Selected a spot I’ve never hunted before to give this evening a try. I could see about 300 yards north along a harvested cornfield and behind me was a swampy bottom that laid below a lake dam. It was the perfect set-up to catch deer filtering out at dark to either get a bite to eat or find some does to chase.

The first deer I saw was an old friend that I recognized from several years of trail camera pictures - “Warty” - named for a wart that he carried above his right eye for several years. I can only assume that the wart caused him to look like someone sucker punched him in the eye the rest of his life.

2008

In 2009, we actually darted him as part of my dissertation research and put a GPS radio collar on him for 32 weeks. At this time, we aged him as at least a 5 year old if not older.

In 2010, he didn’t do much better with growing headgear.

As far as daytime sightings, I’ve only seen Warty twice. Once last year, I caught sight of him trailing a doe through a food plot around 1:00 p.m. late in January. The previous year, he cut the corner of a food plot at last light looking for does as well. He was too far for a shot both times, and by this year he was at least 7 or 8 years old.

There was no hard decision about whether or not to shoot this old timer and when he cleared the last branches, I grunted him to a stop. I guess this gave him too much time to consider the possible danger, because he jumped the string pretty badly on me from 33 yards distant. I kept my finger on the original position of his heart area and it would have been a perfect shot if he hadn’t ducked. Bowhunting is rarely perfect though. By the way, what in the world sort of noise came out of him at impact?!?!

I knew I had contacted shoulder blade, but I recovered my broken arrow about 50 yards down the blood trail and it appeared I had successfully penetrated his near shoulder blade. After giving him 2 hours to rest, we took up the blood trail which led us down into the thick swampy area to my south. After about 250 yards, we heard a deer jump up and crash off and head across an open field. At this point, we abandoned that night’s search and came back in the morning. We barely found any more blood and a trail camera picture about 48 hours later confirmed that he was indeed still on his feet. I zoomed in tight so you could see the impact on his shoulder blade area.

He didn’t survive long though apparently. Just a couple days ago, I followed my nose to a decomposing carcass and was not very surprised when I found “Warty”. I haven’t attempted to recover my broadhead and broken arrow shaft yet, but I did pull the skull off and brought it back to the house.

The most bizarre skull I think I’ve ever seen on a deer. In the past, he had some intense trauma to his pedicles and lost a considerable portion of his skull as well as you could easily slip a dime through the top of his skull down into his brain cavity. It was a wonder he was still walking around alive at all!

It seems every hunt is getting more eventful as the January rut heats up. The morning of January 4th was one of the more enjoyable hunts I’ve had in a long time. Action packed from the time the sun came up until after I had even climbed down at 10:00 a.m. from the stand.

About 25 minutes after I recorded my “hunt intro” video, I noticed some of the tall broomsedge shaking around only 25 yards from my stand. I had never hunted in this cutover and I assumed a deer’s head would at least be visible over the standing vegetation. I was ready for a fox or coyote to pop out but was shocked when it turned out to be a doe and 2 fawns.

I thought about letting them slip on by but as close as it was to the roadbed there wouldn’t be much of a drag. As I deciding what to do, I went to move my video camera tripod over to capture the shot on video but as I was doing so the nanny caught my scent and starting stomping her foot. I went into “all-business” mode and let her have it before she could take off running and alert the rest of the woods that danger lurked close by. By the time my gun echo had quieted, I think the danger factor was quite obvious but I had a 102 pound doe to brag about to.

Within 10 minutes of the gun shot, I glassed 2 does and a couple fawns over 400 yards away in the far corner of the cutover. While I was watching them, I heard a grunt about 75 yards in front of the stand where a little creek tributary spills out into the cutover. It’s really brushy there and I could see a buck weaving his way down the same trail that I presume the doe and 2 fawns from earlier had used.

He scent trailed them right to the identical spot where I shot the doe before turning and heading away. My best guess was a really solid yearling 5 point buck.

Not 20 minutes later, I heard branches breaking again in the exact same spot. Buck #2 of the morning was hot on the same scent trail. This time, the 2 year old half rack 8 point came in and spotted me moving the camera arm, but before he could spook out the entire cutover he ran into a doe and fawn and got pre-occupied chasing them around for the next 30 minutes.

At one point, they completely left the cutover and I thought the action for the morning was probably over, but just about the time I thought about getting down to drag out my doe, they crossed back over a creek and came back in going round and round in circles. By this time, it was 9:00 a.m. and I reasonably sure no other bucks were in the area and decided to try and double on does.

I failed to see the vine hanging in between myself and my intended target on the first shot and you can see the vine shake for about 10 seconds after the initial try. The second shot hit the mark though and she only went about 45 yards before piling up.

Just an action packed morning and I actually had another couple deer run off when I was getting down out of the stand. Didn’t get a look at them, but they were in a totally different direction from any of the other deer I had seen so far that morning.

The second doe weighed 106 pounds and I made a significant dent in my venison deficit for 2012.

Freezing cold is all I can say. This guy is not used to wind chills bottoming out in the low teens – 11 degrees to be exact. Had so many clothes on I could barely walk to the stand, let alone climb into it.
Freezing cold aside though, the deer did move a little bit.

I had a yearling buck cross the CRP field a little after 7 followed by a doe and her 2 fawns that I watched for about 10 minutes before they slipped off into some thicker bedding cover to lay up out of the wind.

Not a ton of movement, but still saw some deer. Just thinking that any day now a good shooter buck will magically appear. Also getting the itch to shoot a doe or two and try to stock the freezer. I’ve got to put at least 2, if not 3, in the deep freeze to last me until next October and 2 of my buddies are also wanting venison so we’ll see if I get a chance the next couple days to sling some lead bullets or some carbon arrows.

No video camera on this hunt because it doesn’t operate in temperatures lower than about 25 degrees. Keeps giving an error message about being too cold and keeping it warm in a pocket and then trying to dig it out with numb fingers is a good recipe to drop the little camcorder out of the stand and I don’t want to do that.

The only pressing deadline for the month of January is Wyoming elk, and it’s only an urgent deal if you are planning to hunt elk this fall. Application deadline is the last day of January, however, you can apply for just a preference point for Wyoming elk beginning July 1 and running through the end of September.

Here’s the Wyoming Game and Fish website for more information, but the heat really picks up during February and March for meeting Western states' big game application deadlines. I'll try to keep you abreast of everything that comes due in the next several months.