View from your deer stand.

[WV Sawmiller]

    Did you shoot the doe with antlers? I understand they are usually sterile anyway.

[97redjeep]

   Did you shoot the doe with antlers? I understand they are usually sterile anyway.

No, so I thought it was a lazy little buck on my trail cam pics but yesterday once I actually put my eyes on it I realized it's a doe, that little button buck with it was with it again today, no other does while it was there so I'm convinced that's it's fawn. 

Here's looking from the deers angle at the "blind" haha 

[WV Sawmiller]

   Here it is over 2 months into bow season and I have not tried hunting with my bow all year. With this pretty weather I decided to go check out my upper stand which needs a battery change in the feeder anyway. It is a 6'X6' shooting house built on 4 locust poles about 9-10 ft above ground and located on a point where 2 draws come together to funnel the deer past me. I got to my stand about 45 minutes or so before sunrise. About 15 minutes later the sky began to lighten just a little and the bane of my existence (Doves!) began whistling down under my feeder 15-20 yards away to steal my corn. After 5-10 more minutes I got fed up with them and got out my slingshot and trying to send them down the road till I spotted movement below on my right and a yearling/fawn doe came in. She hung out around looking up at the feeder a while and started acting spooky like she saw or smelled me. She started easing off and the feeder went off at 7:00 am and she bolted, stopped and thought about returning but decided to keep rambling.


 About 15 minutes later this little guy came from behind and my left and began to feed.

 You can see the sun is beginning to break through. I watched him a while and continued reading my book.


 Hey! What is that. I hear something coming.


 Oh, never mind it is just the girls coming for breakfast. Looked like 5-6 hens in the bunch.


Followed closely in a separate group by the boys. Looks like all 7 are here.  

 At least one guy in the bunch had a beard dragging the ground.


 I had seen several grey (Cat) squirrels under the feeder then this young Fox squirrel came up from the right. I had heard one earlier behind me and may have been this one. I think this one spotted me moving at the window and was considering ratting me out but decided to go back to stealing my corn instead.


 Then this red-bellied woodpecker (What we used to call a Cham-Cham in N. Fla) got to frantically trying to fill a a knothole he found in a dead tree about 30' behind my stand. I watched him make at least a dozen or so flights back and forth each time with a kernel of corn in his beak. I finally chased him off too.

  I stayed in my stand till nearly 10:00 am, finished my book and got down and changed out the battery in my feeder and returned home. No shooter deer I was interested in but a reach nice morning in the woods anyway.

[Walnut Beast]

Very nice 👍

[WV Sawmiller]

   I went to my oldest stand on the side of a hill overlooking a wide bench (6'X8' - this size is too big IMHO) and was there before daylight today. I did not take any pictures. My feeder did not go off. Either the battery is dead or a piece of corn cob or stalk is stopping the spinner but it has been working recently enough the doves showed up by about 6:45 am. At 6:35 am while still too dark to shoot with a bow and he was too far away anyway, a very large deer, apparently a buck from the way he held his head and such, passed about 50-60 yards away directly in front of me. It was too dark to determine the antler size or presence. Apparently he was running his scrapes. That is a very good sight to see. He would have been an easy rifle or muzzleloader kill when those seasons open in a couple of weeks. The last I  saw he was over near my pasture gate where I parked the 4 wheeler. I spotted him or a different deer over by my fence about 65 yards from the gate. I really think it was a little smaller and a big doe or maybe a spike. 

   I stayed there till about 9:00 am during with time a heavy morning fog rolled through and out. At 9:00 I heard an old doe bust me behind. Either she was partway down the hill and spotted me in the blind or more likely she smelled me or walked up to the 4 wheeler and got spooked. I went ahead and called it a day and came back and put another battery on charge and went to the feed store and got another 150 lbs of corn which should fill both feeders till the end of the year/season. 

[mike_belben]

I did two little sits this week with an old compound bow.  Went just after daylight, both times after rainy evenings without seeing anything.  But its nice to just sit in peace.  


Tried a few spots as the wind changed.  I get pretty bored in a stand and use a folding stool on the ground sometimes.  Had my back to this cave..










Looking down across a creek bank and up at the other side.  Deep bottoms to the left, big pasture up top and to the right. 






Some nice straight timber in it too.






That tree ontop is surprisingly big for being rooted in about 6" of dirt. 

[Walnut Beast]

Nice view 👍🦌

[stavebuyer]

Being a timber guy has ruined my hunting as I tend to be calculating potential board feet of the trees in my field of view, evaluating the possible direction of their fall, and how best to plan the skid route. Maybe why I seem to find fishing more relaxing these days .  :D

[mike_belben]

Oh tell me about it.  Theres absolutely prime weathered fieldstone in this crag too and sitting on it eats me up.  Ive tried to buy the rock from the widow with no luck.  Maybe some day buy the whole hollar, only a few acres, nothing flat, and only a half mile by woods or so from my current yard. It would make a gorgeous water powered hunting camp or just serene getaway shack.  

[Sedgehammer]

This first shot is a view from one of the 10 stands on our lease. The 5th pic is another. The rest are bucks caught on camera. I was going to buy a raven cross bow (can't pull a regular bow), but my wife hinted santa might be bringing me one, so I didn't go bow hunting. Season opens this coming saturday.



 

 

 

 

 

 

[WV Sawmiller]

@mike_belben ,

   That big rock in your picture reminds me of the outcropping under my first shooting house. It is a 6'X8' building on the side of a steep hill. I built it with 3 locust poles in the ground and one short post resting directly on the top of the rock. I enter from the uphill side and just built a 2' wide ramp, sort of like a wheelchair ramp, made using a couple of treated 2X6X10's with half inch plywood on top. My rock has a straight front instead of recessed like yours and is about 8' from exposed base to the top.


 Here is an old picture showing part of my rock. This was after a big basswood fell and almost took out my deer blind and it did break off a small buckeye which did minor damage and force me to repair/re-do roof.

 Here is the ramp and the basswood in the background.

   The poles look like they could have been a little bigger but they are holding. We have killed 20-25 deer in and around this location and most after we built this shooting house. The latest was a nice doe 17 October during a special antlerless season.

[mike_belben]

Thats pretty sweet bub.  Someday i would really like to have a little sleep shack with a good clear view of the bush edge thats too far from home for me to be lazy about it.  

I was just whining to the wife yesterday how i can lure deer to our [tiny] place without baiting every night but never in the day.. and how its hard to compete with all the corn piles and flood lights the meth heads are getting em with after dark.   So a little doe bobbles right by us across the burned down vacant house lot next door,  mid day out the window while we are eating lunch as if to thumb its nose at me and rub a little salt in my wound.    :D

[WV Sawmiller]

Mike,

   I have never tried sleeping in this one although it is big enough - really too big for a deer blind. All windows are open and big for bow hunting. It is only a few hundred yards from my nice warm bed in my house so no reason to rough it up there. 


 This is a 4X4 deer blind I built and we installed at the customer site. It is placed right at the edge of the woodline and an old field. it had a nice deer trail right past it. The customer sent me this picture a week after we put it up. He killed this little buck with his crossbow. Actually the 4X4 building is a little small for a deer blind IMHO. I like my 6X6 blind up on poles about 10' high overlooking the point where 2 draws converge, a 60 yard wide bench on the back and an oak line ridge 100 yards away. The prefabbed components for a 6X6 structure are too heavy for me to carry and move. I may build just the framing for one some time and add the flooring and siding on site. Also on my next one the windows may be 6" peepholes instead of completely clear. Just raise the window and shoot when you see one coming.

[Walnut Beast]

Nice bucks👍. Ravin crossbows are pretty sweet. If Santa brings you one you won't be disappointed 😂. I got one and it's pretty neat

[Walnut Beast]

@mike_belben ,

  That big rock in your picture reminds me of the outcropping under my first shooting house. It is a 6'X8' building on the side of a steep hill. I built it with 3 locust poles in the ground and one short post resting directly on the top of the rock. I enter from the uphill side and just built a 2' wide ramp, sort of like a wheelchair ramp, made using a couple of treated 2X6X10's with half inch plywood on top. My rock has a straight front instead of recessed like yours and is about 8' from exposed base to the top.


 Here is an old picture showing part of my rock. This was after a big basswood fell and almost took out my deer blind and it did break off a small buckeye which did minor damage and force me to repair/re-do roof.

 Here is the ramp and the basswood in the background.

  The poles look like they could have been a little bigger but they are holding. We have killed 20-25 deer in and around this location and most after we built this shooting house. The latest was a nice doe 17 October during a special antlerless season.

Really blends in with the surrounding nice

[Walnut Beast]

This first shot is a view from one of the 10 stands on our lease. The 5th pic is another. The rest are bucks caught on camera. I was going to buy a raven cross bow (can't pull a regular bow), but my wife hinted santa might be bringing me one, so I didn't go bow hunting. Season opens this coming saturday.



 

 

 

 

 

 

Good luck 🍀 on getting one of them 🦌

[stavebuyer]

This from a camera on the corner of the 12x24 yard barn I am converting into a camp. No need for a stand I can  just watch out the window and feed the woodstove  8).



 


 

[WV Sawmiller]

Stavey,

  Your shop comment reminded me of my son's best friends grandpa who used to shoot them out of his shop. He even cut a V into a 1X4 or such and nailed it up as a rest for his rifle. He was a retired coal miner and had Black Lung and was on O2. He had big tank of O2 with a long hose to a mask he wore in his shop. One day a nice buck showed up in the field and he grabbed his rifle and was getting ready to shoot. I guess when he opened the window the wind blew the internal door shut crimping his air line and he was turning blue so he was torn between whether to go ahead and shoot the deer or go open the door. I think he held his breath and shot the deer first. A man has to keep his priorities straight.

[mike_belben]

just watch out the window and feed the woodstove  8).

thats where I'm hoping to end up.  im into deer for the cost.  spending 2 months freezing in a tree will buy a lot of better meat. 
now if i could come up with a way to bury a freezer, put a green tarp and a corn pile on top and not catch all the possums and coons .... 

[SawyerTed]

 

 
My view from one of my stands.
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This rub is in the lower left of the view from that stand.


 
The one in the middle came from that stand on opening day of black powder season.  The others were harvested on our farm by other hunters that morning.

[Walnut Beast]

Very nice 👍

[trapper]

Had good  luck the last 2 years.  Grandson got 1 in youth season from it. Dosen't look good now as farmer that rents from me has the field worked up now

[randy d]

To day is the opening of our deer gun season I shot a fork horn at noon and my son shot a seven pointer this after noon so we are done. But now comes the hard part my wife and daughter in law will be cutting and packaging both deer tomorrow.   Randy

[Walnut Beast]

Congratulations👍. Well it sounds pretty easy for you guys if the gals got to do all that 😂. Most gals would be like your dreaming 😂

[randy d]

My mother would cut up our deer at home she showed my wife how to cut up venison and my wife showed our daughter-in-law how to do it. They would never trust any one with our deer meat. We eat a lot of venison and we cut and package the way we like it. Randy