The Pre-Hunt Part 2 -- Scouting My Stand

Early Friday morning (less than 24 hours from the open), my brother-in-law and I hopped on four-wheel ATVs and headed out to scout the camp and spread a little corn. My stand turned out to be about 2 miles from camp (as the ATV flies). It's a 5' x 5' box stand with a floor roughly 6' off the ground. This is lower than a typical box stand (which is good for my fat butt), but sits up on a mound so it's adequately raised for good sight lines and shooting angles. Here's a pic I took and sent to my wife, who responded that it looks like a tree fort of some kind (which admittedly, is true).

The first thing I noticed about my stand is that my shooting areas were wide open and plentiful, and overlooking a creek bed. Imagine if you are looking directly ahead, and a creek surrounds you in a semicircle. And on both sides of the semi-circle creek bed, trees are left uncut, but that all the trees beyond the creek and between you and the creek are cut. Yeah, I suppose that's pretty hard to imagine. Here's some pics to try to explain.

Here's what I see directly ahead of me while sitting in my stand.

Here's what I see when I look to my right.

And here's what I see when I look to my left. If you look closely, you'll see my automatic corn feeder just before the tree line.

Here's a view from my feeder (on my left shoulder), back to the stand. In fact, it would probably be a lot easier if I just show you a video.


After we filled the feeder with corn, we grabbed the memory card from an infared game camera attached nearby. When we finished with my area, we scattered corn near 2 of my BIL's 3 areas then headed back to camp. When we pulled up the pics from the game camera, we saw several deer, including 2 nice 8 point or better bucks. We also saw a number of turkeys and even a few dogs.

Soon thereafter, J-Dawg arrived and we took him out on the 4 wheelers and the truck to show him my BIL's stand where he would be hunting the next morning. By late Friday afternoon, the camp was bustling. Several other hunters were now on site. A number of them were sighting in rifles on the 100 yard range sitting just beside my BIL's and sister's camper, where I stayed. At some point during the afternoon, my kids, granddaughters and nephews began to arrive to visit. About an hour after dark, the fish fry commenced. A handful of camp members cooked cornbread battered catfish, hush puppies and french fries in open fryers outside the cook shack. To that we added cole slaw, several dessert choices and gallons of ice tea. It was a damn fine meal, and a good way to kick off the hunt. After visiting with my family members for quite a while, we settled in to try to sleep a few hours on the eve of the hunt. I set my alarm on my blackberry for 5 a.m. and managed to sleep a few hours, wondering what I'd see.

Up next -- day one of the hunt.