Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting Opener and heat

Our bow season opens Saturday. Deer are still in summer mode where I hunt until the third week of October, or so. Thirty miles south they are in pre-rut now and the rut will peak in a couple of weeks, before our's even starts. I have bowhunted whitetails a long time and learned a lot about doing it.

My best advice is to practice with your bow, hunt where deer live and be still.

Oh... we're going dove hunting next weekend. Too damn hot.

We open here in Texas on the 29. It’s supposed to cool down a little bit by then. Knats will probably be bad.

Hunted all yesterday in the rain, saw small bucks and doe, 9 deer in all, but nothing I wanted to burn a tag on, had a great time nonetheless.

One word of caution, many of you may do so anyway, but, I always carry a sidearm when bowhunting, this area has black bear and hogs on it, bud showed me a trail cam pic of a mama black bear with 3 cubs earlier in the year, hogs on cam too, not to mention the possibility of two legged idiots, I was walking out of the hell-hole at dusk, off to my left I saw a white pit bull laying in the pine needles staring at me not 20 yards off my trail, no collar and a strange look on his face.

I chunked my new bow on the ground and yanked the glock 45 off my belt, he stood up with tail raised, didn't move, we had a stare down for a minute or two, I never said a word to him, he turned to walk the other way, when I couldn't see him any longer I picked my bow up and moved off in the direction I had been headed, damn near walking backwards checking my back trail, also looked to be flanked from either direction, I couldn't imagine trying to fight a surprise pit bull attack in the woods with everything wet, no gun, and a strained right knee to boot, I would not have been my best.

Be careful out there men.

If I were to see that pit bull where I hunt at I could be reasonably sure somebody had driven way out in the boonies and dumped him. Probably because he was unmanageable for them. Stupid people do that sort of thing. As much as I hate shooting dogs, he has no business in the national forest.

Agreed, I had second thoughts about letting him live, problem is, my neighbors here in Oklahoma could have shot my dogs a dozen times when they got out, they never hurt anything or anyone, save one chicken, this patch of land is some my MIL has, it's an 800 acre block that she rents out to weyerhaeuser to grow pine trees on, the place is surrounded by many farms, don't know who the dog belonged too if anyone, just hope like hell I don't hear of it causing any harm.

Totally understand in a place like that where there are neighboring farms. Dog probably got loose and hopefully the owners corral him quickly. I hunt very remote large blocks of public land. In my situation if there is a domestic animal there, it's been dumped by some irresponsible pet owner.

Yup, hope so too.

Bow opens here next Monday, the 1st. found 2 scrapes on sat. and pulled a chip today and had 2 bucks fighting on sat night!, did go down to 38 so im getting fired up, but if its 80 Ill wait, 69 right now!

Did my first sit of the season last night, saw nothing but bugs weren’t bad considering 90F. All in all good evening in the woods. Hope to get out next weekend after this full moon has passed if work/school/kids allow.

Wow, sounds pretty rough out there. I was out hunting a bit farther north last week, had a couple days of snow...think I'll take that over 100 degree heat!

Problem here all my good bucks leave early. So if I have a good one, I have to get him first weekend usually. I sweat to much to sit in an open stand so I hunt a sealed box. Plucker is right toasty when its 100 plus out there, but no other choice really. Though I literally hunt in shorts with no shirt.... HATE the heat.

I hunted yesterday. Chill factor of 102°. Gnats, then black flies, then mosquitoes. And I forgot my climber seat and had to stand. I'm giving up my man card and will never do it again. Of course, I say the same thing about tequila....

Heat was a killer here as well

And still is.

Went out this weekend and it was like summer during the daytime.

I start hunting in mid September. I just keep a small freezer in the garage with a bunch of blue ice packs frozen. I have a few large coolers with extra thick walls in the garage. I shoot bambi and hang it in the garage to skin right away. Once skinned the hide goes in a garbage bag and then into the freezer. The deer gets stripped inside an hour and layered into the cooler with the blue ice packs. If it's hot, the next day I swap blue ice packs and layers of meat into the next cooler. After the first day the blue ice packs usually last two days. I butcher at my leisure, and the meat stays at perfect aging temp.

Done like this with it all ready before hand, the only problem is that you might sweat a little waiting for Bambi to come by for inspection. The rest is not much different than if it's cool outside.. Here where it can be, and not infrequently is, well below zero, the cold temps are really a lot bigger problem. If it's cold you have to get the hide off them immediately. If you don't, it becomes a much harder and much more uncomfortable job in as little as 8 hours. Along with that, you do not get any benefit from aging when they are frozen. Also, depending on how full the house fridge is, I may just take the gallon zip-lock full of grind meat and the pork shoulder and drop them into the cooler until I am ready to grind it. After having meat in a cooler, it's a snap to spray it out with a garden hose and then let it dry out as opposed to a garage fridge. The big foam coolers are easy to come by for free, and they are better than the Yetis.