Surprisingly enough, I had this tiny channel catfish follow my stickbait to the riffle of rocks I was standing on, take a swat, and get hooked! Perfect size for my 30 gallon aquarium, but I let him go to grow up. Anyways, devoid of size but not devoid of relaxing for a couple minutes.

Though preference points and lottery draws are far less common in the East, the highlight for white-tailed deer is, without a doubt, Iowa. Opening the 4th of May, the application period stretches until June 2. Most units require 2-4 points/years to ensure drawing and once a tag is drawn it will cost roughly $600-$650 including each $50 preference point plus the final cost of the tag. Many hunters might scoff at this, but consider the numbers – only 2,100 nonresidents pick up a bow in Iowa each year. The numbers alone should suggest that this is a hunt worth waiting and paying for…and the numbers don’t lie. Iowa is at the top of the heap and should be on the application list for those interested in an exceptional deer hunting experience.

I’m starting to lose faith in my fishing skills. These Ohio fish are beating my tail left and right. With conditions and Internet reports screaming of an unfair advantage for the fishermen and a decided underdog status of the crappie population, I headed to Hoover Lake with intentions of filling 5 or 6 freezer ziplocks with fillets. 3 hours later, I dropped off my couple keepers with a guy wading in the shallows and limped into the office to lick my wounds and contemplate how the morning crashed and burned. Honestly…not sure. Targeted willow bushes, targeted woody cover, targeted flooded timber, drifted jigs down the creek channel, just couldn’t unravel the mystery. With a messy weather system coming into town tomorrow, it will certainly be next week before I get out for attempted revenge. Until then, I’ll do some more homework and see if I can figure out a successful strategy for next time!

I did find a couple black crappie moving into shallow water on early Saturday morning and am hoping that trend will continue as warm temperatures should drive the spawn into the action. A couple limits of crappie will go a long ways towards building my faith in Ohio’s fishing waters!

This lake was over a half mile from the nearest parking area, but didn’t have any decent sign around it. It did, however, pique my interest as to what a return trip in warmer weather might produce from a bass fishing perspective.

Usually, public land scouting is more about figuring where the most human activity is concentrated and looking elsewhere to find pockets of good deer activity. This appeared to be a traditional 1st day of shotgun season type spot and was a good ways back in from the nearest access point.

Going down 400-500 yards from the lake dam, I found a narrow high spot amongst a relatively wet bottom where the deer sign was really concentrated. Tracks, trails, scrapes, rubs – everything converged at this point and if next fall is a wet one, this could be a real dynamite producer.

Looking the other way.

Relocating to another portion of the area, I hiked several fresh cutovers and found another topographical funnel (not pictured here, this is just a picture of the cutover in general) almost 0.7 miles from the parking lot. As much as I liked hunting cutovers in the Southeast, I’ve got to imagine that I’ll spend a few hours in this spot next fall.

Last, I trekked in one last location to scout a powerline intersection and was impressed by what I found. This spot has all the makings of a classic rut hunting location – visibility, cover, topographical funnels, nearby food in the form of agriculture, and remoteness (relatively speaking of course, I am still in Ohio after all…).

Imagine this scenario where the green circle is a great topographical funnel and is surrounded by hardwoods with a heavy multiflora rose understory which basically negates the ability of hunters to slip in undetected. You are aware of a parking lot to the north (yellow star) and could slip from north to south (yellow line) to enter the stand, but the wind is coming from the northwest and you would basically sacrifice the entire bedding area to the east using that approach, not to mention if you are hunting during the morning, the fields might be full of feeding deer just waiting to be spooked by your flashlight-lit hike in.

The red star is a boat launch basically equidistant from the potential stand location but the approach would be totally silent, any feeding deer in the fields would be ignorant to your approach, and the northwest wind would be ideal for allowing a 100% scent-free entry – not to mention that paddling a 200 pound buck back across the lake will be orders of magnitude easier than dragging it uphill through thickets of multiflora rose.

Now, if I re-structure the scenario and we pretend the yellow star doesn’t exist and the public land where the green circle is located is either a mile plus hike down the shoreline or is completely landlocked by private land — the scenario becomes even more tempting and inviting.

Bottom line is this: use water to your advantage and don’t be afraid to toss a canoe in your truck next time you head out in search of a P&Y public land buck.

(For those interested, this scenario was adapted from real public lands at Caesar Creek Lake Wildlife Area near Cincinnati, OH. No clue if the habitat descriptions were accurate or not, but it looked like a potential winner on the map!)

Just need a carriage bolt, 2 nuts, and a corner brace. Screwdriver and a pair of pliers and you’re set.

Position the corner brace against something solid using the pliers and bend to the desired angle.

Once this is done, configure the bolt, nuts, and brace to look like this.

Now, insert the end of the bolt into the big hole in the back of the skull.

That’s all she wrote, maybe 5 minutes start to finish on each one and I was able to price mine down to $2.10 each shopping at Lowes.