Who cant wait for Bow-opener

[Cody Gruchow]

its a little more than a month away and i honestly cant wait for sept-13th to roll around. who here is with me on this. i still have to put up a hang-on and go put up another ladder stand.

[Randy Kaar]

i was planning on leaving last night to the property, but my hunting
buddy must have had a no-go from his wife... aint heard from him since
hmmm.
i wanted to hang a few stands around and scope out some state forest
land.

randy

[22lex]

I'm definately in with both of you!

My fishing season was shot this year from the get-go, and I've been waiting to sit in a stand for quite a while.

My friend and I even set a stand in his backyard and have been shooting at targets for a few weeks.

[Cody Gruchow]

well i originally bought a new bow a bare fred bear truth, and i beleive i bought that in march and its still sitting in the box. but i did manage to bring my old bow out and shoot some and shake some of the rust off and sense then i have just been pumped that and the amount of deer i have on cam.  i hear ya on the fishing its been tough this year.

[Grute Man]

I usually am pumped but this year I have a job that begins right at archery opener and goes for a month.  I'll be working nights for 12-14 hrs per night with no nights off.  I pray to God that we don't get extra work and the job get extended.

The good news is that when the weather is a little cooler, I'll be able to get out there as much as ever.  I'll just have a later start and THAT is the moment I'm looking forward to. 

I applied for 6 or 7 Metro Bow Hunts and I'll try to hunt with the Bucks N Buckthorn group again so between those 2, I'll get lots of hunting time in.

[22lex]

In all honesty I really don't get after bucks until mid-october. I have small chunks of permission land I can hunt (10-20 acres) that I end up just taking a couple of does from and hope to get lucky with a shooter. When it comes to scouting for bucks/and or setting up for rut, my friend and I usually leave that until the third week in October on the more promising land, or beginning of November when I start sitting all day and watching the action happening.

I know all too well that early season hunting no matter how pumped you are, can lead to leaving your scent around.

The good thing is that I may get to go to Missouri and help my friends that film for a couple of days this year and get a free hunt out of the deal!

[Randy Kaar]

we always go on opener and dont care if we see anything, just to
get back out in the woods again. we just never tell the wifes that!

randy

[22lex]

Amen to that!

The day I tell my wife I have no chance at shooting something, is the day that I tell her I'm right!

 

[beersunny]

i am counting the days till my first BOW season!
Been out practicing about once a week for a month now.
going to checkout the land hopefully this week i was talking to the owners son last weekend he said they got a really nice 10 pointer last year. 300 acres 6 stands 2 to 3 hunters till shotgun season then 7 to 8 hunters. 

[Cody Gruchow]

got to be more than 4 people on MNO thats pumped up for bow season. Grute sorry to hear you gotta miss opener. randy thats what its all about, i enjoy just sitting in my stand at 5am and watching everything come to life, nothing more relaxing to me. i dunno about sitting out october, thats my favorite time is pre-rut, i aint to much of a fan of hunting the rut, makes things to easy ya theres more of a chance of seeing a trophy when he is trying to make fawns. i like to know when i harvest a trophy buck that i outsmarted him in his own domain.

[HD]

Not me... I wait till the skeeters are knocked down some and the deer flies are dead.
Besides, early goose season starts.....and we'll be whack'en flying liver!


Hunter

[Cody Gruchow]

gotta brave the blood suckers. besides i shoot the geese when i need some time away from the stand lol. deer hunting is #1 on my list

[HD]

Yep, I can see that...but, I got kids that can't deer hunt yet, and they like blowing the feathers off of birds....

[Cody Gruchow]

thats understandable. whens early goose start the first weekend in sept?

[HD]

9/6 to 9/22


Starts a week before bow......................................

[22lex]

This will make you brave the early season elements.

Friend of mine got this and sent it to me today.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Cody Gruchow]

if that dont get you pumped nothing will lol nice deer, shooter in my book

[22lex]

It's nice to start seeing more and more mature deer like this around our area. No matter how much you try to preach QDM, it always falls on the landowners to practice it.

I know there was a QDM discussion thread before, but it's really hard to practice it when we are all hunting via permission at various locations that join up with other tracts of land. We just do our best to convince the landowner's who are nice enough to let us hunt to take does 'cause they taste just as good as a yearling or 2-1/2 year old bucks.

In our area it is really coming along pretty good with archery clubs, and other organizations teaching people how to have a healthy population of deer.

[Cody Gruchow]

we pratice it on all 3 places i hunt. the one has been practiced for sometime now, its out by victoria. the other one isnt going so well, i dont hunt it much and dont like to preach to my uncles about it sense they hunt it more than i do. the other place were i grew up we started about 3 years ago and its coming along nicely, the surrounding land owners dont follow it which makes it a little more difficult because i know they go by the rule if its brown its down, so they shoot whatever they see.

[22lex]

A chunk of land I used to hunt in Olmstead Co. before it was purchased was completely surrounded by about a thousand acres of no-hunting land. The farmers who worked and owned the land was a nice family who practiced QDM perfectly. Each doe season they would have their friends, and their children of legal shooting age come with them to hunt which usually totalled twenty people. The rules were set the same every year: an adult can only shoot does, and the children under the age of sixteen can only shoot a ten point buck or better.

After everything was said and done there were usually 30-40 does harvested, and a mature buck or two. Needless to say this chunk of land I "used" to hunt was where I harvested my biggest bucks, and saw numerous others over the years.

[Cody Gruchow]

so no adults could shoot a buck?

[22lex]

No, only the kids could. They just wanted to provide the opportunity for the kids to shoot a good one, and the parents to weed out the does and get some meat.

All in all I believe there were four farmers who were all brothers, and only one of them trophy hunted when he wasn't in the field which wasn't very often.

[Cody Gruchow]

i would imagine that would create some huge deer

[22lex]

Yeah, there were always some dandies running around. Real hard to pattern though due to the lay of the land.

Once I get out of my cave, and figure out how to scan pictures I'll have at least one on my avatar I harvested.

[Cody Gruchow]

the big boy i got on my avatar is the one i been hunting for the past 2 years. he is tricky got to draw on him last year but couldnt get a clear shot and didnt want to rush it. and the year before when i drew on him a doe came in behind me and i wasnt paying attention to her and she seen me draw and busted me

[22lex]

That is a nice deer pic in your avatar.

It makes it that much more worth the experience when you see what you are after, pattern them, and make a smart ethical decision.

I had that last year on the 29th of Oct. I had three bucks running a doe all around me, and I mean running! I drew back three times as all of this happened trying to get the lead buck which was a nice ten stopped. I normally don't take a moving shot, but this wasn't even close to walking. The other two bucks cutting the doe off were basket eights and didn't care what was going on. The doe looked right at me in the tree as I was pulling back the last time when I had an opportunity to stop the bigger mature buck, but she couldn't do anything but breathe hard and flop her tounge out to the side. I certainly could of taken a pot shot at the nice ten as it sauntered through a lane at about fourty,(and may have ten/eleven years ago) but knowing the consequences I held off. That to me is a defining moment that all bowhunters have to go through that seperates them from the "arrow flingers".

[Cody Gruchow]

i dont practice at 40 yard much in the first place, i dont see the need in shooting that distance. if i do everything right and work hard for it i should get between 15-30 yard shots. i practice 30-35 yard shots alot and make a decent group. but i could never just fling an arrow at a mature buck or even a deer and hope to connect, thats not hunting thats being a