John’s Hunt 

I was having issues deciding where to hunt. This is totally different hunting than what I am used to doing. I saw lots of trails and areas where deer might bed down or hide. Using the aerial photo from the HSP map, I knew where I wanted to start. I also wanted to do most of my scouting with a rifle in my hand.

With so many fields to select from, I decided to wait until first legal shooting hours to start walking, should I would jump something.

On the first morning I saw a coyote run some deer out of the area I wanted to check out first. There I could watch both creek bottoms. I was only there about 10 minutes until I started seeing deer. A few does at first, but after a few minutes an object I saw several times ended up being a bedded down buck. He was only a 3 pointer, (eastern count). He got up and began following a doe. As I was watching him, a 7 point walked up to me. He stayed between 15 and 25 yards away for about 20 minutes. It got to the point where I "waved my hat at him" to get him to leave, because he kept snorting! It took several times before he left. I'm no trophy hunter, but it was an awful long drive to be done in the first half hour!

Later that day I was running late coming back, so I just sat at a section of woods I was wondering about. I just sat a chair up in the tall grass. About 20 minutes later, 3 mule deer (does), and 1 small mule deer buck jumped the fence about 25 yards from me. Then I saw two whitetail doe as I was leaving.

The second morning I got off to a late start again. While walking in, I saw what I believe to be the same 3 pointer that I saw the morning before. He had his nose to the ground. While watching him, 3 does jumped up. That was it for that day!

On the third morning I saw 3 does on the way in. The night before I decided I was going to hunt the field where I saw the small buck. Once I got there, I changed my mind. I went to where I was the first 2 mornings. After about an hour and a half, I looked over in the one field and there were 6 deer in the field. I kept watching for them to cross along the bottom. After about 30 minutes I looked back where they came from, and a buck was running towards me. It happened pretty fast! In fact, from the time I saw him, until I shot, was about 10 seconds.

John