Day 12 - Oct 16

Had a Lodge meeting on Monday, so could not hunt then.
Kathy and Alex came up Tuesday, so we hit Marshall / Neal again.

After the below picture, Nick headed to the W stand on Neal.
Kathy and Alex split the Marshall / Boyd / Neal property line and I waited at the truck.


Alex, Nick, and Kathy are ready to hunt.

We arrived at 5 pm.  It was 68 F when we left the house, but 67 F by the time we hit the woods.
The wind was blowing pretty well.  The screen shot says 2 mph with gusts to 18 mph.  It felt more like sustained 15 mph winds to me.  The winds are mostly from the S-SE, blowing to the NW.  This is definitely in my favor as I intended to stalk towards the E.

Screen shot of weather conditions at 5:15 pm on 10/16/2012

After 20 mins, I slowly started across Marshall's standing corn at a diagonal towards the NE Killing Finger.  I moved only when the wind blew (which was fairly often) to cover my sound.
The corn rows are planted N & S - so travelling those directions was easy.  The difficult part was heading E.
Here's a shot of me in the corn.

The corn field that Craig is stalking through

Along the way, I found two "open" areas where it was too wet for the corn to grow in the middle of this field.  And yes, the deer were using those areas as hotels.  I jumped nothing on the way in.

As I reached the ditch that drains into the killing finger, I came upon fresh tracks.  From their looks, if I were pushing these deer, they were not spooked.  They appeared to both be doe - a mother and one yearling.  I based this on size and location of the tracks.  And yes, it IS possible to distinguish sex from the tracks.  In fact, it is VERY simple if you have multiple tracks.  I'll put up a post on this later.

I stopped two corn rows short of the Killing Finger to scan the woods.  I scanned 40 - 100 yards into the woods and convinced myself that the deer had moved on through.  I was ready to step out of the corn when the large doe picked up her head to look around.  She was due E of me at 30 yards.  I slowly lowered my body to the ground.

At this point, if I were carrying my crossbow, I could have put meat in the freezer.  Unfortunately, I was carrying my horse bow and was not confident that I could sneak my arrow through the woods and make a clean kill.  However, if mama doe kept feeding to the S (the direction she was facing), she would step into the open, broadside at 20 yards - and that shot, that shot I own.  It was not to be, she continued to feed to the E, directly away from me.

It was now 7:00 pm.  We had only 30 minutes of legal shooting light left, and at her rate of travel, there is no way for her to make it over to Kathy and Alex.  I snuck to the S and then rattled the corn, on purpose to hopefully spook her the the others.  No dice.  She and baby both followed the trail that continued E as they ran away.

I sent a text to tell everyone that it was me coming out of the corn and that I was not to be shot at.  And, if they wanted, they could head to the truck.  Nick headed for the truck.  Kathy and Alex waited on me to emerge from the corn.

As the three of us walked back, a coyote jumped out of the corn in front of us at about 100 yards.  Our best guess was that Nick spooked him out on his way to the truck.  Sure enough, when we all got back to the truck, Nick confirmed that he heard something walking in the corn at the corner but could not see anything.

Here ends the deer hunting for the week as Wednesday is date night, Thursday I have to pack, and Friday I leave for Colorado to hunt elk.

So as of Friday, I will begin posting on our adventures in Elk Hunting if I can get WIFI in Grand Junction.

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