On day 2 of whitetail bow season, I decided to hunt the private land spot I have permission on. The weather was clear and cool so I anticipated seeing some decent deer movement. I parked my truck at the entrance to the property and walked back to the last 3 acres. The property itself is 30 acres of thick cover and borders a large working agricultural farm of 300 acres. I knew going in that the deer would be hitting the field to feed in the early evening.
I picked a tree to set up in that provided lots of cover. There is still a lot of foliage on the property right now and several tall woody bushes near the tree give you about 20 feet of green between you and the ground. As this was my first time hunting the property this year, I treated it as an observation sit and wanted to be in a place where I had a clear view of the agricultural field and the area I thought the deer would be moving through to get there.
I hunted from my saddle, but instead of using climbing sticks, I decided to climb the tree using SRT (Single Rope Technique) which is a method where you harness into a rope and climb the tree with an ascender. This was my first time using the rope method in the field and it took a lot of work to get the rope hooked to the tree and climb up. At the end of the day, however, rappelling down the tree was quick and easy.
The wind was working in my favor and blowing away from the bedding areas. My Ozonics ozone generator was running as well. I mention all this because around 4:30 I had a series of groups of deer coming in to about 15 yards from my stand. In total, I counted 12 antlerless deer and 2 young bucks. Both bucks were in shooting range at about 30 yards. One was a fork and the other was a tri fork. It felt good to pass on both deer and let them grow. I do not doubt that in a couple of years they will be great looking bucks.
I planned to let all the deer pass and wait until hopefully, a mature buck would emerge later in the day. I do not have any definite proof that there is a mature buck on this property yet, however the prevalence of cover, water, and nearby farm fields increases the probability. When I factor in the large number of does bedding on the property and the multiple potential buck beds it is almost certain there is at least one good buck out there. As the sun started to set the deer activity died down. By that point, they had all moved on to the farm fields already for their nighttime routines.
It was a great second day in the woods overall. I plan on hunting this property once again tomorrow during the rain and cold. I plan to move in closer to the bedding areas and to try and get more aggressive. I will then back out and hunt public land for the next week while I let things calm back down on the private spot.
