven out to the country to shoot at things (I won't dignify trespassing and poaching as 'hunting'), so before we hunt we have to do sort of a perimeter check to see who else is on the property, what they're doing, where they are, and if it is worth confronting them vs. waiting for them to leave, etc. In the 1960's one neighbor would flip any cars he found on his property over with his front end loader, and the other would either set fire to them or push them into the river. I'd be afraid of the responses you might get these days (legal and physical) if you did that kind of thing, but I can understand why they got mad at the constant stream of trespassers.

The other thing is that there's always someone who wants your land, and will try to raise taxes until you have to sell, or try to condemn it, or annex it, or regulate your useage until you give up.

[/whine off]

Still - your point about just enjoying 'getting out' and seeing the trees, wildlife, etc. is probably the best way to look at it - "...the worst day hunting is better than the best day in the office?"

[Nath]

We all suffer lean years. I had some guys ruin my goose shooting this year. Rabbit is struggling from folk shooting them.
But when they all move on I'll still be there for when times come good again

Nath.

[.45colt]

I am Sorry to here this,but the same thing has happened to me several times. one well meaning family member invited his brother to a farm after I took him there.He invited some more friends. "they" soon overran the small woodlot at the end of the fields. some of my best places from long ago are now in the middle of mega dollar housing.
My last resort was right out the back door 5 minutes from the back door.I bowhunted there 20 years. local Kids and there 4 wheelers soon trashed the woods. and they now hunt from permant tree stands over feeders ......Gone with the wind.

[Jason_W]

My season's been rough as well. I'm hunting northern VT where the deer population density is pretty low. The weather opening weekend was rainy, and this weekend is bitter cold and windy. My fiancee saw one deer last weekend that offered no clear view of itself, and yesterday I was tracking what looked (by the tracks) to be a buck and two does. I didn't manage to catch up with them before they crossed onto posted land. Today will be the last day I have to hunt during the general rifle season, but I do have a doe tag for blackpowder season.

I don't last too long out there on days like today, 15 degrees and windy.

[kimwcook]

I haven't even gone hunting the last three years because of work, time, etc.. It's about to drive me nuts. I gotta get out into the woods.

[samsi]

I've heard a lot of similar stories this year. I hunted 5 days myself, only saw 2 does the whole time. Maybe next year......

[RIHMFIRE]

So far, in our club, we have taken 2 does and 1 hog...
However, we are seeing a lot of twins and one doe had
triplets....Quite a few button bucks and spikes...
Our season does not end til 3rd week in january!
Pleanty of time left....

[BenT]

Wisconsin opener it was 5 degrees. Not alot of movement. Except for the neighbors property was full of people. I sit on a hill side at the end of a valley were the field ends. At 6 am I could here the zippers of a ground blind on the neighbors side of the fence. It happens to be in my shooting lane . So now I'm leary of shooting in that direction , because of the brush I can't see where the neighbor is. Across a ravine I can see a man with is son sitting. His son must of been cold because he starting walking around at 7am. Needless to say I didn't see any deer coming from that direction. At 7:50 am I let a doe go by up the ravine to see if this kid would get some shooting. He either didn't see it or didn't want a nice size doe. At 8:15 a guy from the back side of the ridge starts walking through on a buck blood trail. I got out of my stand and helped him track it for a while. He did apoligize right away for interupting my hunt. What are you going to do. I did shoot an adult doe at 2pm at 40 feet. It almost ran me over.

Also if want to talk about changing landscape. I hunt on my grand fathers farm which has a horseshoe valley that is 2 40 acre parcels long . Well the the left side of the horseshoe got sold to the limestone quarry , which is on the otherside. The ridges are about 100 feet higher than the valley floor. The quarry operators started removing top soil and filling up a couple of ravines the deer use to go to the top of the ridge. They are to steep now. So basically deer movement has totaly change in this little valley because one side of the horseshoe the deer can't get to the top of the ridge or come down to the bottom. Spots that I've hunted for 30 years are no longer good.

[BlueStateSaint]

Gotta go against the grain on this one. The camp I belong to, way up in the northeastern Adirondacks of New York, has claimed three bucks. Two of those last Saturday. One of the guys' 14-year-old stepson (14-year-olds can hunt big game legally in NY for the first time in rifle season, this year) got a 179-pound 7-pointer two weeks ago. Then, last Saturday, two ten-pointers did something stupid about four-five hours apart. I was up there for the tens. There will be a fair amount of venison coming from those two. (They were an indicated 169 pounds and 141 pounds, but the scale was probably off, because we fiddled with the calibration.) Thing is, the NYS Northern Zone rifle season still has two weeks to go, and none of the three bucks was a "young and dumb" one. (They were old and dumb. There's a difference.) I'm headed back up Saturday, and towing my father-in-law, and hoping to get my father, my brother-in-law, and his father, all up there. We'll be able to put on some serious drives.