Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

hmm, thanks for the tip, I'll be watching for that

dang ole cabin was nice & toasty all weekend. friday night at about 8PM I lit the wood stove & stuffed it full of kindling & smaller pieces of firewood & let it huff away. It was -10 degrees when I started, it took an hour or so before we could start to notice the cabin warming up, after an hour & a half it was getting pretty good in there but the outside temp kept dropping. I think the temp outside settled in somewhere around 12 to 15 below zero. After 2 hours it was fully warmed up, nice & toasty warm & I could slow the stove down & start feeding it some big unsplit chunks of firewood.

Outside temps warmed up over night, it was around 10 above when I woke up sat morning & temps climbed close to 20 degrees. It snowed all day & for some reason the deer just weren't moving on sat. Early sunday morning after the snow stopped falling it's like the woods came alive with deer, but they all moved too early for me. Fresh tracks everywhere sunday morning.

I really didn't give too much of an effort hunting all weekend, did more relaxing than anything, hung out in the cabin, stayed warm... climbed into the old 77 ford & went for a few drives on old logging trails a few times but didn't sit in the stands very much.

I shot a doe with the smoke pole last night pretty close to home, basically just meat hunting, she was with a small buck, I had tags for both & chose the doe. 250 grain hornady sst, 100 grains american pioneer gold (sticks) & rem clean bore primers... thompson encore, fiddy cal. broadside, 60-65 yds. POA center mass behind shoulder, clean pass through high lung shot. she went maybe 30 yds without spilling a drop of blood in the fresh white snow, stopped, wobbled & dropped.

Very cold fingers field dressing that one, temp was about zero.

With that one hanging the pressure is off a bit for the final weekend of black powder season coming up.

I suppose I'll take off from work early on friday & head out to the woods to get that cabin warmed up. Hopefully I'll get there in time to light the stove, stuff it full of wood & head for a stand to sit for evening post.

Looking forward to the final weekend of "deer camp".

there will be many other weekends out there through the winter, snowmobiling, cutting firewood, just horsing around.

Speaking of horses, a couple of friends of mine, 2 brothers stopped by the shack sat morning for breakfast & the older of the 2 bro's has these big damn horses, he's into the horse team pulling, sleighs, buggies, what ever. Well he wants to get a couple of his horse buddy friends who also have teams of these big damn horses & sleighs & organize a winter sleagh ride from my cabin over to this other cool ombre's cabin just up the trail a bit from our cabin & back. Sounds like heap big fun to me.

Bonfire at each cabin & maybe one at a mid point... heap big fun.

Dave-

Man with stories like that...I really miss Minnestoa, really miss it. As long as I'm married I will probably never live in northern MN again, but my cabin damn sure will be there.

A few more years and I can start looking for the place to put it.

...Anybody wanna buy a boat

Time to drag out the flat bottom winter boats pretty soon Tom, Lake-O-the woods is makin ice like crazy.


forgot to mention, at below zero temps, the styrofoam out house seat is very nice!!

instant warm!!

The flat bottom boat is ready to go. One crazy azz got his permanent sunk excpt the top 2' of it. Idiot. There always has to be one guy to try it. Good luck getting that out, it's going to nothing but freeze harder now. Until Saturday we were making ice quick, but with the snow that will slow down. I'm guessing at least another week maybe two befoe it's really safe, at least around here.

that's what me & a friend were saying last night when we were hanging that deer in my garage, probably next weekend. 15th-16th, before it's safe.

it's been cold but we too have snow, heck we keep getting it, it's snowing right now.

like my buddy said last night, you get these drifts out on the ice, well, a deep drift on fresh forming ice insulates & slows the ice down quite a bit. makes for lots of little thin spots out there.


possibly snowmobiles & portables that weekend of 15-16. They are fishing LOW right now, but it's a little early for me. especially when deer season is still on!!!

I realize early ice is good fishing, but it's still just a fish. Not worth my fat azz going through for. I'll let the goofballs with the extention ladders go out for a few weeks before I let 'er rip. I do OK anyway. no complaints from me.

For those that are not familiar with the geinus extention ladder technique, the ice clowns use the ladder to get from where the open water is, to the hard water to fish. Once they are out where they want to fish, they stand or sit on the ladder near their drilled holes and fish so they don't fall through the thin ice.

Usualy a Darwin Award winner every year, but they still do it, every year.

Big damn horses? Sleigh ride through the winter woods? Campfires?

Goll dern it Davey! That sounds like more fun than watching Amish midget rake fighting!

Dave,
Is your zone the zone with the extended (into Jan) deer season?


tzone,
I grew up using the ladder (or whatever was handy) trick. But we used it in the spring; when the ice is melted near shore. Great panfishing just before ice-out. Fall is for going out on thin ice with a bunch of guys and lots of ropes. Somebody went through every year in our bunch. We always rescued them. No big deal. Of course I'm older and not so agile now. I wait till I can get the Scandic out there these days.

Somebody ALWAYS falls through.

Dpole.... is it true?

a buddy of mine e-mailed me this morning asking me if I was going to dust off the rifle & get back out there.....


is it true???


I'm in zone 101.


is it true???

I've got mixed feelings.... mostly good, words for which are .... innapropriate....


excuse me, I need a moment.....

i just checked into it, it's true.

guess i'm not done hunting quite yet.

wow, this is crazy.

so, basically... I get a deer hunting "do-over"

another deer season.... this is crazy.

Well, this time I'm going to try like hell to get one in front of my wife, she had crappy luck during rifle season, didn't see a single deer.

Dave, how much extra time did they give you, and why?

Lucky dawgs! Good for you.

-jeff

it's in my zone area only because they found some deer infected with bovine tb.

some cattle farmer i guess had some cattle with tb & deer eating from the same feeders contracted the disease & now the dnr wants all the deer dead in my area.

well, I'm on the very outskirts of the area, the zone area. my deer walk back & forth across the line between my zone area & the next one over that is out of the extended hunt area.

but, I'm still in it, just barely but i am in it.

it goes for 3 weekends. (2 full weeks)

Nice! Uh... except for the TB. You have to get any deer you kill tested, then?

-jeff

you can see it on the lungs if they have it i guess. and yes you can have them tested but as long as you cook the meat, it's cool.

or at least that's what they tell us...

The WI DNR is not helping out are they? They really blew it here with the CWD crap. No chance to get rid of 'em all, but fun times may be had by all who try.

Good luck. Do you get to shoot bucks too?

FNA...
er, I mean "yes"

bucks too, if you have an open tag like i do.

Another crack at 'ol fork toes. Cool!