57° Low / 84° High - Clear

0 Animals Viewed

Pete and I wrapped up turkey season today, hunting together on my deer lease.  We split up again for the first hour and a half, but neither of us heard any gobbling.  Getting back together for a few minutes, we decided to try a couple of different areas, so we split up again but yet again heard nothing.

At lunch time, we decided to say the heck with turkey hunting for this year.  Turkey hunting can be a wonderfully fun thing to do, but when the birds aren't making any noise, it can also be extremely frustrating.  For the third year in a row, I've heard almost no gobbling on my lease, and although we know the birds are there, it was just time to give it up.

We each did, on one of our walks, find a couple of turkey eggs.  Mine was broken, probably by a fox, and Pete's was intact but not in a nest.

39° Low / 80° High - Clear

0 Animals Viewed

I went down to the lease today for an unplanned afternoon hunt.  I spent the whole afternoon on the second road, and saw and heard nothing.  Got quite a workout walking around the lease, but still no sign of any birds.

I found a nice arrowhead over by one of our deer stands; the first that I've found on this lease.

60° Low / 82° High - Heavy rain

0 Animals Viewed

Pete and I hunted together again on this rainy day.  We split up completely, both of us having places that we wanted to try to hunt.  The weather was absolutely miserable, which can make for a fun but frustrating time.  We saw no turkeys for most of the day.  I did find a fantastic spot for deer hunting, and if the loggers don't touch the place I found this will become my "secret spot" for deer season.

On the way out, three gobblers crossed the muddy lease road in front of the truck.  Pete hollered out "Stop the truck!", and I laughed, showing him that my foot was fully down on the brake pedal.  The mud was so thick that we were still sliding along as the turkeys ran into the woods.  We got out and chased them for a few minutes, but we never saw them again.

49° Low / 64° High - Overcast

0 Animals Viewed

Pete and I hunted together again today.  We split up, with him going down into the swamp and me deciding to walk the length of the first road from pretty much one end to the other.  As we started to part ways, Trey drove up in his truck.  He and I walked up to the top of the hill, but hearing no gobbles we also split up and went separate directions.

I did get a few answering gobbles from time to time on the first road, but never had any luck getting the attention of any of the turkeys that I tried calling to.

42° Low / 64° High - Overcast

0 Animals Viewed

Pete and I went down to Gerald's house today to hunt on his land.  Gerald (Micki's father) owns around 100 acres just twenty minutes from my house.  We flushed a quartet of wood ducks off of his pond when we crossed the dam heading to the house, and saw a ringneck duck as well.

The land was very thick and difficult to turkey hunt on, and though we found some scratching where turkeys had been, neither Pete nor I saw or heard any birds.

51° Low / 75° High - Overcast

2 Hen Turkeys seen

It was opening day of turkey season in my part of South Carolina today.  I got to my lease just before sunrise and parked my truck in front of stand 9.  I was about to walk down the long road in front of the stand to start my hunt when club member Brandon drove up and parked beside me.  We chatted for a minute or two, telling each other where we planned to hunt, then said our "good lucks" and parted ways.

I walked on down the road heading toward a small food plot that is hidden down in the woods near where I parked.  I paused to owl hoot a couple of times, hoping to hear a gobble, but I got no response.  I walked on down to the field, then found a brush pile that offered me plenty of cover to hide in.  I sat in the makeshift blind for an hour or so, occasionally calling but mostly just listening. 

Hearing nothing, I finally got up and gathered my gear.  Looking around, I spotted what looked like a deer skull about 30 yards away, so I walked over to take a look.  Before I got there I saw the tip of an antler sticking out of a pile of pine needles off to the left of the skull, so I picked it up and was surprised to find the intact skull of a beautiful 8 point buck.  The original skull turned out to be a small doe, so I left that one where it was but kept the 8 pointer.

I then made a wide circle back to my truck so that I wouldn't have to carry the skull around with me all morning.  Moving on to the next area, I ran into Brandon, who had heard one gobble but had not gotten a look at the turkey that made it. 

I made several more stands throughout the course of the day, but never saw any gobblers.  I did see two hens over on the first lease road, but that was it.

42° Low / 66° High - Clear

1 Fox Viewed

I decided to do things a little bit differently today.  I got to the lease just as it was getting light enough to shoot, so rather than put out the caller I climbed up in stand 9 and bleated a few times with my old fawn-in-distress mouth caller.  I did a one minute series, waited five minutes, then did another short series.  Just after the second series, I saw a fox trot out of the woods to my right, heading straight for my stand.  I stood up and got him in the scope just as he sat down on his haunches and started looking around.  When he sat, I slipped off the safety and fired, then saw him collapse in a heap.

Not bad, I thought.  In the stand for less than 10 minutes and already got one!  I got down and walked over to my fox.  It was a good sized grey, and the 7mm magnum really opened him up good.  He was gutted from brisket to pelvis; I couldn't have done a better job with a knife.  Perfect shot to have him pelted out.  I got my pocket knife and finished the job of gutting him, leaving the innards in a steaming pile on the ground.  I put him on a trash bag in the back of my truck, then moved on to the next stand.

Rather than hunt the lease in a liner fashion today, I had decided to bounce around from location to location throughout the main lease, so I headed over to the tall cedar tower next.  On the way, I saw that Jimmy and Matt had been hard at work.  There was a new ladder stand around the corner past stand 10 replacing an old ground blind that used to be there.  I didn't stop at the stand, but moved on to the cedar tower where I called for 30 minutes with no response.

From there I went to stand 15 and saw again that Jimmy and Matt had been at work.  They had removed the old tower stand and replaced it with a new ladder in a better location.  The new stand sat right in the middle of a sharp turn in the road, allowing you to look in two directions for deer hunting.  It was a beautiful spot, and I can't wait to hunt it this deer season.  I put out my caller, then climbed up in the new stand.  Ugh.  No bench, and no carpet yet.  I knelt on the floor of the stand and called for 10 minutes, but was just too uncomfortable without a seat, so I moved on.

At stand 16 I found the old tower that Jimmy had moved from my last spot.  The tower made this area a much better place to hunt; the old ground blind that used to be here sat too low to offer a good look at this small field.  I called for a half hour from here but again, no response.  I moved back to the second lease road and found yet another new stand that they had put up.  This was a ground blind that offered a great view up one of our logging roads, so I sat here for awhile, but still no predators appeared.

Leaving this stand, I turned out onto the main lease road and saw Jimmy and Matt headed my way in their trucks.  We stopped and chatted for awhile.  They were on their way to stand 15 to install the carpet and bench and do a little brush cutting.  I laughed and told them that I had just hunted in the new stand, but couldn't stay due to the missing bench.  Anyway, they headed on their way and I went mine, moving over to another area to hunt. 

I made three more stands, but saw nothing else all day.  Still, happy to have gotten even one predator, I headed over to Randy Jordan's place to drop off the fox to have him pelt it out for me.  While there we talked about my African trophies a bit, which are due to show up at the tannery in North Carolina in a week or so.  I told him that I'd like to have him do them in this order:  warthog, impala, blesbok, and kudu.  Of all of my African animals, the warthog would be the hardest trophy to replace, so I wanted him done first so that I could have him safely on my wall.  I'd save the kudu for last since he would be the most expensive mount.

28° Low / 60° High - Clear

0 Animals Viewed

My third predator hunt of the year was pretty much a repeat performance of the previous one.  I started the morning off in stand 9, then moved on to the long road near stand 10, then continued on through the lease hitting various deer stands in a linear fashion.  I got in a couple of different stands than I did on the previous hunt, but my luck was the same:  nothing.

After making a half dozen stands on the main part of the lease, I moved over to the smaller section where the loggers have been working.  I made a couple of stands in there without seeing anything, so I went over to the dirt pit and put my caller out near the edge of the woods that border the pit.  There's a huge cliff here, towering 70 feet above the pit with a stand on top looking out over the whole area.  Leaving my caller in place, I drove back out onto the main road to get to where you can access the stand on top of the cliff.

Rather than get in the stand itself, I sat with my back against a pine tree near the edge of the cliff.  The caller and decoy looked tiny below me, but when I activated them with the remote control I could hear the sound of the caller pretty well.  I stayed here for about an hour, just enjoying the view, thinking that I would have to deer hunt from here one time next season.

I got no response, so I drove back around and packed up my gear.  Hiding my truck in a little dip in the dirt pit, I locked it up tightly and decided to take a long walk into the swamp to look for antlers.  I made a huge circle through the area and found lots of buck sign, but no sheds.  I was drenched with sweat by the time I got back to my truck, so I decided at that point to call it a day and head home.

30° Low / 50° High - Cloudy, snow, sleet, rain, then clear

0 Animals Viewed

It was a long day of predator hunting for me today.  I went down to the lease alone today, determined to learn how to hunt predators.  I started off on the second lease road since they are doing a bunch of logging over on the first road.  My first setup was made where we saw the coyote two weeks ago.  I put my caller and decoy out up on the road to the right of stand 9, then got in the stand and began to call.

I did a 45 minute sequence at that stand with no answer, so I moved on.  My next stand was on the long road just past the first stand, where you have about a 200 yard view.  I put the caller and decoy way down the road, then got back in the young pines and did another 45 minutes of calling.  Still no response.

Next I moved to the third road and called from an old cedar tower stand that I don't hunt very often.  I didn't like the setup very well here, so I only stayed for about 20 minutes before moving on.  The next stand after that was another cedar tower; it's one that I don't like to get up in because the steps on the ladder are so far apart that it's hard to climb.  I got in it anyway, and found that the shooting window was way too high as compared to the seat.  Again, 20 minutes here and I moved on again.

I got in the tallest cedar tower on the lease next just as some snow and sleet began to move in.  I really liked this setup a lot, and I believe I called something in here.  I heard something trot up real close to my stand, but I never got a look at it.  After 45 minutes at this stand, it was time to move on yet again. 

I couldn't really decide where to go next, but I finally decided to take a little break from the predators and look around a little bit.  I drove to stand 16, which is a little field that I don't hunt very often.  Parking the truck on the far side of the field, I got my pistol out of my backpack and shoved it into my pocket.  Then I took a walk deep into the woods behind an old box blind on the edge of the field.  As I moved further and further into the woods I started to see a few buck rubs, then a couple of scrapes.  I was obviously in the home territory of a big buck; and I may have even gotten a glimpse of him.  A deer snorted at me and crashed through the woods to my left.  All I saw was his rear end, but a big rear end it was.

I looked around a bit more, then walked back to the truck.  It was lunch time, so I drove up to the highest hill I could find and called in an order for take-out from the Riverdeck.  On the way over to the restaurant I stopped and opened the gate at the dirt pit.  I wanted to put my caller out, pick up my lunch, then go sit in the cliff blind and eat while calling for more predators.  The cliff blind sits high.. very high... atop a cliff that looks down over the dirt pit.  Unfortunately, it was starting to rain, and my caller is not waterproof, so I had to abandon that plan.

I went on and picked up my lunch, then came back and sat on a bench at our target range in the dirt pit and ate my meal.  After that I decided to go look for shed antlers for awhile, so I moved my truck down into a dip to hide it, then walked into the swamp behind the dirt pit.  Many of the trees in the swamp were torn up with buck rubs; this was obviously still a great habitat for the big monsters.  I walked from one end of the swamp to the other, but all I found was the skull, pelvis, and one leg bone from a small doe.  Oh, I found a turtle shell too; seems like I find them all the time.

I was tired out from my walk through the swamp by the time I got back to my truck, so I decided just to drive around a bit before doing any more predator hunting.  I took a trip up the first lease road to see how the loggers were doing.  Turns out that they had been busy; the woods have been thinned from one end of the road to the other.  We have a couple of potential new food plots, but the road is a total mess right now, and I worried about getting stuck.  I managed to drive the entire distance without any problems, but I sure was relieved to get back to the main road.

Next up, I did a 30 minute sequence of calls at the salt lick stand followed by 30 minutes at the family stand.  As usual, nothing responded.

There wasn't a lot of daylight left, so I decided to make one more stand for predators.  I went back to the long stretch of road between stand 9 and stand 10 and got set up just like I had done earlier this morning.  I waited for about 30 minutes before doing any calling, then tried a series of male coyote challenge calls and finally some female invitation calls, but yet again I got no response.

These predators are amazingly difficult to hunt.  Although it was great fun to be back in the woods today, it was frustrating not getting any responses.  Well, there was that one potential response earlier today, but I would have liked to have gotten a look at the animal.  Anyway, we'll keep at it and one day will know how to hunt these jokers.

36° Low / 57° High - Clear

1 Coyote seen

Ted and I opened up the 2008 hunting year today by heading down to the lease for some predator hunting.  Ted only had a half-day to hunt, so we took separate vehicles and met up at a gas station outside of Great Falls, SC.  On the road to the lease we saw a small herd of deer and two grey foxes.

We started off the morning at stand 9.  I walked down the road in front of the stand and put out my electronic caller and decoy while Ted set up his Ameristep ground blind.  He put the blind beside the ladder stand and got in.  I climbed up the stand.  Our agreement was that Ted would take anything that came into view on the long road in front of the stand, while I would shoot anything to either side. 

As daylight approached, I heard the sound of a predator coming directly in towards us.  I hadn't even started calling yet, but the sound was unmistakable.  It was still fairly dark, but I caught a glimpse of a coyote coming out of the woods directly in front of me.  He saw Ted's blind and turned and trotted off along the road leading deeper into the lease.  I raised my rifle, but couldn't find him in the scope.  My impression was that he had darted off the road to the right, into some young pines, but try as I might I never saw him. 

After that, I turned on the caller and let it go for awhile, but nothing else came in.  Getting down from the stand, we found the coyote's tracks in the road and saw that he had actually branched off to the left, staying on the road, rather than heading right as I thought he had. 

We moved toward the next deer stand, hoping to call along a 300 yard section of logging road bordered by young pines.  I was walking down the road to set up the caller when suddenly I saw a beagle standing in the road.  He looked lost, and I tried to get him to come to me, but he was scared and ran off.  Knowing that this stand was ruined, we decided to move on.

We gathered the gear then went and made another stand in a deep valley a quarter mile down the road.  The wind was picking up, and nothing at all responded, so we decided to head even deeper into the woods.  We drove over to what we call "Rattlesnake Road", jumping two deer on the way, then parked the truck and moved into a swamp bottom where we again called for a half hour or so.  Still no response.

Deciding to move toward where we had seen the two foxes on the way in this morning, we moved over to the first lease road and went down into another deep valley to call.  We put the caller out on a hill on the opposite side of the valley from us in what looked to be a beautiful setup.  Again though we got no response.

It was getting pretty late and Ted would need to go home soon, and he still wanted to try to sight in his Ruger .44 Magnum revolver.  We drove over to the "dirt pit", which is a place on our lease that's set up for target shooting.  After a quick lunch, we tried to sight in the Ruger but had no luck.  The recoil is so heavy that the scope mount would not stay in place.  We gave up and Ted headed on home.

I drove back over to the main lease and parked my truck in what we call the "staging area", which is a big field that we use to assemble our stands. I took a short nap, then went back to the dirt pit.  There is a pine tree that was starting to block the road into the pit, so I took a few minutes to cut off some of the larger branches.  After that, I took a walk back into the swamp behind the shooting area.

I found a couple of large rubs, and I found a nice trail camera that one of the guys had put out in front of a corn pile.  Looks like a great place to deer hunt.  I tried to stand in front of the camera so it would take a picture of me so that the owner would know that I had found his secret spot, but it never went off.  Must have been out of film.