The past two seasons, I've really lost my mojo. Long story short, we had problems with neighbors that led to me selling my little house on the river. Stuff was pretty methed up. I went through a layoff, and my wife's pregnancy turned out to be high-risk and very stressful.
On top of all that, having a little girl for some reason has made me hyper-aware of how much I dislike a lot of mainstream hunting culture. Hunting has always been regrettably entangled with redneckery and white trash in my area, and I'm not sure exactly when Rogan and the rest of the manosphere 'roid-heads started using hunting to prop up their masculinity, but it sure happened and as the kids say "the vibes are off" for me now. I'm blessed with a small group of really good hunting and fishing friends whose ethos more-or-less matches mine, but I went through a spell where I seemed to meet an awful lot of hunters and anglers who I didn't want to be around and whom I definitely didn't want my little girl to be around.
But last year, I did manage to rekindle the spark a little. I picked up some cell cameras, put them out, and started seeing nice deer and showing them off to my buddies and my kid. I took a week off, hunted the rut, and had four run-ins with nice bucks. Perhaps most importantly, I had a good friend who's also a long-legged hunter and new dad come down for the last weekend of season, and we hunted a new stretch of timber that I'd been wanting to poke around on.
I found this place four years ago, right before life started to get cattywampus. A five mile boat ride eventually takes you down a little slough, which peters out right as it hits a swamp ridge. If you bushwhack this ridge a mile further into the swamp, you'll come to a swamp crossing. Four years ago, me and another friend ran this ridge turkey hunting, and once we got to the terminus I left him to rest and cat nap under a tree while I picked my way through a swamp crossing. Three hundred yards, several water moccasins, and a good dunking in nasty water later, I came out at another, larger ridge.
I had told my buddy I wouldn't be long, so I speed-scouted this mile-long ridge at a literal trot. It was covered in rubs and scrapes, and I also saw a pretty high concentration of hog runs and feathers under good roosting trees. It looked good. Really good.
Life happened, and I lost the ability and the drive to make long expeditions back into the swamp. But my buddy coming down did two things. One, it put pressure on me as the host to put him on deer. Two, it gave me at least the illusion of safety since instead of rocking solo I had an experienced co-adventurer. So we got up ungodly early, rode a small boat a long way, bushwhacked, swamp-slogged, and then bushwhacked some more.
Just like last time, the place looked stellar.
We were still walking to the place I had in mind to park my buddy when we stopped to admire a scrape. Movement caught my eye, and when I looked up a small buck was working another scrape further down the ridge. My buddy had made a seven hour drive for a meat hunt (fatherhood had also robbed him of his woods time and emptied his freezer) so I pointed the buck out to him. He shot it, and after a rough tracking job we quartered the buck and made the long treck out.
The place looked so good that despite the effort required to get there, we both agreed that evening that going back in the morning was the only sensible thing to do. Again we made the long trip, and I dropped my buddy off where he'd shot his buck the day before while I pushed a little further ahead to scout a a little more thoroughly and maybe find a spot to post up. I ended up distracted by a group of hen turkeys that spooked at my buddy's rifle shot. He texted that he'd shot another buck at the same scrape line, and for me to keep hunting. I kept slipping through the woods, and discovered what I can only describe as one hell of a scrape line. As I was marking scrapes and eyeballing trees and potential camera locations, another shot rang out. My phone buzzed in my pocket.
"Doe." the text read.
"I'm done. Couldn't help myself."
"They're like ants! Had to have been a dozen deer moving through the swamp."
I backtracked to his location, and we started quartering up his deer. As I was working a ham loose, my buddy tapped my arm and pointed. A doe was obliviously walking the ridge. Never one to pass a bad decision, I grabbed my rifle and made an already heavy walk back to the boat even less fun.
As we walked back, I couldn't help but make plans for next year. It was fun and all to have a trigger-happy weekend, but this place was a long way from civilization to be shooting dinks and does. Some of those rubs were really big, and I literally don't think I've ever found a place with more deer sign in my home area. What the place needed was a few trail cameras to soak, so that I could find out just how big the "big boys" that definitely had to run that ridge were. My buddy, struggling through the mud with two deer on his back, couldn't do much more than sweat and listen, but he did agree that it was a good spot, and that he'd be interested in returning next rut for a more serious endeavor.
This morning, I hung two cameras. One about 50 yards south of three, bleached deer skulls, on the trail my buddy's deer took. The other is a bit further in, on a well-worn trail intersection, looking at a scrape that deer are already working. As I sit here at the house with a sick wife and a toddler who's climbing on my desk, I'm so excited to see what this ridge has in store for my buddy and I this winter that I about can't stand myself.
It's good to be back.
On top of all that, having a little girl for some reason has made me hyper-aware of how much I dislike a lot of mainstream hunting culture. Hunting has always been regrettably entangled with redneckery and white trash in my area, and I'm not sure exactly when Rogan and the rest of the manosphere 'roid-heads started using hunting to prop up their masculinity, but it sure happened and as the kids say "the vibes are off" for me now. I'm blessed with a small group of really good hunting and fishing friends whose ethos more-or-less matches mine, but I went through a spell where I seemed to meet an awful lot of hunters and anglers who I didn't want to be around and whom I definitely didn't want my little girl to be around.
But last year, I did manage to rekindle the spark a little. I picked up some cell cameras, put them out, and started seeing nice deer and showing them off to my buddies and my kid. I took a week off, hunted the rut, and had four run-ins with nice bucks. Perhaps most importantly, I had a good friend who's also a long-legged hunter and new dad come down for the last weekend of season, and we hunted a new stretch of timber that I'd been wanting to poke around on.
I found this place four years ago, right before life started to get cattywampus. A five mile boat ride eventually takes you down a little slough, which peters out right as it hits a swamp ridge. If you bushwhack this ridge a mile further into the swamp, you'll come to a swamp crossing. Four years ago, me and another friend ran this ridge turkey hunting, and once we got to the terminus I left him to rest and cat nap under a tree while I picked my way through a swamp crossing. Three hundred yards, several water moccasins, and a good dunking in nasty water later, I came out at another, larger ridge.
I had told my buddy I wouldn't be long, so I speed-scouted this mile-long ridge at a literal trot. It was covered in rubs and scrapes, and I also saw a pretty high concentration of hog runs and feathers under good roosting trees. It looked good. Really good.
Life happened, and I lost the ability and the drive to make long expeditions back into the swamp. But my buddy coming down did two things. One, it put pressure on me as the host to put him on deer. Two, it gave me at least the illusion of safety since instead of rocking solo I had an experienced co-adventurer. So we got up ungodly early, rode a small boat a long way, bushwhacked, swamp-slogged, and then bushwhacked some more.
Just like last time, the place looked stellar.
We were still walking to the place I had in mind to park my buddy when we stopped to admire a scrape. Movement caught my eye, and when I looked up a small buck was working another scrape further down the ridge. My buddy had made a seven hour drive for a meat hunt (fatherhood had also robbed him of his woods time and emptied his freezer) so I pointed the buck out to him. He shot it, and after a rough tracking job we quartered the buck and made the long treck out.
The place looked so good that despite the effort required to get there, we both agreed that evening that going back in the morning was the only sensible thing to do. Again we made the long trip, and I dropped my buddy off where he'd shot his buck the day before while I pushed a little further ahead to scout a a little more thoroughly and maybe find a spot to post up. I ended up distracted by a group of hen turkeys that spooked at my buddy's rifle shot. He texted that he'd shot another buck at the same scrape line, and for me to keep hunting. I kept slipping through the woods, and discovered what I can only describe as one hell of a scrape line. As I was marking scrapes and eyeballing trees and potential camera locations, another shot rang out. My phone buzzed in my pocket.
"Doe." the text read.
"I'm done. Couldn't help myself."
"They're like ants! Had to have been a dozen deer moving through the swamp."
I backtracked to his location, and we started quartering up his deer. As I was working a ham loose, my buddy tapped my arm and pointed. A doe was obliviously walking the ridge. Never one to pass a bad decision, I grabbed my rifle and made an already heavy walk back to the boat even less fun.
As we walked back, I couldn't help but make plans for next year. It was fun and all to have a trigger-happy weekend, but this place was a long way from civilization to be shooting dinks and does. Some of those rubs were really big, and I literally don't think I've ever found a place with more deer sign in my home area. What the place needed was a few trail cameras to soak, so that I could find out just how big the "big boys" that definitely had to run that ridge were. My buddy, struggling through the mud with two deer on his back, couldn't do much more than sweat and listen, but he did agree that it was a good spot, and that he'd be interested in returning next rut for a more serious endeavor.
This morning, I hung two cameras. One about 50 yards south of three, bleached deer skulls, on the trail my buddy's deer took. The other is a bit further in, on a well-worn trail intersection, looking at a scrape that deer are already working. As I sit here at the house with a sick wife and a toddler who's climbing on my desk, I'm so excited to see what this ridge has in store for my buddy and I this winter that I about can't stand myself.
It's good to be back.
). Perhaps being a "normal" hunter is a reason to be out there in and of itself, so people, albeit at a much smaller scale, can see we exist too.
