It was bitter once again this morning. The temperature hovered around 20 and the wind continued. I hunted down near the old rockwall that I wrote about in my book. Last week I found an area where the deer had been feeding so I decided to give it a whirl. For as cold as it was I stayed quite warm. It was the first time this season that I broke out my Lacrosse Ice King boots. They’re a pain in the ass to walk in, but they keep my feet warm.
Dad sat down near the big brook at the base of the mountain. He saw some good sign in that area yesterday. His feet didn’t stay quite as warm as mine. When he was crossing the brook his feet got wet.
Shortly after daylight he could hear a deer coming. As the deer crunched through the leaves he got some glimpses of it, but never saw enough of the deer to determine if it was a buck or a doe. The wind didn’t cooperate and the deer changed it’s travel route.
That was all we saw today. It was a nice day to end the northern zone rifle season in New York. We now have a week of primitive weapons hunting. I’m so busy at work with vacation coverage that I won’t have time to get out until the weekend. I’ll hunt with my muzzleloader and call it a year at the end of the weekend.
I was going to write a summary for the year tonight, but I’ve decided to wait until next weekend when it will officially be over for the year.
Today brought back a lot of memories. As I sat there in the bitter cold I thought back to when I was 12 years old. I lost my grandfather in September of that year. It was a few days before hunting season opened. Although hunting wasn’t a big part of my life at that point it was a big part of my dad’s life.
I can’t remember how many years in a row my dad had killed a buck, but it was quite a few. The year his father passed away was tough in more ways than one. No matter what he did that hunting season nothing seemed to work out. On the final day of the season he ended up taking a beautiful 6 pointer. By today’s standards it wasn’t a big buck, but at that time he was a beauty. We were hunting in that same piece of woods today. It seems like it was a long, long time ago to me. I’m sure it seems like it was yesterday to my dad.
I also thought of the year that I killed a nice buck on the last day of the season right at last light. When I wrote my first book I specifically saved the story of this one in case I decided to write another one. We didn’t have a camera with us and I ended up in the hospital that night. We never got a good picture of that deer except for dad posing with him in the yard. I’ll attach the picture so you can have a look. I’ll also attach a few from my new trail camera. The does fed like crazy in front of it during the last week, but the bucks were camera shy.
One last note. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t see a good buck today. When I got back to the truck I dropped the latch on my gun and the bullets fell into my hand. Then, I pulled the bolt to eject the bullet from the barrel…………………………I never loaded the gun. That pretty much sums up the year. Only a few more trips into the woods for the 2010 deer season.
I killed this buck the last few minutes of daylight on the last day of the season.
I killed this buck on the last day of the season a few years ago in an area I had never hunted. It was brutally cold.
A few mountain turkeys getting a bite to eat
A doe and her little one in the background
A squirrel hanging out on the rock.