To be honest, I don’t think I ever saw this deer with my own two eyes except for 1 occasion.. I’ve joked around and always called this deer my “Pen Pal”.
The property setting is basic. Take an aerial view of the township and it looks like someone dabbed their paint brush in paint and threw it on paper. Dots, lots and lots of dots. Smaller 10-20 acre wood tracts out the ying yang every which way you looked. The property had nothing special, all I had access to was 18 acres of thick immature woods surrounded by 140 acres of AG fields. The neighbor had an adjoining 3 acres and a 250 yard fence row of trees that ran to another 20 acres of thick timber.
I began hunting this property during the middle of the 2006 season. It was shared by 2 others at the time. I felt obligated the first few years to earn my stay and did very little bow hunting. My season was generally made by just helping the 2 landowners sons be successful. When I moved in, they lacked scent control and proper stand placement, and I’m not saying I’m a professional by any means. Lets just say they both tripled their deer kills with my help. Year after year I saw both of them lose more and more devotion to the sport. Partly because reality took over for the both of them and time restrictions. Now was my time to make some moves as I had to property to myself 90% of the time.
Graduating from college, being self employed and single most of the time, I began running my buddies trail cameras he let me borrow in 2009 and hunting more for myself. I didn’t know shit about them. Find a scrape, throw a cam on it, get a few pictures of some bucks, take inventory and wing it. I never produced. This cycle went on for a few years, but each year I got more efficient. I slowly began picking up on consistent travel routes each year but vowed I would never go farther than 40 yards inside the wood line to hunt. It’s their house, and I always played the cautious game thinking they knew when we would set foot in there. I got some real nice bucks on cam over the years but the glimpses I’d see of them were darting out of the woods running a doe never to be seen again.
My goal was always to harvest a good buck that I may have had some history with, whether I had seen him a few times or through camera. I’d see guys through forums and TOO over the years kill great bucks with awesome history. I wanted that personal challenge and pride.
The property setting is basic. Take an aerial view of the township and it looks like someone dabbed their paint brush in paint and threw it on paper. Dots, lots and lots of dots. Smaller 10-20 acre wood tracts out the ying yang every which way you looked. The property had nothing special, all I had access to was 18 acres of thick immature woods surrounded by 140 acres of AG fields. The neighbor had an adjoining 3 acres and a 250 yard fence row of trees that ran to another 20 acres of thick timber.
I began hunting this property during the middle of the 2006 season. It was shared by 2 others at the time. I felt obligated the first few years to earn my stay and did very little bow hunting. My season was generally made by just helping the 2 landowners sons be successful. When I moved in, they lacked scent control and proper stand placement, and I’m not saying I’m a professional by any means. Lets just say they both tripled their deer kills with my help. Year after year I saw both of them lose more and more devotion to the sport. Partly because reality took over for the both of them and time restrictions. Now was my time to make some moves as I had to property to myself 90% of the time.
Graduating from college, being self employed and single most of the time, I began running my buddies trail cameras he let me borrow in 2009 and hunting more for myself. I didn’t know shit about them. Find a scrape, throw a cam on it, get a few pictures of some bucks, take inventory and wing it. I never produced. This cycle went on for a few years, but each year I got more efficient. I slowly began picking up on consistent travel routes each year but vowed I would never go farther than 40 yards inside the wood line to hunt. It’s their house, and I always played the cautious game thinking they knew when we would set foot in there. I got some real nice bucks on cam over the years but the glimpses I’d see of them were darting out of the woods running a doe never to be seen again.
My goal was always to harvest a good buck that I may have had some history with, whether I had seen him a few times or through camera. I’d see guys through forums and TOO over the years kill great bucks with awesome history. I wanted that personal challenge and pride.
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