It’s really not a matter of bragging, in fact I think it’s mostly luck, but coming into the 2010 season he had one buck on the wall that was even in the same class as several of my better ones. Generally speaking he was short on patience and long on effort. That produced a lot of opportunities at 110-130 bucks which produced a lot of filled tags.

But coming into the 2010 season he was claiming it would be different. I was skeptical. Then one day I was driving to the cabin at dusk when I got a call. He was obviously excited about a buck he’d just shot but he needed help getting it loaded. My daughter and I changed course and met him at the scene:

With good mass, good length, and double split brows, he gross in the low 140′s.

So The Old Man had punched his Missouri archery tag, and now it was on to Kansas. A few days later I was chasing Missouri deer when I got a call, again. He didn’t tell me what he had, just that he would meet me at my house mid-day:

Decent mass, good length, and great width, this one also grossed in the low 140s.

So he’d gone 60 some years without killing a no-doubt P&Y buck, and now he’d killed 2 in a week! Both DIY, fair chase, with good clean kills and simple tracking jobs. Just like in the books. And while that suddenly left him with a shortage of whitetail tags, he wasn’t complaining.

Once again, congrats, happy Father’s Day, and thanks.

How cool is that? Yesterday I caught enough bass with my daughter that my thumb is raw, today I’ve got a tom strutting by the creek. Spring is here!

Anyway, I was sent this little piece that Bowhunting World did the other day and I thought I’d pass it along. I particularly liked this:

BW: How often do you go out on your farms and get skunked like the average guy?

MD: A lot. Most days we get skunked, just like everybody. I don’t care how much land you’ve got and how good it is and how well it’s managed, mature bucks win most of the time when you’re hunting with a bow.

TD: Want a good example? A few years ago I killed my first buck of the year on my 60th day of bowhunting. That’s a lot of getting skunked!

60 days of getting skunked before dropping the string? That’s dedication, and that’s what kills big bucks. It’s also more time that most hunters will spend in a decade… Here’s the whole piece.

Unfortunately I have bowhunted exactly once this fall. In the 13 years since I discovered archery I’ve never hunted so little. Last Saturday The Old Man and I spent most of the day hanging stands, checking sites, etc. We quit by 4:30 to shoot our elk rifles:

Then I took a shower and grabbed my bow. I sat in a stand I’ve had fantastic hopes each time I’ve sat in it, and I’ve yet to see a solid buck there. It sits in a narrow strip of timber between a lake and a cut corn field.

Looking left:

Looking right:

The idea is to catch deer trading from the big cover to the cut corn fields before dark. The idea is good, the quality of the deer has not been. Two does came by and that was it. I’m not giving up on it though.

You can find more information at the Archery Hall of Fame.

Anyway, what we’re talking about here is the highlights of my 2009 season. A few years back I ran out of space on my desk and book shelf for any more pictures, so I combined the best 3 pictures from that season and framed them together. Then for 2008 I made a matching set but had to use 4 pictures. Now my 2009 set is done.

The first two spots were easy to fill. I killed two fantastic bucks in 2009, one on the last day of the Kansas rifle season and the other on the first day of the Missouri rifle season.

The third was also easy. The second and larger of my two spring ’09 bears had to be included.

That left at most one spot. The opener of the 2009 turkey season was one I’ll never forget with The Old Man and I each guiding our half of a father/son combo on toms with good shows.

I went on to have a good turkey season on my own as well, but nothing that made the grade. I also had several fantastic duck hunts, including a wonderful shoot on the opening day of the Kansas season where a friend and I killed nearly a limit of doves at the trucks after killing a limit of ducks.

That same friend was also a part of a classic late season duck bender when the red legged drakes were in tight…

There were great pheasant hunts in South Dakota and Kansas, dove hunts in Kansas and Missouri, and stud archery bucks taken by The Old Man and The Arkansas Boys. There were three duck bands and two banded geese. I killed 2 Missouri does and 1 in Kansas. I killed my first bear. The Old Man and I killed a pile of fish together on his first shoot.

2009 was a fantastic year by any measure I can imagine, but ultimately it was hard to ignore what was probably the best goose hunt of my life for that final spot.

This has been perhaps the most fun post I’ve ever created. I used to keep a journal of my hunts but looking back through old blog posts and the associated pictures is much better. I would encourage any outdoor blogger out there to create their own hall of fame. Even if your readers don’t care, you will enjoy it. I’ve also added a Hall of Fame category so I can add classes in the future (or even past) and store potential candidates from the 2010 season.

Now the tough part… I’ve never set foot anywhere near Longview Lake. If I had more carefully studied the drawing odds I probably would have applied for a rifle or muzzleloader hunt… Nonetheless, I’m excited about the challenge. I’ve never tried to bowhunt public ground on a tight time schedule, during the rut. In fact my public ground experience is limited to a few years when I first started bowhunting and really had no idea what I was doing. Now I’ve got an opportunity to hunt the first two weeks of November on a prime piece of limited-entry, suburban lake ground. The rules require me to kill a doe before I can stick a buck, which will also be new for me.

Look for pictures from scouting missions and hopefully some horns… If anyone reading this has any experience with Longview I would love to hear your thoughts! You can email me at dukkillr@hotmail.com or comment below.

As I got older my grandfather exposed me to deer hunting. A few years later I started teaching myself to bowhunt with considerable help from friend and loyal reader CA-Chucky. Around that time The Old Man started going rifle deer hunting with me. I gutted his first deer or two, and we worked together on a few fantastic deer and elk hunts. Then he bought a bow… We were going to bowhunt in Montana for big elk. He practiced a great deal and at the moment of truth he made a lethal shot at 40 yards:

His first arrow ever was a bull pushing 340! I hope it’s not the best animal he ever kills, but right now it’s the one he has on the refrigerator! Congrats, happy Father’s Day, and thanks.

This afternoon The Old Man and I tried it again, but the river was on it’s way down and we struggled to find the right combination of current, depth, and fish. We shot a couple and saw a few of these friendly guys: