| DEER SEASON 2007 Page 4 of 5 |
| Dec. 1, 2007 Piff and I went back down to Adams Co. to try to fill our doe tags. The morning temps were in the low 20’s with a light wind out of the east. Piff hunted different stand sights throughout the morning and only seen a few deer. Today was my day to see a good number of deer. I hunted out of the ladder stand that is in the south side of a woodlot. The same stand where I shot my buck on Monday. Around 7:30 I saw some movement in the underbrush to the north. There appeared to be 5 or 6 deer slowly working their way from the neighbor’s property to the west towards the thicket between me and Piff. They filtered right past my other ladder stand that is in the north end of the woods. Around a half of an hour later I heard the sounds of hoofs running in the pasture to the west. A young buck followed by a doe and a yearling were hightailing it just on the other side of the fence heading south. They eventually jumped the fence onto our property and slipped up to the edge of the small patch of woods near the road. The buck went in the woods but the other two stayed out and they were continually looking back towards the spot where they crossed the fence. After 5 minutes or so all three of them sprinted towards the woods behind the pond. This time the doe led and the buck had his nose to her tail. She must have been heat! I then looked back into the pasture and noticed another deer. I could not make out if it was a buck or a doe. At 11:00 I stood up and started to get my gear together to get down out of my stand. As I was just turning to put my foot on the first rung I caught a glimpse of movement in a ditch that runs through the west end of the woods. Soon I could make out a little yearling browsing its way through the greenbrier. A few minutes alter another yearling crossed the ditch and the both spent the next hour in the area. When they eventually left I climbed down and made my way up to the gate to meat Piff. When I arrived there I saw Piff easing his way towards me from the east end of the property. His path took him along the south end of a woodlot. Suddenly a doe and a yearling came out of the west end of the woods. They were both looking back in Piff’s direction. When I raised my gun up to try to get in position to shoot the doe she spotted my movement and then they both ran back into the woods. When Piff met me at the gate we swapped stories on how the morning went and then decided to go back up to the house to warm up and take a lunch break. As we walked along the fence that borders the west end of the woodlot I noticed a deer behind some cedar trees that were around a pond. We then sat down beside the fence and watched her slowly work her way to our side of the trees. It looked like she was heading towards the pond. I set up my shooting sticks and propped up the scoped shotgun. There was a hole in the fence where I could shoot through. When she turned broadside I took the shot and she went down hard. We both assumed that she was down for good when all of a sudden, much to our surprise, she quickly got up and ran off! She ran up to the fence on the south side of the woods and tried to jump it, but it was too high. She then disappeared out of view behind a shed. We could not believe what just happened! It looked like a good hit and she went down hard. We sat there for about 15-20 minutes and proceeded to slowly make our way to the spot where we had last seen her, expecting to find her close by. When we arrived we could not find her laying anywhere. There was a faint blood trail running along the fence. After a while we eventually lost the trail. The owner’s dog soon saw us and came over and picked up the trail. He found the blood trail which ran across a hayfield and down into a small ravine where I saw a spot of blood on a rock. To make a long story short the dog and I looked for the doe the rest of the afternoon before giving up. I never saw a spot where she laid down. There was not very much blood at the place where she went down at the shot. It is a mystery to me why she went down so hard and then showed little sign of a blood trail! |
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