I’m sure that almost everyone knows about Google Earth and maybe even uses it to do some scouting.  Personally, I prefer using local tax maps with the aerial features enabled.  That way I can not only do some remote scouting, I can find out who owns the property and get their contact information to ask permission for hunting.

Someone, in a hunting forum that I frequently interact with, introduced me to maps.live.com

I think the aerial features are about equal to Google Earth’s capabilities, but the ‘bird’s eye’ view feature is unbelievable and is great for distinguishing hardwoods from pines and other more detail-oriented scouting tasks that usually have to be done on the ground.  I even found a log on which to cross a creek from the ‘bird’s eye’ view feature.  Also, maps.live.com has a great 3D view that must be downloaded but is worth the time it takes to acquire.

Hopefully this tool can boost your scouting ability this pre-season as archery season is rapidly approaching!

Friday, I took a couple of hours in the morning to scout out a potential hot-spot that I found on some local game lands.  Why would I hunt game lands when I have 300+ acres in Alamance County on private land to hunt, a few choice spots in Raleigh also on private land?  Simple, it is dynamite! 

Hey look, mature pines, almost worthless deer habitat…no surprises there. 

I did find a great squirrel hunting spot though, a few trees with this many carved up pinecones under it could mean a limit of squirrels.

Over a half-mile into my walk, I stumbled across the first of several gems.  This 2-3 acre white oak stand was the first source of deer food I had encountered and bingo, 10 yards into the stand there they were.

The picture is horrible, but you get the point…3 does and a little buck stood around long enough for me to tell I was in the right place.

Another quarter of a mile and I stepped out of the pine forest to see this pretty sight, low water means fresh vegetable garden for wildlife.  Fresh green growth was absolutely pounded by the deer and raccoon and fox tracks littered the ground too.  Hot spot #2.

Another photo of some great deer groceries!

Now this is the big boy that I want a personal encounter with during October.  Five inches of track!

Also quite a few doves back in this spot.  They were constantly flying back and forth.  Must have been some source of seeds or fruit they were interested in. 

Hot spot #3 was a full mile back into the woods, but it by far the sweetest spot I had seen yet.  I jumped another deer between the “grocery store” and a hardwood ridge that was filled with hickory and oak trees, even a few black gum mixed in.  Trails were cut deep into the elevated ridge, buck sign was abundant from previous falls, and fresh droppings covered the leaf litter. 

This calf-sized cedar tree rub from last year was surrounded by 5 or 6 smaller rubs all within 10 or so feet.  Unbelievable funnel between a few topographical features which I won’t disclose and littered with deer sign…super secret hunting spot…all on public land!

It will be an evening hunt only and a heck of a long drag back to the road, but I will go out on a limb and guarantee that one of my buck tags is spent on this ridge before the season ends…

My wife Kara and I headed up to Kerr Lake on Friday evening with our friends to camp overnight and do some fishing.  After catching a little bait under one of the many bridges on the lake, we headed to a nice sandy beach and cooked some hotdogs and marshmallows. 

While we were relaxing by the campfire, I managed to pull in 2 channel catfish with a helping of Catfish Dynamite ‘Cheese’ dipbait.  That is some nasty stuff, but catfish can’t get enough of it.  One of the fish pulled the rod down off its prop-stick and we didn’t notice it was gone until it was almost too late…completely submerged and headed towards the depths, I picked up the rod at the last second and reeled in one of the catfish. 

The wind picked up a little, so we moved the boat to a sheltered cove and laid out the sleeping bags.  Great night’s sleep under the stars…woke up several times to critters swimming in the water, a barn owl hooting, and the startling grunts of a great blue heron. 

Next morning, we headed to one of our favorite fishing holes and tossed out 8 noodles and drifted with 7 baits of our own spread around the boat.  Nothing.  Next spot….noodles and drift….nothing.  Repeat 2 more times….nothing!  The catfish were absolutely not interested in biting.  It must have been a combination of a full moon, abundant forage source (baby shad??? EVERYWHERE!…gar were having a hayday!)  I’m assuming the catfish were bloated after a night’s gorging on prey, but who knows.  Bottom line, I’m glad the Catfish Dynamite produced on Friday night or we would have gotten skunked. 

A promising rocky point with nearby deep river channel, light colored specks to the right of the point are our noodles…’promising’ is the deciding word here….no fulfillment!

We did get the treat of watching 2 fawns play around the water’s edge about 150 yards away from one of our fishing holes.  In the photo, you can barely see one between the 2 logs on the edge of the water. 

All in all, it was a great trip and the weather was beautiful.  Great campfire food and some time spent with friends.  What more could you ask for?…except a few more catfish.

Well, my thesis deadline is rapidly approaching.  Just a day or two ago it was the start of summer, now I’m looking at 9 and a half weeks until I need to be done my graduate research and writing.  That being said, I apologize for the little bit of a slow-down in blogging posts…but I guess that is part of the territory.  Now with classes started and the distraction of preparing to move to Alabama in January, it may suffer even more, but I’ll try not to let that happen.  I can assure frequent hunt reports during deer season.  I’ll be slowed down a little in my hunting outings, but slowed down for me, translates into 40 or 50 hunting days instead of 70-80, so there still we be plenty to talk about.  Who knows, if the critters cooperate, posts may even pick up for me!

Just wanted to thank everyone for reading The Outdoor Smorgasbord, it’s been a interesting and satisfying way to reach other people who share in the same outdoor passions.  We recently passed our 15,000th page view and will be closing in on 200 blog posts soon.  Best of luck to everyone this fall and check in often to see how my hunting luck is going…hunt hard, hunt smart, and shoot straight!

Not sure if this was the last hurrah or not, but with dove and goose season coming in just a week and a half and archery season soon thereafter - I may have picked up my bowfishing tackle for the last time of the summer.

Andrew and I headed up to the Eno River yesterday to chase around some carp, but didn’t have to much luck.  Water was down a couple feet past normal and the fish were in such shallow water that we either couldn’t get to them or they had the water churned up into a chocolate milk concoction.

We did manage to connect on 4 common carp and miss twice that many, but there just wasn’t much action going on.  Andrew kept the trip exciting though with a 9.2 swan dive into the drink.  When he reached out to push off of a log that wasn’t there anymore, gravity took over, and well…you can see the result.

We did see a couple of neat things going up and down the river though… 1) Snakes were swimming all over the place, mostly northern watersnakes from what we could tell, 2) saw a prothonotary warbler - which is just a brilliant little songbird that looks like it belongs in a tropical jungle, 3) and we stumbled onto a Wildlife Resources Commission rocket net set-up.

The light strip on the sand is to the left of the box is corn and lures in whatever they are trying to catch…ducks, doves, wild turkeys?  When they are in range, a switch is triggered by the waiting processing team and the net is propelled by 3 rockets up and over the bait pile capturing the critters underneath.

A zoomed in view of the rockets sitting on top of the net box.  After the animals are captured, they can be banded, measured, sexed, aged, even relocated to areas being re-stocked.  Wild turkeys have historically been captured and relocated using this technique and are distributed as widely as they are today because of this great wildlife management technique.

All too often I hear someone talking about a buck or doe that was wounded during archery season and they can’t figure out why.  Then they say something to the effect of, I was right on him, but my arrow just didn’t fly right.  Eventually, they will confess to not having shot their bow with broadheads at the business end of their arrows until they were actually drawing back on a real live deer.  Pathetic and inexcusable!

Make sure you shoot the practice heads provided in most broadhead packages.  If your broadhead of choice does not supply practice broadheads, fire a real broadhead into a 3D target.  It may dull a little, but nothing a little whetstone action can’t fix.  There is no excuse for entering the woods and not knowing how your hunting broadheads will fly in the heat of the moment.

I plan on shooting my Muzzy broadheads again this fall, but I also bought a package of Rage 2 blades to test out also…practice broadhead included.

One last thing, if you are in the habit of tuning your bow after season in November and then picking up your bow in August and expecting things to be perfectly in sync…you are having a ‘pipe’ dream.  Get your bow freshly tuned 1-3 months before season and see if your broadhead accuracy doesn’t increase dramatically.

I went out Saturday to scout a Raleigh property that I’ll be hunting during the archery season this fall.  The rain washed away all the old tracks on Friday and Saturday morning was the perfect time to check for fresh tracks and deer sign.  Sure enough, on just 25 acres, I found 6-8 sets of tracks laid down in the last 12 hours and bumped into 2 small does that were bedded just off a powerline. 

Native deer browse was abundant on the property and I am excited to see what it produces those first couple of weeks of archery season.  There is a pond on the property and off the back side of the dam was a little beaver pond (only about 10 feet across) just littered with deer tracks.  If it gets dry over the next month that could be a great ambush spot.

The most impressive forage sources were the numerous muscadine grapevines and patches of smooth and winged sumac.  Sumac leaves are fantastic deer browse and the fruit when ripe attracts everything from raccoons to black bears to songbirds to white-tailed deer.  A great wildlife food that many hunters often overlook.  You’ll find sumac most often along powerlines and other early successional disturbances - maybe an overgrown field. 

End result - a successful scouting trip.  Got to see a few deer, find some great early season food sources, locate an isolated waterhole in cover, and mark a few trees that I’ll be shimmying up with my climbing stand….all on 25 acres. 

Well, the QDM Workshop up in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, was a great time rubbing shoulders with foresters, private land managers, farmers, biologists, and more.  The one common thread was a love for deer and managing their habitat.  A lot of people have misconceptions about QDM advocates - in it for the big bucks, selfish and snobbish hunters, etc.  Nothing could be farther from the truth if they truly understand quality deer management.  All of wildlife benefits when deer are properly managed for and habitat is the big winner when deer management is taken seriously!

On day 1, we heard almost 12 hours of dialogue/presentation on everything from aging whitetail deer, to food plot management, to clearcutting and other silvicultural techniques, deer disease biology, and the history of quality deer management.  Craig Harper was a great speaker from Universiy of Tennessee-Knoxville and many consider him to be one of, if not the, leading authority on food plots.  Craig gave a couple of great talks and I really enjoyed his expertise on the 2nd day on the field trip.

Also, Joe Hamilton, founder of QDMA was in attendance and gave a couple shorter presentations.  I presented on some of my research findings from the farm in Maryland, Brad Howard from the WRC gave a great disease presentation and also the history of deer management in the North Carolina mountains.  Chris Moorman gave a great talk on habitat management. 

That evening in the ’shoot from the hip’ session, discussion was bantered around about hunter recruitment, predator management, supplemental mineral feeding, and more.

The field trip on Day 2 took place on the Apple Mountain Demonstration Site.  You can’t imagine what these guys have squeezed into a little over 400 acres.  In a nutshell, the property was formerly old-growth hardwood forest but was 50% clearcut 3 or 4 years ago.  In the logging roads and decks, food plots have been established.  Apple orchards have been planted.  Native browse can seemingly be measured in the tons per acre!  The property is a text-book example of the 180 degree turn-around that habitat can experience with smart timber management practices and planning ahead to manage for wildlife with the finished product.

Craig Harper talking about annual food plots as he holds up some cowpeas.

Referred to as the most important wildlife plant in the Southeast by Chris Moorman, blackberry vines were heavily browsed throughout the property and were regenerating well along the clear-cut/food plot borders.

The group making its way along a winter wheat/soybean food plot.  Edges of the food plots were sprayed with a selective hardwood herbicide to prevent shading and allow maximum sunlight to stimulate plant growth.

Lightly disking in this crop of winter wheat provides enough seed to regenerate a nice winter wheat stand without worrying to re-seed an “annual” food plot.

One of several apple orchards that are 3 years old on the property.  As with all plantings, making sure your lime and fertilizer dose are appropriate for your specific site will make growing great deer forage much easier than ignoring and neglecting to get your soil tested…people, IT’S FREE in North Carolina!!

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Putting up game cameras is an exciting part to deer hunting, but it can also be useful. Several months ago I posted an article on how to use cameras to census your deer herd and determine some important information about sex ratios, deer density, age structure, etc.

Another great use of game cameras is to use the pictures to inform hunt club members of bucks that are off- and on- limits. Inexperienced, and sometimes experienced, members may be known to stretch the measure tape on a 14″ wide buck in an excuse to pull the trigger. Having a picture of that 2.5 year old and saying explicitly “off-limits” with everyone gathered around a table is the best preventive medicine that the buck could receive. Now there are no excuses and more than likely you’ll be able to chase him as a 3.5 year old next season.

Lay out all the bucks that you have pictures of and separate them into 2 piles: shoot and don’t shoot. You’ll find that your illegal buck kills decrease because there is no ambiguity then.

As a little appetizer for archery season which is rapidly approaching, this is the buck that initiated me to bowhunting.  After a couple of weeks of extremely dry weather in October, a cold rain really got the bucks moving.  I was only in the stand for 20 minutes or so and I had my first visitor.  This gnarly little 8 pointer came and fed within 20 yards before hopping back over the barb wire fence and continuing on his way. 

Not long after he disappeared, a couple of does drifted out of the overgrown field I was hunting and worked into range.  I was getting awfully tempted to arrow the biggest doe when I looked up and saw 2 more bucks walking in my direction.  They were over 200 yards away, but I could see that one buck looked almost as wide as his ears. 

10 minutes later and I was shaking in my boots…gripping my bow handle harder than I ever thought possible, I came to full draw with the buck standing only 8 yards from the bottom of my tree stand.  Thwack!  I got good penetration up to fletchings as the buck dug his hoofs into the ground and rocketed back out into the brush.  I felt confident about the shot, but decided to wait until dark to follow him up. 

When I wrapped my hands around his antlers it was unlike anything I had experienced while rifle hunting…something more personal, more intense, and more satisfying.  It definitely confirmed what I had already thought…bowhunting is the real deal.  It has been my passion ever since.  My only regret is that this tailgate ‘redneck’ shot is the only photograph I have of the deer.  I take my photography very seriously now, but wish I had similar sentiments back then…oh well.

Interestingly, my first buck fell to a Wasp JakHammer expandable broadhead and I haven’t shot another since.  The next year I switched to Muzzy’s and have shot them well over the years.  I’ll be trying another mechanical broadhead this fall though - I guess I am going to find out what the ‘Rage’ is all about?  But more on that later…