I awoke to my alarm at promptly 5 a.m. to hear the wind howling. After wrangling J-Dawg, I filled my backpack with Vitamin Water, bottled water, jerky and nuts. I tried to give him equal rations, but he didn't have as much room -- it turns out his mom packed him several goodies of his own. Unfortunately, we realized we left his hunting clothes in his sister's car, so J-Dawg set out on opening morning wearing shorts, boots and a long sleeve shirt. I gave him a heavy fleece shirt to take to the stand with him so he wouldn't freeze, but we were both so pumped the cool, windy morning didn't seem to matter.
I put three .270 WSM cartridges in my right front pocket, made sure I had my orange hat and vest, and after messing around for a bit, left camp promptly at 5:30 a.m. under the cover of total darkness. We had planned our route the day before -- I would drive J-Dawg to his stand (a loaner from my B-I-L) then drive as close to mine as I could get before hiking in. In all, it was about 15 minutes and 5 miles. (I will embed a video in a later part of the series that will show the last mile or so of the drive, which is essentially 4x4 territory.)
After arriving at my parking area, I strapped on my pack and began hiking in on a trail suitable only for 4-wheelers and bulldozers. After what seemed like a mile (we later estimated it to be between 1/4 and 3/8 of a mile), I finally emerged near my stand. Though I was never a boy scout, I would have made one proud in packing my bag. I toted probably 10 bottles of water/vitamin water, 2 pounds of nuts and jerky, a box of ammo, field glasses, a flashlight, a deer grunt, a camo fleece pullover, a flip video camera, my blackberry and of course, that hunting essential -- my I Pad. It didn't take but 1 day's worth of hiking for me to realize that I probably didn't need to carry so much stuff.
In any event, I was in my stand a good 20 minutes before it was light enough to see. With the wind continuing to howl, I waited for the deer to arrive. And waited. And waited. At 7 a.m., my automatic deer feeder spun a half pound of corn onto the ground. Being the optimist, I figured the deer heard it go off and were probably beating a path to my stand at that very moment! But as the minutes dragged past, I neither saw nor heard anything. Of course, the wind was blowing so hard, a herd of elephants could have tromped through the brush behind me and I probably wouldn't have known it.
Finally, about 8:30, a small deer appeared on the roadway/shooting lane directly in front of me, on the left side of the head-on view photo from my pre-hunt scouting post. He was walking right toward me at about 75 yards, right in the road gap in the treeline. I could tell right away he was a little spike. He took about five steps toward me, turned to his left so he was broadside in the road, then in 2 or 3 steps walked into the cover of woods. He wasn't much of a buck, but it was great to see a deer - any deer - after sitting there for 2.5 hours with nothing happening but a handful of shots in the distance from my fellow camp members.
I hunted until 11 a.m., but saw nothing else. I wasn't too discouraged yet -- though the wind was really whipping about (no doubt causing the deer to stay put far more than usual), the pictures in my game camera told me that most of the deer near my stand/feeder came by in the evening. So I hiked back out, jumped in the truck and picked up J-Dawg on the way back to camp. He had seen a few does and a decent 8 point that he couldn't get a shot at. While I was hunting in a clearing with a woodline through it, he was deeper in the woods where it was a little quieter from a wind perspective.
We headed back to camp and ate biscuits, sausage, eggs, hash browns etc. prepared by the camp cooks, who would be preparing 2 big meals a day for the entire opening week. We learned pretty quickly, however, that most of the hunters quit between 9:30 and 10, and had eaten all the bacon and gravy! But we didn't mind -- we came to hunt, not eat. J-Dawg only had 2 days, and I only had 5. We decided we would hunt first, and eat what was left. And from that point on, we were typically the first ones out of camp, and the last ones in.
Back at camp, we learned that a half dozen or so hunters had bagged decent 8 point or better bucks. However, most were disappointed with how many deer they had seen, blaming the wind and weather. Many hunters had not seen a single deer, which was incredible to them considering most stands had been "overrun" with deer the weekend before during the blackpowder hunt. In fact, my B-I-L had shot a large doe the week before after picking her out of a crowd of NINE sitting in a single shooting lane.
We loaded up at 2 p.m. to head back to our stands. The wind remained ferocious throughout the afternoon. I stared for hours at the areas around me, waiting on the deer that had been captured on my camera only days ago to return for the corn scattered beneath the feeder. But it wasn't to be on that afternoon. I stayed until it was good and dark at 5:45 without seeing a thing. Through text messaging, I learned J-Dawg had seen nothing either, while my B-I-L continued to see a fair number of deer, including a couple of decent 7 and 8 pointers -- he was holding out for a BIG deer.
Back at camp we filled up on pork chops, pinto beans, corn bread, and all sorts of goodies. The deer might have proved disappointing on day one, but the food continued to be awesome. We had hunted hard, and were tired. We hung out with family as long as we could, then made them go home so I could shower, relax with a cocktail, then get to sleep. 5 a.m. and Day 2 would be here before you know it.
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