Hunt Day 4 - Sat, 10 OCT

Alex and I rolled about 7 am.  It was 41 degrees and there was almost no wind.
I dropped Alex off at the bridge on Vice and he walked W to the creek.
I drove on up, parked on Neal, and stalked in on Marshall. 
This is the sun coming up over Marshall.

Sunrise.  Saturday, October 10, 2015


Neal's beans are out, so I walked as far N and E as I could in a picked bean field.  Since it's cool and very humid, it was quiet walking.
I crossed over to Marshall though a fence line and a few standing stalks of corn.  I still need some work stalking there.  Once I made it to the picked corn, all was quiet again.
I saw a few squirrels and then had a flock of geese fly over.  I took a video.  It's only 6 seconds long.  It shows the geese flying over - very close - I could have limited out on geese.  Then I pan back to where I am hunting.  Check it out here:  https://youtu.be/-vWGnA1EIOM

Then, as I travel about another 50 yards, I hear the blue jays start calling.  What are they telling me?  Alex shot something.  I grab my phone and look at it as the text comes up - shot a buck, looking for blood.

So I've not even made it to the woods to sit.  I have been slowly walking for an hour.  And now, now it's time to go track.

I walk back to the truck and drive to Alex.  He had a nice (he said wall-hanger) 8 point walk by at 20 yards.  He saw the arrow hit, but in his words "did not penetrate like it should have."  He saw where it had run.  We spend the next 2.5 hours tracking that property and the next.  I found one spot of blood that was very 'watery.'

Here's my summation:  Alex stuck a rib.  The wound was superficial, and thus the watery blood.  I think he lives on.

We cut sign around the boundaries and the walked the creek to ensure it was not anywhere close and dead.  In the location that Alex hit the buck (behind the shoulder, broadside, at 20 yards), if the arrow had hit lung, we would have found either blood or the dead deer, maybe both.  We found nada.

We came back and hauled recycling.  And since both our women folk were out (one working, and one at a volleyball tourney), we stopped at the South Fork restaurant for lunch - where I tricked Alex into eating hog balls.  How?  The waitress and I just called them oysters.  He had no clue they were Rocky Mountain Oysters.  While he said they did not taste terrible, it was not something he wants to eat again - just because of the stigma.  That's fine.  More for me.

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