Today was my first day hunting in the Midwest for the year. We arrived last night and set camp up around dark. It made for a short night’s sleep, and I didn’t feel rested when I woke up.
Throughout the night, we got pounded with severe thunderstorms and monsoon-like rains. The chaos started about midnight and lasted until around 7. When it began letting up, Dad, Jim and I went to hang a stand for Dad.
We saw eight deer on our walk in, but we couldn’t identify any of them as bucks. It felt good to see some deer. After getting done hanging the stand, we heard a noise and saw a truck driving through the woods on the old haul road that we had walked in on. In all the years I’ve hunted in this area, I’ve never seen a vehicle on it because it’s illegal to have any motorized vehicles on it. However, two clowns from Wisconsin decided they would drive down the road and park right next to the stand. According to the GPS, we had walked a little over a mile, and these lazy individuals basically ruined the hunting and disobeyed the laws. The things I’ve seen people do in the woods on public land has amazed me in recent years. Sometimes I wish I could go back to the old days before it was “cool” to hunt on public land. Now, with the mass influx of social media influencers, everyone has decided to hunt on public land. As I was aging, many public land hunters were looked down on because they didn’t have private land to hunt on. Public-land hunters were always seen as the paupers of the deer-hunting world. It’s amazing how things change.
I spent the second half of the day scouting with Brian as the temperatures climbed into the mid 80s, topping out at 85. We found a pretty good area, and we will return to hunt it in a few days.
On our way out, a woman with a flashlight chased us through the woods and tried telling us we were on private land and her father in-law owned it. However, she was wrong. Our OnX maps clearly showed we were not on private land. Instead, we were about 20 yards from the border. Although I believed OnX was the best thing ever when it first came out, I’ve learned to dislike it. I believe it’s another item that has led to the influx of public land hunters all over the country. The program made it so people are no longer afraid of the woods. They rely on their phones and have no fear whatsoever. Although they don’t have woodsmanship skills, they have a computer in their hands. Maybe I’m spewing negativity and shouldn’t be, but I don’t like what I’ve seen social media do to hunting — or the country.
We will see what tomorrow brings. It’s supposed to be another scorcher tomorrow. As I write this at 8 p.m., it’s still in the mid to high 60s. It definitely doesn’t feel like November.