Deer Day 17 - Tues NOV 19

I picked up Davey at 4:00 pm.  It was mostly clear and 41 F.  We headed for Marshall's NE woods. Krueger was sitting in the W woods behind the fertilizer plant.

I walked down to the bottoms and Dave headed for his stand in the killing finger.  I saw 2 squirrels, 4 rabbits and tons of deer sign (tracks, rubs, and scrapes), but no deer.  Well, until I started to walk out.

My Samsung Galaxy downloaded an update - so basically nothing worked until I did a restart.  I dropped to my knees, made sure the phone was on silent, and restarted it.  After which, I sent Dave a text saying that I was walking W out the finger toward him.  Then, I stood up.  Bam, doe to my N snorted and ran W.

She picked up another one, ran toward Dave, circled us both, and then bolted S.  No shots taken.  But hey, we at least SAW deer.

And, on the way out, we got to see a beautiful sunset.  It was after 6 pm by the time we made it back to the truck and beyond legal shooting light.  We toasted with a Modello and headed home for dinner.  It was 35 F when we quit.  Good to be out and seeing deer.

The woods sure look different with all the leaves gone


Gorgeous sunset tonight

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil....
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down int...
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The ...
Read more