Traditionally, this date has been good for us in the Midwest and in the Adirondacks. I’ve killed a lot of my good deer on November 14. With that in mind, Josh and Dad decided to give it one last try this morning.
Josh hunted an area we scouted a few years ago. Although we had never hunted it, we hung cameras there this year. We didn’t get anything big on them, but the woods look like a great place to hold big bucks.
It poured all night, so Josh didn’t want to get going too early. Brian and I cruised the roads after dropping him off shortly after daylight. However, within an hour, Josh was calling us to tell us he had punched his tag. We turned around and went back to help him get the deer out of the woods.
The rest of the day Brian and I spent our time retrieving our 25 cameras and multiple stands. It was incredibly hard work, and we had to cover many miles to gather things up. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pictures of Josh’s deer.
Dad wanted to call it a season after his morning hunt, but I convinced him to go back to where I killed the deer yesterday. I told him I would carry all of his stuff in there and set the stand up, so that’s what I did.
Shortly after getting into the stand, he texted me to tell me he had passed up a 6-pointer. Before the night ended, he had seen three bucks and a few does but nothing he wanted to shoot.
As darkness came, he called me and told me he was getting down. I went back into the woods and pulled the stand and carried all of his gear and the stand back to the truck.
I was disappointed that he didn’t fill his tag. I know he probably doesn’t care that much about it, but I feel as if I failed him. He never failed me when he always tried getting me a deer while I was growing up. He also always did everything he could for me up until this year, and this year would be no different if he had the ability to do it. I hope in some small way, he thinks I succeeded in trying to help him fill his tag. I gave it my best shot. I wanted it way more for him than I wanted it for myself. If anything, this experience has made me realize how incredibly easy it is to put the ones you love before yourself. Although we didn’t tag out on the same day like last year, we gave it our best shot.
Here’s a cool foundation I found one day while scouting a new area and a big rub Brian found in a new spot.
