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

Well were do I start? I guess first of Stan I'm very sorry to hear you have to sit this one out but thank you very much for the well wishing & such, next season is just around the corner & you'll be 100% by then.

Tzone! you broke the 8 point curse!! 9!! Good job!!

Rooster & special K good job with the 2 bucks!! Jim you gotta stop using guns as traction devices though, I mean come on man, use some branches or something to stuff under the tires when you get your chevy stuck, not guns!! That's going to get expensive! LOL!!

Wabo, I hope you see that big buck again during rifle season, good luck.

Well we had a tough weekend of hunting, north wind blew hard & steady which seemed to really keep the deer down. We saw very few deer all weekend, most that we saw we pushed up out of beds & sent running in the wrong direction where nobody was posting.

We sure had fun though, good food, good stories, lots of laughes, a few beers if you can believe that

My uncle brought that elk heart up to camp that he had pickled, Boy that turned out really good!

We also did some elk backstrap & potatos on the grill, my aunt sent up a heaping tub of cookies that were fantastic!! Thanks very much!!

You see, I can thank her on the thread here because I have learned that my aunt & uncle have found & do read the thread here. I hadn't told them about it bacause I guess I felt a little silly about it but they did find it & my uncle said he read the whole thing from begining to end & the only problem he had with it was the fact that I never told him about it

He was pretty ticked off at me for never telling him!!

Well I guess I just didn't know what he would think of it, I'm glad he likes it though.

Anyways, we had a full camp with youngsters everywhere, my little guy (Mr. Chickenbuck) really takes to my uncle & he had plenty of time to tell him all about chicken bucks, flying bears & swamp squids. They went for a couple of rides in the pickup together looking for deer in the forest & I guess at one point my uncle spotted a huge pine that had the top busted off & hanging over. He pointed it out to "Short Mag" & I guess the little guy didn't as much as blink or hesitate in stating the fact that "yep, flying bear must have hit that tree."

Always good for a laugh.

My nephew came up, he hunted hard. He passed on a spike opening morning & he got shamed with the deer camp shame stick for shooting at & missing a running buck that he saw at about 250 yds.

I'm editing here now because I lost everything I wrote about the pictures below Grrr!

OK, I'll try again.

We had our two nieces up with there mom too, oldest niece sat with my daughter in Pam's heated stand but the 2 of them giggle uncontrollably when you put them together so the deer were safe from them

My youngest niece went on a still hunt with me one morning. She became quite the little scout often taking a knee to scan below the pine branches for deer legs or movement.

The kids�s mom cooked us a good breakfast Sunday morning & it�s always nice to see that the smoke alarm batteries still work

The camp thinned out Sunday night & it was down to just me & my 2 oldest kids for Sunday night & Monday morning. We did get some visitors Sunday though. Twistedone from the forum here stopped by with his group, we had a few beers & visited, shared stories from the weekend & such.

Monday morning my daughter took the heated stand & me & my boy took an open 2 person stand. We heard a deer that morning, real close too but it never showed itself to us.

For the evening we switched, my daughter had come in from sitting in Pam�s stand so me & my boy decided we might as well have a turn.

So up we went into the heated 2 person stand for the first time, boy was that nice.

It was more of the same, dead woods, nothing moving. Until about 4:50 PM

I spotted legs strolling through the brush ahead of us , I nudged my boy & whispered �deer coming in, straight ahead�. I had the slider window in front of me open already, my boy�s side was closed. It was a doe with a button buck following, they were coming in fairly fast. She was alert, there was no time to get my boy�s slider window open & he also had to cycle a round. It was too much noise to risk as alert as she was. I decided to take her , she was only 30 yds out & facing us straight on, she dropped her head to the ground & I settled in on the top base of her neck & sent one through her spine & down through her heart. She folded, not as much as a wiggle.

I was hoping the button buck would stand for a minute allowing for a second shot, I knew if the doe busted us she would have bolted & the button buck would have followed. I told my boy to chamber a round as & helped get his window open. I covered the little deer as he took aim just in case something went wrong with the shot. He wasted no time placing his shot & tripping the trigger. I watched the deer go down in my scope & it began to do the dreaded wail �bleeeaa� I was still on him & decided to silence that wail quickly as it�s not a good thing to experience especially on your first deer.

Talk about a happy boy, I grabbed him by his face with both hands & gave him a big kiss on the cheek. Big hug & pat on the back, he was absolutely shaking with excitement. He went on & on about how fun it was watching mine drop straight down then his doing the same. He talked about how he didn�t even feel the gun kick & all of that� Very happy kid.

He ran back to get a 4 wheeler to haul them out & my daughter joined him when he returned. She was very proud of her little brother & happy for both of us even though it was from the stand that she had just left.

That made me pretty proud of her.

She took these pictures for us.








I gotta go, more later.

Dave