Scent Control

As I have said before keeping your scent to a minimum is crucial while deer hunting. You can buy scent eliminator spray bottles at Walmart or just about any other store with a hunting section but there is a lot of other ways to go along with the constant process of keeping your scent to a minimum. In my opinion the most important key is yourself, when I say that I am referring to using the scent free body wash, soap, shampoo and deodorant. Your body and hair is a very difficult part of your scent to control. Next is keeping your hunting clothes in a scent free bag or storage container. I have a locking air tight container that stays in my truck during hunting season all the time, except for when I bring them home to wash them in scent free clothes soap. I don't wear my hunting clothes anywhere but in the woods during deer season. I also break up pine branches for some cover scent and put them in my container with my clothes. After you get the previous two down pat you're ready to go hunting and that is when the spray bottle from Walmart comes into play. It is imperative to make sure and spray down every bit of your clothes before and after you have put them on. I also spray some in my hair and kind of scrub it in as an extra precaution. Another important tool to use is a cover scent. Sounds kind of funny but I like to use raccoon pee. Now I don't put it in my hair or on my clothes but I do put it on my boots just as another precaution to make sure the deer don't pick up on my scent where I walked in. With all this being said nothing can eliminate 100% of your scent but if you can make yourself stick to this above and hunt with the wind in your favor it will increase your chances greatly.

Early Bow Season

Okay so most of the time when the temperature is in the upper eighty's you don't deer hunt. However, when you hunt in south Alabama you kind of expect that in the early part of bow season. When it's hot outside the deer are less likely to get up and move around which makes the hunting much harder and I have had a really tough season until yesterday afternoon when I decided to hang my climber off the back side of a cow pasture in some hardwoods with plenty of oaks that are dropping acorns. It's a spot that I have hunted in years past but haven't hunted it in a couple of years and considering the fact that I have seen eighteen deer combined between yesterday afternoon, this morning, and this afternoon. With the amount deer activity in this area even with the weather being as bad as it is for hunting this will be a spot that I will hunt very hard for the next few days with a cold front that is supposed to be blowing in tonight. 

This afternoon I actually got in the stand a little late but still managed to see six deer. I had only been sitting there about fifteen minutes when I took the picture you see above. It's kind of hard to tell but there in this picture it is a mature doe along with her three spotted fawns. 

Around an hour later I had two other mature does come passing through and it is almost impossible to see them in the picture but if you look very closely there are both pretty close to the center of the frame. I enjoy hunting whether I see any deer or not but it definitely helps getting to see a hand full deer. Hopefully this cold front will get some bucks moving in the day light hours over the next couple days so I might have the opportunity to take a crack at one of them. 

Finding New Bucks to Add to The Hit List

In the last week I have had three new bucks show up in a spot that I have been wanting to hunt but had just not gotten any pictures of any good bucks on camera. All of these three would be fine deer to take in Covington County but the biggest of the three has my full attention at the moment.

This mature eight point is a stud of a deer. His main feature is tine length but he still has descent width and pretty good mass throughout his rack.I feel like he is a very solid four and a half year old deer.

This is another solid eight point even though he isn't quite as big as the previous deer he still has plenty to catch my attention enough for me to want to harvest him with a bow. This particular buck doesn't really have features that really stand out more than others but still has good all around qualities.

 Lastly the smallest of the three which is still a pretty descent deer and I would love to get an opportunity to take him with my bow. He has a pretty tight rack with good mass but not much tine length and also the best way to recognize him is that his ear is cut.

With all the hot weather lately it has been pretty much impossible to even think you have a chance of harvesting a mature buck but starting tomorrow a cold front is moving in and I am hoping to take full advantage of it by spending a lot of time in the woods in hopes of getting a shot at any of these three but hopefully I'll get an opportunity on the first one. 

2016 Hit List

Each year I like to keep a tab on what bucks I have at our farm via trail cam pictures and I try to get an idea for which ones I think are mature enough to shoot. The ones that qualify get added to the hit list. I have been somewhat successful the last three years by killing four bucks that I was specifically hunting at the particular time. Being able to harvest the deer that you are after is something that most any deer hunter will take pride in. This being because it is not an easy feat to harvest a mature buck, especially in South Alabama. So far this year I have five bucks that I have my eye on that qualify for the hit list. 

1. Number one on my list is a nine point that looks to possibly be the biggest deer I've ever hunted at our farm and would be the biggest I've harvested if I am fortunate enough to take him. I know for a fact that he is for sure a mature shooter that score will measure out to somewhere around 135 to 140 inches (120 and up being a fine deer around here) and feel that his age is probably around five and a half years old. 

2. Coming in second is a good looking eight point that looks to be a mid 120's deer and four to five years old. He has a solid all around rack with plenty of mass and width.

3. Up next is another solid eight point and he has a lot in common with number 2 as far as having good width. I've actually had this deer on camera for three years now counting this year and feel pretty confident he is five and a half.

4. Up next is a nice looking eight point that I'm not completely sure about his age and will have to make a decision on whether or not to take him if I am fortunate enough to see him while hunting. He has a lot in common genetically with buck number one and I also get a lot of pictures of them together so I have a feeling that they are closely related. 

5. Lastly is a buck that mainly needs to be harvested for management reasons. He's a mature seven point that just doesn't have the best genetics for a deer herd. Never the less I would love to get the opportunity to harvest this deer. 

Safety Harness and Tree Stand Safety

Lock-on

Harvesting a deer is the ultimate go when deer hunting obviously but safety while hunting is imperative. When my dad was nineteen years old he fell out of his tree stand while bow hunting and broke his neck. He is beyond blessed to not only still be walking but to be alive after an incident like this and he has made it very clear to me to be safe with tree stands. The stand he fell out of was a very basic set up, it was just a platform that you stand on (just big enough to fit your feet on) with no seat. Even though the stands of this day an age are much more safe it is still critical to take safety measures to try and keep disaster from happening. When I was about fourteen I started hunting out of tree climbers and lock-ons and my dad immediately informed me that I had to have a safety harness if I wanted to hunt out of these stands. I did then and I do now make it a priority to wear my harness so that I am strapped in at all times so that if I did happen to fall it would catch me. I also like to use a Hunter's Safety System "Life Line". It is essentially a rope that ties to the tree directly above your stand and also the base of the tree, it keeps you strapped in all the way from the ground up and then back down when  you're done hunting. This is a key feature that the first hunter safety systems missed out on because the most common time for a hunter to fall is when they are getting in and out of the stand and the original harness didn't do you any good until you were already in your stand and did you no good once you were done hunting and starting to climb down. 

Deer Herd Management

In order to keep a quality deer herd on your property you need to have at least some what of a management plan in place. This usually involves doe management, buck management and supplementing your deer. Doe management consist of having an idea of how many deer you have per acre, as well as how much browse you have for the deer to feed on. If you come to the conclusion that you have too many deer per acre it is time to start harvesting some does. The point of this is that if you have too many deer per acre for the amount of feed they have available the deer will be less healthy and be more prone to getting certain types of disease. Not only does this affect does but bucks as well and more importantly does that are pregnant because just like humans if the doe is in poor shape and unhealthy while pregnant the greater the chances of the newborn fawn will have poor genetics. Buck management has more to do with being able to age deer by just eyeballing them. If at all possible, you don't want to take any bucks under the age of 4, the age that a buck is deemed mature. Some great ways to identify a deer as mature is by looking to see if his belly and brisket (hangs down at the bottom of the neck in front of his front shoulders) has any sag to it and also the way he looks in the face, An older deer will have a roman nose and lots of the time will have some grey in his face. Usually a mature deer will have plenty of mass in his antlers and a bigger rack in general but that just depends on genetics so I prefer to go by the belly/brisket sag and the face. Also culling out deer with poor genetics, this is noticeable on bucks by the way their rack looks. However, sometimes a buck may seem to have poor genetics at an early age and then one year you'll get him on camera or see him and he'll be a good looking deer so as I said earlier it is key to wait until a buck is mature before attempting to harvest them. In order to grow big bucks it is key to supplement your deer in the off season while their racks are growing. I usually go with a mix that is very common which consist of trace mineral salt and dicalcium phosphate. I always do this in the spring and it is not a very time consuming practice. All you have to do is churn up some dirt, preferably clay, in about a 3 foot circle and about four or five inches deep and mix the ingredients in with the dirt. There is name brand mixes you can buy from the store but they tend to be kind of expensive and the mix I use seems to be working and I know it is cheaper. Hunting can be a very expensive hobby so I prefer to go the cheap route every once in a while when it seems reasonable to do so. 

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

With me being an avid hunter and owner of a good number of firearms the right for me to keep and bear arms is very important to me. I feel that people who are for gun control are somewhat mislead about how taking guns away from citizens would help with the problems we have in this country today. It is proven that when citizens carry concealed murder rates and violent crime drops dramatically, for both men and women but especially for women. Every year guns are used for self-defense from 800,000 to 2.5 million times. States that enacted right-to-carry laws between 1977 and 1999, the rate of multiple victim shootings declined by 67% with deaths and injuries dropping by 75% and 81%. Also two of eight school shootings were brought to a stop by citizens with guns before the police arrived at the scene.  On an international scale Switzerland requires young males to have firearms in their homes as part of the country’s militia. Finland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world and also has a very low violent crime rate. Most of the gun control talk is directed toward assault rifles, fully automatic and semi-automatic weapons. However, in order to obtain a fully automatic weapon there is an extensive process that is required. With this process being required for the last eighty years. There are about 250,000 of these fully auto weapons in people’s hands and in this eighty year period there has not been a single time that a legally owned machine gun was used to commit a crime. This is the control that I do agree with to make sure that guns don’t end up in the wrong hands. I’m sure we’ve all seen the bumper stickers that say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. With that being said there are reasonable measures to take without banning guns all together. With these facts available for anyone to see I hope that some people can come to an understanding about this incredibly controversial topic that could have a great deal of impact on our country in the future.