Bad morning for me.

Winchested

Winchested

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Set-up first year hunting deer, I'm on my own and have been for the 4th day sitting and waiting to see some deer move.

7:30 comes up, another guy who has permission to hunt the property comes, I say hi how are you. He goes off into another corner. 30 minutes later *BOOM*. He was in and out with a deer on the rack of his atv in 45 minutes, I have spent over 20 hours out there this week and have not even seen anything.

To top it off, it rained and rained, our duck blind is under 1 1/2 feet of water and my Dodge Caliber got stuck in the mud when I tried to leave. That took me another 35 minutes to un-stick.


I think I am King of bad luck!
 
Seeing as he's finished hunting, why don't you take a walk over to where he was hunting and see what's different from his area from your's. Maybe he was watching a scrape line, or a salt lick. or he's sitting on a ridge + can see more surrondings or maybe the wind was in his favor, or maybe he's quieter than you are. Maybe he's sitting on a natural funnel. Could be alot of reasons. Maybe LUCK.
Are you sitting in your duck blind in the water. If you are, get out and walk around.
 
Wrong spot+ wrong time= No deer. :(

Describe the area you are hunting...why do you think it is a good spot for a stand?
 
I wouldn't get too discouraged....I think hunting is sometimes a little skill and a little luck. Just depends on the day. Of course, I'm fairly new to deer hunting so I could be wrong.;) Keep at it.
 
maybe the deer winded you and ran over to him.
Maybe he has a nice little bait pile over there that he has been feeding when you are not around.
FYI. dodges are good trucks dont listen to these guys. They tend to only get stuck in the mud. if it was a open field you would have no problem.. LOL
 
Bummer, happened to me a couple weeks ago in Bashaw...sitting watching a farm track for deer to cross in the snow...guy drives onto the farm 200yrds behinf me (no permission that day as my farmer friend did not recognize his truck), after he drives all over the quarter he cruises to a spot I was at 15mins before and BOOM...I knew it was a good spot that I should been more patient with!

Oh well, just like Ray from Trailer Park Boys says, "Way she goes boys..sometimes she goes, sometimes she doesn't, way she f*%kin goes!":D
 
Would you rather have been at work?

You'll get lots of days like that .

It'll make the day when you do score that much better.


I just had 10 days like that this year travelling 1100 miles and coming home with 10 grouse.

That's why they call it hunting.

and there's nothing like it...



FWIW, I think Teddy Roosevelt said it very well

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
 
I was hunting atop a sand hill in at the east end of a pond that showed plenty of deer tracks all around it, I had baited it with apples for quite a while and noticed they were getting eaten. The swampy end of the pond is flooded by about 2' of water in the past 3 days due to more water going in than coming out so it has stopped the deer coming through that end of the pond.

I understand why he was able to find the deer, it was only luck he stumbled upon it because originally he was headed to the other side of the pond.

No I wasn't hunting out of the duck blind.

It was an okay morning, I did walk over to where he had shot the deer. It was a small little 1 acre soy bean field off the main field with a 20 yard thicket all the way around it. Deer must have been bedding down in there now. I will be heading to that spot tomorrow and sunday now.
 
Winchested said:
I was hunting atop a sand hill in at the east end of a pond that showed plenty of deer tracks all around it, I had baited it with apples for quite a while and noticed they were getting eaten. The swampy end of the pond is flooded by about 2' of water in the past 3 days due to more water going in than coming out so it has stopped the deer coming through that end of the pond.

I understand why he was able to find the deer, it was only luck he stumbled upon it because originally he was headed to the other side of the pond.

No I wasn't hunting out of the duck blind.

It was an okay morning, I did walk over to where he had shot the deer. It was a small little 1 acre soy bean field off the main field with a 20 yard thicket all the way around it. Deer must have been bedding down in there now. I will be heading to that spot tomorrow and sunday now.
Click to expand...

Tracks are great, when were they made, at midnight? never expect deer in the open , find out where their coming from, setup on trails, or where 2 or more come in contact with each other. etc ...
 
Winchested said:
It was a small little 1 acre soy bean field off the main field with a 20 yard thicket all the way around it. Deer must have been bedding down in there now. I will be heading to that spot tomorrow and sunday now.
Click to expand...


Now THAT is where you want to be. Great cover to bed down in, GREAT feed, water nearby.

BTW, I didn't shoot a deer, and only saw a few that never presented a good shot, for the first 3 years after I started hunting. I didn't have a hunter father to teach me, so I taught myself. Now I shoot roughly 7 or 8 big-game animals per year. You want to know what the difference is? Now I know how to find the animals, and I hunt land where the animals live and are easier to find!
 
Thanks for the input guys, I am slowly learning patience and learning on your own is hard but I am trying.

My father has not shot a deer before either, but fortunately my father in-law is getting back into the game and he has shot plenty.
 
I spent at least 200 hrs in stands and such this year. I hunt mostly primitive weapon ( Bow and BP ) so the set up has to be right. I got one opportunity for the whole season. It was only a doe but putting in all that time makes it al the sweeter. During rifle season there was a lot of shooting around me but what can you do.

Enjoy the time out there and the best advice I can give is to watch the wind. All season wind were shifting or from the wrong direction. The one day the wind was perfect I connected at under 20 yards. Patience is a virtue at this sport.
 
winchested said:
I was hunting atop a sand hill in at the east end of a pond that showed plenty of deer tracks all around it, I had baited it with apples for quite a while and noticed they were getting eaten. The swampy end of the pond is flooded by about 2' of water in the past 3 days due to more water going in than coming out so it has stopped the deer coming through that end of the pond.
Click to expand...


Whitetail deer are not deterred by water, in fact they deliberately travel through it to throw off their scent.

One November, I tracked a buck for about a mile. It was zig-zagging through the bush, made a few rubs and scrapes, eventually it came to a river. The river was frozen, where the deer came to it. It could have simply walked across the ice. But the deer made a point of turning and heading up the bank to a spot where there was open water, and it crossed there, by swimming through the water. It actually had to go through an area of thin ice by breaking it.

Another time I tracked a buck through a bush in Ontario. That bush had several swampy areas, with ponds and the buck made a point of detouring to those water holes and crossing right through the middle of them. And that deer also had to break ice in the ponds in order to get through. It did it three times! Three different ponds! I found that fascinating!

Walking around open water or water with thin ice would seem the obvious thing to do. From those experiences, I learned that deer instinctively seek out the water to break up their scent trails. Neither deer were being pursued by predators, I only came along after the fact and tracked them in the snow.

Now if I track a deer, I expect it to head for creeks or ponds. Temperature is irrelevant. I think when I tracked that Alberta deer it was -20C.
 
You didn't have a bad morning, you were hunting. That's a good morning. When you actually get a deer, that's a very good morning.
 
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