I was in Alamance County hunting yesterday, so I’ll play a little catch-up and update my latest hunting outings from Thursday p.m. to Friday p.m.
Thursday night was a spur of the moment decision to even go into the woods. At about 2:30 p.m., I convinced myself that missing the warmest day we’ve had in 6 days and that we will have in the next 5 or 6 days would be foolish. Deer had to be moving.
I swung by the house long enough to grab my slug gun, pull on my Scentlok coveralls, and grab my game lands maps. By 3:05, I was driving down Six Forks Road, halfway watching the road and halfway staring at the maps deciding where I could go make a few rattling sequences.
I finally decided on a location and pulled the truck over. About 500 yards in to the woods, I came out into a BIG hardwood hollow and sat down to do bang the horns together. Nothing doing.
Another 300 or 400 yards and I came to an interior roadbed that cuts through this particular tract of game lands. I decided to still-hunt along the road and see what I could see. I hadn’t gone 100 yards and looked down into a creek bottom to see a deer staring back at me. I crouched down ever so slowly and crept closer under the cover of the hill. Come to find out, it was a nanny doe and 2 little ones feeding in on some new shoots of grass. I evidently played it slowly enough that eventually they went back to feeding.
Soon though, they got real nervous and I had my finger on the safety expecting a buck to step out. Well, it was a gray fox – hardly a trophy buck.
So, I sat there long enough for them to drift off into a cedar thicket, pulled out my antlers and crashed them together again. Nothing doing again.
About 5:00, it was time to start heading back to the truck for an early dinner of beef roast and veggies in the crock pot, but I heard that oh-so-familiar sound of footsteps in the leaves. I could see a silhouette of a deer slipping through the pines, and I got my gun up on an opening and stopped it with a grunt. I thought it was a doe until he swung his head towards me to check out the sound and he was a legal buck with about 2 inch buttons sticking up.
So, for hunting a tract of game lands where I’ve never been before, as quick of a hunt as it was, and having to leave the woods early, I was rather happy with the action I had. Perfect example though, 3 more antlerless deer that would make great venison, but if I had time to process a deer I might very well have whacked that tiny spike because of the way regulations are set up on our game lands.
Great evening to be in the woods!
