After settling in last night, I learned Dad was feeling well enough to come to camp to hunt. He actually came to camp to see the deer. Brian had called him on the way to help me. I was really happy to see him and my mother, but I knew they shouldn’t have made the trip. Somehow, it brought me back to my early years of hunting and the excitement we both had when I got lucky enough to take a nice deer.
I took some climbing sticks to Illinois that were in one of his stands I had set, so I decided I needed to bring them back to it in case he found it in himself to go hunting when he got to camp.
As long as I had to do it, I decided I would just sit in the stand after hanging the sticks. I love being in the woods during November, too. You can never stop learning, and I love to learn as much as I can, especially during the heart of the season.
It was 13 degrees when I headed into the woods, and the leaves were crunchy. At 8:30, I could hear a deer making its way toward me. Scanning the woods to find it, I finally located it in some thick stuff. He had his nose on the ground and was looking for the ladies. He was a shooter and resembled the buck I killed yesterday. I felt really good about it when he finally left. He was in front of me for 25 minutes. I’m hoping Dad gets a look at him in the coming days. I felt good about getting the sticks back in the tree and seeing a really nice buck in the process.
Later in the day, I had to look for some of the stuff I lost while getting the deer out of the woods yesterday. Luckily, I found it while backtracking myself on my GPS. The stuff had fallen from the outside of my backpack, where I had strapped it while dragging the deer. I didn’t think I was going to find it, so I was happy when I located it.