13 December 2007
Iowa Whitetail Deer Season - Day 2
Posted by Darrell under: Hunting Stories .
Dana - 2, Me - 0
I’ll start by saying that I’ve never seen deer run like Iowa deer. If you jump one, he or she will likely run for at least a mile, sometimes further. I still haven’t gotten to take a shot at one that wasn’t on a full out dead run. Maybe tomorrow?
Day 2 was cold. It was about 25 degrees when we first stepped outside and it never got much warmer than 27 degrees. It was 22 degrees at the end of the day. Mix in some 20-30 mph wind and a little freezing rain and snow and it gets even worse. I can tell you from experience that it is a bad idea to walk hard, work up a sweat, and then take a post as a blocker in 30 mph wind in below freezing weather. You get cold! I normally don’t get too shook up when I see deer. Yet, I did lots of shaking today. It was because I was freezing!
I had hoped to recount the day on a deer by deer basis. But, it isn’t possible. I lost track of the deer count early on. Fortunately, Dana has a better memory then I do. He counted it up and apparently we saw 45 different deer today (ten bucks). I thought it sounded a little low, but Dana explained that we saw more deer than this, but some of them were the same deer that we spotted multiple times.
The morning began with an early breakfast at a local café. Dana’s cousin Mike and his son Chris met us for breakfast. Mike owns about 6,000 acres. Dana had already told me stories about how hard Mike works farming all his land and then taking the profits and buying yet more land. To be honest, I was a little leery of spending the day with somebody that owned a large section of the county. My fear was unfounded. Mike and Chris were both extremely laid back and easy going. They were really fun to hunt with. They also made me feel extremely welcome. I quickly realized that Mike and Chris were my kind of people.
We started the day with a drive in a wood lot across from Dana’s parents house. I was a blocker and so I was posted about 250 yards above the South edge of the woods on the back side of a terrace. Chris was posted out at some
However, I did see a big boy ghosting his way through the woods about 100 yards in front of Dana. He was working right towards Chris and I waited to hear the roar from Chris’s slug gun. I heard the roar.
Chris had shot a decent 8 point. I had seen him, too, just moments after I saw the monster. Apparently the monster buck had made it past Chris and headed north. The 8 point wasn’t so lucky. The 8 point ran off to the west field and got into the terraces. I stayed up high while the other guys tracked him and watched to see if he broke out of the terraces. I spotted him several hundred yards away making his way to the South. He ran until I couldn’t see him any longer. The guys trailed his heavy blood trail for close to 1.5 miles before losing the trail. We never found that deer.
It was the second deer of the trip that was not recovered. I wrote yesterday about wounding and not recovering a doe. As Phil pointed out, I probably shouldn’t have taken that shot. I won’t say this about Chris. I saw his deer after it was shot (about a mile later) and it looked like it was hit good. How it could leave a solid blood trail for over 1.5 miles and then dissapear is beyond me.
Next, we did a drive in the same area where we saw the four bucks the day before. I was given a cushy blocker spot and told to be on my toes. From my vantage point the horizon was less than 70 yards away so if deer broke into it I wouldn’t have much time to react before they jumped the fence to my right and disappeared.
Exactly as predicted, 2 does and 2 small bucks came flying into view. When I say flying, I mean flying. These deer were jumping 10 feet high with each bound and covering about 15 to 20 feet. I had about a 4 second window of opportunity and I missed. The other guys didn’t give me too hard a time about it – which I was thankful for. Failing to recover a deer followed by a clean miss doesn’t do much for my psyche.
Dana’s dad then drove his pickup out into the field where we were standing and talking about my miss. He said that 8 does had came out behind us and crossed the road heading into his East fields. Dana and Mike sent Chris and I to a couple spots to block and they went to try to drive them to us.
About 5 minutes after I got situated, I heard Chris start shooting. The does had run right down on him. He shot one and instead of dying it ran about 1/3 mile to the neighbor’s section. As we got to the fence we watched the doe try to jump a fence and head into yet another field. She couldn’t do it. She was about 200 yards away and so we decided to go around and tell the neighbor (who was one of Mike’s friends) that we needed to pick up a deer on his land.
As we finally got over there we saw her laying in some corn. We were sure she was really close to dead. She was, but she wasn’t close enough. She ran about a quarter mile towards the neighbors house and, amazingly, jumped in their lagoon. She wallowed out in to the middle of the lagoon and died. I was sure glad that it wasn’t my deer!
We then headed east towards Mike’s property that is referred to as “the ranch”. We did another drive. This time Dana and I were the blockers. Chris and Mike walked a nice deer right to Dana. He shot it and I watched as (no surprise) it ran off towards the next county. We trailed that deer for well over a mile to no avail. We did see 11 does, but no buck.
After about an hour and half of tracking the buck, we saw him running back towards us from the west. He was with several other deer and staggering badly. He ran back down into the woodlot from which Dana had originally shot him. Another drive was called for in the same exact spot. This time Dana got his buck. We recovered that buck less than 100 yards from where Dana originally shot him. He had been hit hard. The funny thing is that he ran over 3.5 miles in the meantime!
We saw several more deer during the rest of the day. Dana shot (and recovered) a doe which was incredibly hard to kill. These deer just won’t die. When Mike and Dana finally recovered her she was in the middle of a creek. Mike waded out to get her. It was the second time for him to get wet today. I felt bad for him since it was only about 20 degrees with 30 mph winds! Not good conditions to be wet in.
Anyway, it was a great day. I saw lots of deer and spent time with some fun people that obviously share my love of the outdoors and passion for hunting. Maybe tomorrow is my day?
Dana and his buck:
One Comment so far...
deerPhD Says:
14 December 2007 at 4:25 am.
nice pics! I know from experience that hunting on drives can be very challenging!
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