Blown opportunity this morning
Due to some unforeseen circumstances at work, I wound up with the morning off today and with the weather looking the way it was there was no chance i would be skipping an impromptu hunt.
I arrived at my tree about 20 mins before legal light and got settled in. It was a beautiful crisp clear morning and I soon heard some movement in the bean field behind me.
The stand location I chose is in the brush about 50 yards from a bean field, overlooking about 80 yards of dry ground before it runs off into a cedar swamp. It is decently brushy with a nice opening ahead and to the left of me. The does run this funnel morning and night, between their bedding area in the swamp and feeding in the beans. it is still very green and all the leaves are up, so there isn’t much visibility beyond about 50 yards, and even a lot of that is blocked off by the undergrowth.
like I said, I started hearing movement before first light, but nothing visualized. By about 745 I still hadn’t seen anything, but there is an elm sapling directly in front of me that had grown enough since last year that I was sitting in its canopy. After studying it a little I decided that if I could trim one or two branches I would have much better visibility, but not lose the cover it afforded me. So I pulled out my Grohmann and began whittling away the top branches.
As soon as I cleared the first branch away I looked through the opening and saw an ear flick about 60 yards to my right. After a minute or two i realized this was the group of does the frequent the area and if they passed my way I was going to take the largest of the group.
Well, they headed in front of me on a string. The first one, a fawn, passed by at 23 yards and strode through the opening I hoped to shoot into. Another fawn went through 20 yards behind the first, then a yearling doe. The fourth doe to come in to sight was a large one and I was ready to take her so I drew my bow and waited for her to step into the opening. She was walking rather briskly so as soon as she hit the opening I “meh’d” her as I wasn’t comfortable shooting at the speed the walking. She took 3 more steps and stopped broadside, with her vitals blocked by a 6” tree! She stood still for 10 seconds then turned directly away from me and sauntered off.
At this point I heard movement to the right and 2 more large does we’re waiting to walk through the opening. I guess they heard be try to stop the doe in front of them and they changed directions and walked off out of range.
Anyways, I’m still in the tree hoping something else will come through, but I’m encouraged by the number of does in the area that I have patterned. I am hunting this area lightly until the end of October. I have some real dandy bucks on camera in daylight and I can’t wait for them to start chasing!
