Still beating myself up

 I went deer hunting yesterday and the deer were really moving. I was seeing alot of yearling bucks 

and a couple small does. At 9:13am I shot a really nice wide 8. When I watched him move off on the neighbors I text him and let him know. He text me back letting me know his son just shot one and asked if I would hold off. His son wanted to give the deer a little time, after checking, his arrow looked like liver partial lung hit. I agreed and thought it would be good to let mine also have some time. Well, long story short I got the green light after he found his. So I started down to my bolt which I could see from my stand. I found some belly hair and some blood that dried up after a short track, there was virtually no blood on the bolt. I just screwed up the nicest buck I've seen and the chance to be done this year. In hindsight I ranged him at 47 yards twice, so I used my 50 yard dot and just dropped it a little. I should've used my 50 and held on the heart. 

 

Crap

On the upside this guys been hangin out 20 yards behind my stand 2 of the 4 days I've hunted....

I've wind bumped him out both days when I get down and start back to the truck.

Answer from last week and what happened this week

 The answer to the question last week was...... Preying Mantis.

Corey texted me first then Reggie (from work) was the second to know. 

I was heading to work on Friday and this little guy wanted to go. Since I knew it would be too much red tape to have him work the day, I decided to give him the day off. I stopped on the roadside, helped him off the car and put him in some grass.

Good luck little buddy.

Monday was not deer opener so I did some bank fishing.....

And got my deer gear together and shot my X-bow...

Ready 👌👍

Tuesday was the opener, as per the opener and first couple weeks of season..... I was late to the stand.

I was just getting into my stand at about sunrise and had a deer blow 20 yards from me. I got to see him run away as I was getting situated. Counting him I saw 4 deer on the opener, him, a 7pt yearling a doe and a fawn. I could've shot the 7 but passed on him..... Why?  young deer and opener.

After he rubbed that tree he followed his doe and I thought they were gone.... 5 min later I heard something behind me. I turned to see the buck walking down the trail I walk in on and was within 15 yards. He looked right at me... and moved off to my left and stared at me for another 5 min before walking back up the way he came and disappeared in the brush.

Pretty good opener...

Day 2 found again late to the stand, I had to get different clothes on since it was 20 degrees cooler than the previous morning. All in all I had another stellar day. I saw 9 deer, 2 of which were small bucks, one Michigan 11 point (spike) and a six that I had inside of 20 yards. That little guy strolled up my hill, went in behind me and bedded down 20 yards in the brush.

He had me pinned down for 3- 3 1/2 hours, which put me past my leave time but I didn't want to just bust him out. So, I carefully and quietly gathered my gear and eased down the ladder and crept up the trail. I did end up wind bumping him but he didn't blow so I don't think he was too freaked out.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to do anything today (dentist appt) and getting ready for the week so I did a little bank fishing last night. The conditions were good but the wind was bad. The West wind had pushed and was continuing to push all the weeds from across the lake into shore, which made this fishing trip a cursing event..... I was able to catch one.

The one thing I've noticed about the bank fish.... they are all about the same size. 

Aah that's OK they were fun to catch.

The temps stay low for next week so maybe I'll be able to punch my tag. 👍

Just a quick question

 Who can tell me what this is.....

I had to take the boat out 1 last time

 Let's start with Monday which was suppose to rain off and on. I decided to do some projects around the house that needed done. Including filling my new/used "gun" safe with my ammo, thereby making it an ammo safe. With bow season opening on the first I thought it might be a good idea to go out and look at my stand. So I waited for the rain to stop and headed over. 4 hours later I had the saplings all cut, overhangs cut and new pipe insulation on the shooting rest. Ready for season..... 👍

 

As you may already know I was having engine issues on the boat. When they all started my "buddy" said he would get it tuned and sell it, as it really isn't what I need. When I built the boat I made it to cast and troll and what I have found out is I do alot more trolling on big water. So I followed his advice and got it stripped and tuned. I had to take it out to test the motor and see how it ran.... it ran great. 

When I was thinking about where to go I decided on someplace close just a run out and back kinda place. I went 15 minutes from the house on Jimmerson lake which connects to Lake James. James in a big lake with alot of 3-5 foot humps to fish, and I hit a third of them.

I didn't catch any big fish but I caught A BUNCH of them, and it seems for every fish I caught I had to stick myself with a hook, not past the barb but it still stung. 

Here's a couple of the "bigger" one's.

Anyway it wasn't about the fishing, which was a blast, but more about the motor. Now I gotta get my gear out of it, vacuum it, clean the hull and get some pics to list on Facebook.

As promised

 Last week started with a little goose scouting that ended up looking like this.

Yep, all Tom turkeys.

Tuesday ended up a little better, I found 60 or so geese in the front yard of one of my landowner's brothers.  After a text session between the brother and myself, he ended up giving me permission to shoot it the next morning. 

There was only one safe way to shoot this and that was to literally put my head up to the driveway and only shoot South.

I was a little worried the geese would be a no show, only because they are not very patternable in early season. They however did not disappoint I had a flock of 10 or so come in first of which I dropped 3.

I had my camera all set up but missed the first flock, and when the next started in I didn't want to miss them. So, I tried to get the camera going from the time I first heard them til they started landing. Since I couldn't get the camera recording and I had geese on the ground I decided to fill my limit. I shot 2 out of that flock, however I sailed one into the beans that I couldn't find.

So with my "limit" I packed it in and headed for the house.

This is the only goose hunt I had during early season but it was a really fun hunt.

 

 This week I got some much needed work done around the house, got my boat cleared out and had the motor worked on. I also made time to do some fishing.

Next week I'm going to test run my boat.... and do some fishing. Put the boat up for sale and get my decoy trailer pulled out and ready for season.

October 1st starts deer season and then turkey comes in on the 16th with woodcock coming in on the 15th and duck and goose opening on the 19th. 

Lotta goings on next month.