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Well guys, this is going to be a long journal entry. This one will cover the annual 9 day hunting trip my buddy Dan and I took from 11/3 to 11/11 that we split between his property in Otsego County NY and my property in Bradford County, PA.
As usual during this time of year, Friday 11/2 found me restless at work waiting for 5pm to click. The car was already packed with enough clothes and supplies for the 9 day trip that awaited Dan and I. As soon as 5pm hit, I was out of there and on my way to Dan’s house to make our weekly trip to go sit in a tree. Initial plans for the trip were to stay at Dan’s camp from Saturday the 3rd to Monday 5th, then head 2.5 hours to my camp Monday night and to plan to stay until Friday night, then back up to Dan’s camp for the last Saturday and Sunday.
Picture of Dan and I in the car on the way to his camp on Friday evening
Saturday 11/3 –
Now Dan and I have a 3 year running history on a patch of property that is adjacent to his family plot. This property is probably 60 acres in size and is owned by a neighbor that has given exclusive permission to hunt to Dan’s family and camp. This year we decided that we would not step foot on this property until the second week in November, since in the past this is when it produced the most sightings. We did not want to risk disturbing it until the chase phase had really started.
It has become a VERY well used big buck travel corridor during the chase and seek phases and has produced annual sightings of Pope and Young caliber deer for both Dan and I every year. We were both very excited for our first sits on this patch of property this year, and both had our fingers crossed for a good wind to hunt this spot. Our plans were if the wind allowed to hunt approximately 75 yards apart, with me covering the stream crossing funnel, and Dan covering the fence line that ran through the timber next to this stream. Luckily, when we woke up Saturday morning the wind was perfect.
We set out anxiously on Saturday morning well before sunrise for the ¾ mile hike to this spot with a days worth of food in our packs, a climber stand strapped to each of our backs, and intentions for an all day sit. Boy the first signs of daylight took forever that morning it seemed because of the anticipation. Things were surprisingly slow during the early part of the morning I remember. At approximately 9am, a flock of almost 20 turkeys came in at less than 20 yards, and despite open season and a turkey tag burning a hole in my pocket I decided I would pull out the camera instead of the bow. I managed to get almost 5 full minutes of video of the flock before they finally decided to head the other way towards Dan.
Following the turkey encounter at around 10am a pair of young 1.5 year old bucks cruised in, a spike and a small basket rack 6 pointer. The spike bedded for about 10 minutes roughly 50 yards away while the 6 pointer rubbed on trees. I’m not sure why, but the spike got up after only a few minutes and the 6 pointer followed him to the stream crossing in front of me. They both crossed and headed in Dan’s direction, both well within shooting distance of my stand when they crossed.
Picture of the 6 pointer in the stream crossing I was covering
After discussing with Dan later that day both of these young bucks passed in front of him at less than 15 yards just seconds after I snapped that picture.
Probably less than half an hour after the two young bucks passed through, I heard the unmistakable sound of Dan’s bow interrupting the trickling sound of the stream beneath me. I waited patiently to see if something would come crashing my way, however after several minutes of waiting and looking and listening, I realized that whatever it was probably wasn’t coming my way.
Another 15 minutes or so following the first shot, I heard the bow go off again, followed by a loud hoot of joy coming from Dan. I knew he must have just shot a stud of a buck if he was this excited, I’ve hunted with him enough now to know that if he was this excited it had to be an exceptional deer. After a minute or two of waiting to see if something was going to come crashing my way, I got on the 2 way radio to see what he had shot. Dan explained to me that the first shot was at a doe that he managed to miss clean due to a yardage guessing error, however the second shot was a VERY large buck that he thought was either a 9 or 10 pointer that came in following the doe a few minutes later.
He explained to me that he hit the buck a bit far forward and maybe a bit high as the deer quartered away from him, but that the arrow had still hit well within the vitals, and certainly within the 10 ring on a 3D target. We decided to be a bit patient and to give the deer an hour and a half or so to err on the side of caution. At about 1pm, I headed out of my tree to head over to Dan’s stand to make our way to the scene of impact and see what kind of sign was waiting for us.
Here is Dan at the base of his tree as I approached from my stand
After heading to the sign of impact we quickly determined that the arrow had not passed through, Dan said he also saw the deer run off with 7-8” of arrow sticking out. Although the buck was easy to follow because of his extremely heavy footed tracks in the leaves, the first 50 yards of the trail produced little to no blood. After those first 50 yards or so though, it was like the flood gates opened, and there was blood everywhere. This was an encouraging sign to led us to the conclusion that it was OK to pursue the animal a bit further, afterall an animal bleeding this heavily couldn’t go far.
Actual pictures of the blood trail
The blood trail continued with the same consistent heavy blood flow every few feet, was a bright pink color, and consistently had bubbles in it. The sign every hunter hopes for when beginning to track their animal. Every 100 yards or so, we would come across a patch where the buck seemed to stop and there would be a pool of blood 6” to 8” in diameter. Every 10 minutes we would say he can’t be far, there is just too much blood here and he can’t continue like this much longer………
Probably a good 400 yards into the blood trail with no deer, the trail started to die down a bit so Dan and I decided to back out, head to the cabin, change into more appropriate clothes, give the deer some more time, and get his father so we had a third set of eyes. We returned on the trail another 2 hours or so later with his father and managed to find blood 30 yards from our last spot and then had consistent blood again for probably another 200 yards or so before dark came.
The buck would continue on a trail in one direction for 100 yards or so and then out of nowhere backtrack, and change directions entirely. Again, through the entire first day we had enough blood that encouraged us to stay on the trail because we simply thought the animal couldn’t continue on with the amount of blood loss we were seeing.
At dark, we decided to back out, give the deer overnight, and then come back refreshed with another 12 hours of daylight to continue the search. We got back to the cabin and I called HuntingNet.Com’s own Rob / PA Bowyer to see if he had a phone number for a local certified deer tracker with a trained dog, and he armed me with the contact information of John Jeanneney (local to NY but also a national authority on tracking wounded game with dogs). After a phone conversation with John that night he gave me contact information of a few locals much closer to Dan’s camp that were certified and had trained dogs that we could call on if we needed.
Sunday 11/4 -
Sunday morning found us back on the trail at around 8am. Blood became a bit spotty at this point, but we were still finding consistent blood every 10-20 feet or so with a good spot pooled up every 100 yards. Again we were confident that we would find the deer, he just went further than we thought he would. We tracked the deer another 400 yards or so until we came to a side hill that headed downhill and towards a beaver pond that had the perimeter clearly marked with posted signs.
We decided to head to the edge of the beaver pond and look at the names of the posted signs so we could obtain contact information of the owners, back out, and hopefully then get permission to pursue the animal. Well halfway down the side hill to the signs, Dan’s buck jumps up less than 100 yards from us, runs full bore straight to the beaver pond, jumps in and swims to the far side of the pond and we heard him crashing off through the timber on the other side. Thoroughly disappointed, we continued to follow the blood to the posted signs to confirm that the animal that just ran off was indeed the deer that Dan had shot. After confirming this, we backed out to get in touch with the land owners, and to give the deer another night to expire.
Turns out one of the owners of the property the buck ran onto is actually the host of Woods n Water television, Peter Fiduccia and his cousin Leo. It is their personal QDMA managed property and hunting club. We had heard from locals that they had obtained this property however because of time restraints we never had made time to go meet the members of their club. We obtained information on where their main camp was on the property from neighbors and Dan and I set out to meet their crew and hopefully obtain permission to pursue this buck.
We headed over to their camp and Dan and I were greeted by Peter’s son Cody and his wife Kate. Cody had us follow him to where his father and Leo were working on the property and we had a chance to talk with them and explain the situation. I have to say, Peter and Leo were both great to deal with, and very pleasant and supportive of us going in to find the buck. We agreed that we would get a member of Deer Search (NY’s organization of certified deer trackers with trained dogs) in there the following morning after giving the buck another full night to expire.
After a bit of conversation with Peter and Leo about our QDMA projects we parted ways and Dan and I headed back to his camp to get in touch with one of the local contacts I had obtained that could assist us with a trained dog in the morning. I spoke with Mario Montana on the phone upon our arrival to Dan’s camp, and he agreed to come out the following morning with his Wirehair Daschund named Cheyenne.
After the phone conversation I decided to shower and head out to hunt for the rest of the evening. I was able to have a nice encounter with a fat 1.5 year old 5 point buck that I watched at less than 30 yards for quite a while, and I even managed to capture almost 3 minutes of video of him as well feeding in one of the food plots.
Monday 11/5 –
Monday morning finally came, and I called Mario at around 7:30am to give him directions to Dan’s camp.When he finally arrived, we all piled into Dan’s Ranger and headed up to the scene of last blood.
Mario Montana with his dog Cheyenne right before we headed to the last sign of blood
We quickly arrived at the scene of last blood and then circled the pond to see where this buck reached the other side of the pond. We got lucky and quickly found blood where the deer came out of the pond. We tracked the buck up the hill on the other side of the pond, following Cheyenne’s nose and excited barks as she followed the trail. At the top and after paralleling the hill for a bit, we arrived to a corn field and followed her for another 100 yards or so parallel to the corn field.
All of a sudden 60 yards off the downhill side of the field, the woods erupted as Dan’s buck stood up out of his bed along with a doe, and both and crashed off through the timber. At this point, there is no blood on the ground; however Cheyenne confirmed this was the same buck as she barked and barked and barked while sniffing his bed. I got a good look at this buck from about 60 yards away as he bounded off, and he ran with no limp and did not appear to be wounded at all.
When I say this deer was a true stud of a whitetail, I honestly mean it. It was in the top 3 biggest bucks I have ever seen in the wild in my life and I’m guessing it was pushing well over 130” of antler, an exceptional deer for central NY. We followed Cheyenne’s nose about 100 yards further on the trail of this buck after his bed, and found no fresh blood. After seeing the buck was with a doe, was not bleeding at this time, ran off fine with no visual signs of being mortally wounded, and the fact that it was now 48 hours after he was hit………we decided that this buck was probably not mortally wounded at this point and came to the conclusion that we should back out and call off the search.
It broke my heart to not be able to see Dan wrap his hand around the horns of this beautiful buck, but we all felt comfort in the fact that the deer was not mortally wounded and would live to see another day. With any luck there will be another chapter in the story of this buck, and it will be easy to identify him in the future with the permanent tattoo that Dan put on his right shoulder. We have since spoke with Peter Fiduccia and his cousin Leo and asked them if they manage to tag this buck later this year on their property, that we would at least like to see him up close.
If anyone from the Triple M hunting club sees this journal entry I would personally like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to pursue this buck onto your property, and for the opportunity to at least bring closure to this encounter for Dan. You’re a stand up group of guys in my book and I certainly am glad that we finally got to meet each of you, and I wish you all a great season! I hope we can have discussions in the future on how we can maybe get some of our surrounding neighbors on board with a QDMA plan that will help us all see more and better bucks in this area.
After bringing closure to this encounter for Dan, we decided to not hunt that last evening in NY and to pack up the car a bit early and head to my camp in PA and let Dan’s place cool down for a few days.
My car packed with all of our stuff in front of Dan’s camp just before we headed to my camp
Tuesday morning the alarm went of early in my cabin, and Dan and I headed into the woods early as well. Dan decided to sit in the Nanny Whacker stand since it has produced so many encounters with chasing bucks during this phase of the year. I headed to my favorite honey hole Dan has now named as the Double Barrel stand.
The Double Barrel stand is a travel corridor that runs parallel to the creek bottom, and connects the two most utilized buck bedding areas on my family property (both young hemlock stands). The bucks cruise this area paralleling the creek on the property directly by this stand so consistently. This is a stand that I have always stayed out of until the second week of November; I never pressure this area until this time of year. It is one of those spots that the bucks are using year in and out, and if you stay clear of it until prime time, it will produce.
It is so close however to the bedding/sanctuary areas that you will only get one or two hunts a year in this place before it is disturbed, so you need to plan these accordingly for the cruising/seeking/chasing phase and you need to plan for a time with perfect wind direction. Before sunlight, I heard 3 separate instances of deer crashing through the water in the creek bottom, a sure sign that this spot was hot. As the sun came up I realized that there were several scrapes in the same spot as they were last year, less than 10 yards from my stand.
Story continues below
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At approximately 7:30am, I hear the unmistakable sounds of a deer closing in on me on the upwind side, and since it had rained the entire night before and the leaves on the ground were soaked, I knew this deer was close. Seconds later a button buck popped into my main shooting lane at 10 yards and cruised almost directly underneath me Every few steps he would stop and look over his shoulder, checking his back trail. I knew another deer was probably following him, I assumed his mother would follow in a few minutes.
Very shortly after he cruised through, I heard the sound of a second deer approaching quickly. At this point I was standing with my bow ready just in case, although I had no intentions of shooting does that morning. The approaching deer stopped probably 15 yards out with brush and several trees between us and I couldn’t see exactly what it was. All of a sudden a young hemlock that was approximately 25 feet tall started shaking violently back and forth, the top swaying 3-4’ in either direction. I obviously knew it was a buck at this point and I was so excited anticipating what kind of buck it was I thought my heart was going to pop out of my chest, or that he would see my frosty breath for sure, or maybe I would just fall straight out of the tree.
After he thrashed the tree for several minutes only yards away, he started to scrape right there. I still couldn’t see him at this point, however I could hear the debris flying everywhere as he pawed away at the ground. The buck then swung to my right hand side and appeared in a shooting lane at less than 10 yards, with his ears laid back and with an aggressive stiff legged posture walking towards where the button buck was standing behind me. I quickly swung around to prevent myself from getting tangled in my safety harness, and to hopefully get a shot at him on the other side of the tree as he continued to walk menacingly towards the button buck.
After turning to see him on the other side I reached full draw quickly, but he was still moving. Since he was less than 10 yards at this point I didn’t want to risk trying to stop him with a mouth grunt and spooking him. I followed him at full draw for what seemed like forever, until he hit the downwind side of my scent. He stopped immediately, picked his ears up from the aggressive laid back position to the upright alert position and started looking around for the source of the smell……..while facing directly at me at less than 10 yards. I knew I had no ethical shot at this angle and continued to hold for what seemed like an eternity.
What was probably more like 30 seconds after this stand off started, he started to side step as if he was ready to get out of there quickly, and his side step brought him into the full broadside position. This was all I needed, and I dropped the string and let my Drenalin sing. Because of the extreme downward angle caused by how close he was, and the height of my stand, my arrow took him directly in the spine. Upon impact, the buck flipped straight over onto his back and locked up and started thrashing.
I quickly reloaded and sent another Goldtip his way, which quickly brought closure to the encounter with this fine buck. I know he isn’t as large as some of the bucks we have seen this year on HNI however he is my best with a bow, and after passing over a half dozen legal bucks this year it felt great to bring closure to my 07 buck tag in PA with this deer. After Dan and I both added everything up separately we came up with the same number, he taped out at 98 1/8” gross with no brow tines and weighed in at 160lbs field dressed.
Wednesday 11/7 -
The next several days I got a bit lazy for the morning hunts and elected to sleep in and work on finishing up the log paneling on the interior of my cabin. I continued to hunt evenings to try and fill my doe tags however nothing quite panned out for me. I did get a VERY rare north wind Wednesday evening. This is the wind that is required to hunt my largest food plot (plot #1 in my first journal entry), and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity because we only see this wind direction maybe 1-2 times per year. I managed to see several deer including an encounter with a beautiful mature doe that I also captured some video of, but I wasn’t able to close the deal. I’m excited now for the PA late archery season to try and fill my remaining two doe tags I have left for PA.
Dan and I did manage to finally finish up the interior of my cabin on Thursday night. We worked hard for several hours and finally finished up around 12:30am. I have to say I’m absolutely thrilled this is finally done now. I still have to finish building the beds that I have bought materials for, and then we won’t have to sleep on air mattresses anymore when we are there.
The last night we were there it was down in the 20’s at night outside and because we finally sealed everything up on the ceiling, my little heater was able to keep the temperature in the cabin around 80 degrees all night. This was a welcome change after several nights with the cabin temps in the 40’s and 50’s. I wish I had taken pictures to share of the interior completed, but I will have to get these next week when I am down there for Thanksgiving. I will be sure to share this in a future journal update so you can all see the final product.
Friday 11/9 –
Friday morning I elected to stay in the cabin and sleep in since it was so cozy warm and we had worked so late the night before. We went out to breakfast at the local greasy spoon named the Chatterbox, and when we got back Dan decided to head out into the woods to hunt the hollow crossing funnel on the neighbor’s property where we had setup a climber a few days earlier. We had setup my new game camera as well in this spot and we were anxious to see what had crossed since the beginning of the week. The plan was to have Dan sit there until dark and then he would pack out the climber and camera when he was done with his sit.
The evening was uneventful with only a lone spike coming through the area directly under the stand. At dark Dan let me know on the 2 way radio that he was waiting by the road and asked for a ride back to the cabin. I gladly hopped in my father’s truck and headed to where he was waiting to give him a ride. On our way out we decided to take the long way and pass my large food plot since it was still light enough to see if something was in it.
As we got to the plot, we could easily see a VERY large 3.5 year old 8 point buck with long upward sweeping main beams only 40 yards from us. We watched him as he casually went on his way cruising away obviously looking for ladies. It was exciting to see him, and to know he should make it for another year unless Dan gets lucky and tags him during the late season this year. He already had a good 120” of antler on him and he should be an awesome buck next year, hopefully he makes it!
After arriving back at my camp, we pulled the memory card on the camera and also came up with pictures of what appears to be another 3.5 year old buck. As of now he is still alive and well and I’m hoping he makes it another year as well, at his age he probably will not relocate and this would now be 2x separate 4.5 year old animals for us to hunt next year and will make it much easier to pass the little ones knowing they are lurking. He’s not exactly a prime 3.5 year old buck this year, but in another year he should be a real stud.
Pictures of the 7 pointer we captured on my game camera
Shortly after seeing the pictures of this buck, we packed up the car and buttoned up camp so that we could make the trek back to Dan’s property in NY for the remaining two days of our trip.
Saturday 11/10 -
Saturday morning found me awake, showered, and hiking into the snow covered darkness by 5:30am with a climber on my back and enough food and drink to last me the entire day. Overnight approximately 1”-2” of snow fell, and it continued to fall all morning until around 10:30am, when it turned into sleet and freezing rain. I had packed my new packable rain suit in with me knowing the weather would be less than ideal, with another buck tag now burning a hole in my pocket I was determined to sit without getting down until darkness came. What a cold miserable day, precipitation fell all day long the entire time and despite sitting over my favorite chase phase funnel and a perfect wind all day long, all I saw was a single lone gray squirrel that didn’t stick around for more than 1-2 minutes.
Sunday 11/11 -
Sunday morning I heard the alarm go off at 5:00am, and it motivated me just enough to roll over and pull the covers a bit more snug around my neck. I did hear Dan and his father get ready though and head into the woods. Since I already had a good buck on the ground at this point, and after 12 hours of sitting in the snow and rain the day before, the thought of hiking into the darkness to sit in the cold was not appealing enough to get me out of bed.
Shortly after Dan and his father Ken left camp for their stands, Luke (the coolest camp dog in the world) hopped into bed with me and we both slept until around 9:00am. Around 10:00am after I was able to raid some of the remaining bacon from the morning breakfast that was cooked while I was still fast asleep, I was sitting on the couch reading a Deer and Deer Hunting magazine from the mid 1980’s when Dan walked into the cabin with a bloody leaf in his hand to show me. He asked me if I wanted to help track the buck he just shot. I was as excited as can be to see him with another opportunity on a buck after the scenario that played our earlier in the week, and of course I said absolutely!!!
We elected to relax for about an hour despite Dan’s claim of a perfect double lung shot on the deer, just to err on the side of caution. When we finally got to the scene of impact, we quickly identified the tell tale signs of a double lung hit……..bright pink blood splattered on the fresh snow in a 4’ path obviously spraying out of both sides of the deer. The trail quickly ended 60 yards later with the buck piled up in the snow covered leaves. I have to say that after knowing Dan for going on 3 years now he continues to impress me with his motivation, desire, and passion for this game we call bowhunting. Knowing he got up early 9 days into this hunt to get out into the woods one more time for the last day, and managed to finally close the deal had me just as excited and thrilled as Dan. He’s quite an inspiration to me and most that meet him, and I’m glad to be able to call him a friend.
So that’s the 2007 version of our annual 9 day hunt. This is the third year that Dan and I have hunted together, and I have to say that I am already looking forward to next years trip. We still have quite a bit of hunting ahead of us this season, with the firearms seasons in both NY and PA coming up in the next few weeks, as well as the late seasons for both NY and PA. I personally still have several tags left and hope to fill at least a few more including a buck tag for NY, an either sex tag for NY, a doe tag for NY, as well as 2 more doe tags for PA.
I hope you have enjoyed this lengthy journal entry and look forward to sharing more of my season over the next several weeks! |