- Joined
- Sep 4, 2019
- Messages
- 1,373
This weekend late Sat night I drove to my hometown about an hour and a half away, where I hunt. Was feeling lazy in the morning so just took a stool and the HC Mini in.
Put my back to a big tree near the river, to pull scent. A forkie seemed suspicious of me, so I decided to get a face covering on. As I slowly reached to my pack a horned owl called overhead. I looked up to see the owl (awesome) and as I looked down there’s my #1 shooter staring me in the eye at 30 yards. HC is on my leg and my hand is in my pack. A doe runs right at me, squats and pees at 5 yards! This buck hates my existence but he moves in to 5 yards to smell the pee, one eye on me the whole time. What a freakin awesome scene I had in front of me, in my hunting hall of fame. Hoping they’d lose interest I hear more deer coming across the river behind me, so now I have a dozen eyes in the woods all around me, about a 20 yard radius. Two bucks pushing a handful of does.
They finally left I got the weapon ready and the 8 point and doe came back, red dot on him, but this time skirted about 35 yards away in the brush. No good shot.
I’m getting pretty good at getting an opportunity on our largest bucks each year, but the details are sabotaging me. The location was ideal but the setup was not. If I / you want to sit an imperfect ground setup be ready to hold perfectly still at prime time, weapon ready. The more front and back cover we can find the more forgiving the setup, my setup was not forgiving and I paid the price. In the PM I was up the tree behind me, this time in the JX3, but he didn’t come back.
Also, the lockdown doesn’t have to be boring, it just depends on successfully seeking out buck / doe situations. I hadn’t seen this buck for a week and a half, Saturday I got one picture of him and I suspected he wasn’t doe’d up… I was right, I just didn’t attend to all the details needed to score. Last year 10 yards from that spot I couldn’t get drawn on the previous alpha buck, that’s why I bought the Mini, then this years buck showed me the Mini isn’t a cure-all either, my brain and my setups are the problem.
Put my back to a big tree near the river, to pull scent. A forkie seemed suspicious of me, so I decided to get a face covering on. As I slowly reached to my pack a horned owl called overhead. I looked up to see the owl (awesome) and as I looked down there’s my #1 shooter staring me in the eye at 30 yards. HC is on my leg and my hand is in my pack. A doe runs right at me, squats and pees at 5 yards! This buck hates my existence but he moves in to 5 yards to smell the pee, one eye on me the whole time. What a freakin awesome scene I had in front of me, in my hunting hall of fame. Hoping they’d lose interest I hear more deer coming across the river behind me, so now I have a dozen eyes in the woods all around me, about a 20 yard radius. Two bucks pushing a handful of does.
They finally left I got the weapon ready and the 8 point and doe came back, red dot on him, but this time skirted about 35 yards away in the brush. No good shot.
I’m getting pretty good at getting an opportunity on our largest bucks each year, but the details are sabotaging me. The location was ideal but the setup was not. If I / you want to sit an imperfect ground setup be ready to hold perfectly still at prime time, weapon ready. The more front and back cover we can find the more forgiving the setup, my setup was not forgiving and I paid the price. In the PM I was up the tree behind me, this time in the JX3, but he didn’t come back.
Also, the lockdown doesn’t have to be boring, it just depends on successfully seeking out buck / doe situations. I hadn’t seen this buck for a week and a half, Saturday I got one picture of him and I suspected he wasn’t doe’d up… I was right, I just didn’t attend to all the details needed to score. Last year 10 yards from that spot I couldn’t get drawn on the previous alpha buck, that’s why I bought the Mini, then this years buck showed me the Mini isn’t a cure-all either, my brain and my setups are the problem.