14 Miles of Sheddin'....

I went back home this weekend for a weekend of dedicated shed hunting.  The group met up before sunrise to cook up a pre-hunt breakfast to put some fuel in our legs.

 After breakfast we through on our packs; loaded with extra clothes, water, binoculars, and most importantly toilet paper.  It was long before I found the first antler, adding to the enthusiasm for the rest of the day.  I got my first "hanger"!

 We continued scouring the canyons, and saw plenty of fresh deer sign.  But it was several more miles before Eric stumbled on this skull in a plum thicket.

I brought my GPS along today.  We had always been curious how much ground we covered during a day of walking.  I would glance down occasionally to check our progress.  3 miles.....5 miles...5 1/2 miles...  

We seemed to be "racking up" more miles than antlers, but it was a perfect morning to be outside.

 

Eric had to head home around Noon, so we looped our way back towards the truck.  By the time we got back to the cold beer, we had walked just under 9 miles.  My legs were getting wobbly and my knees started to burn.  Looking at my tracks, it looked like we were fairly thorough. 

I was glad to sit back with a Busch Light and let somebody else fire up the grill.  

 

So far the day was a little disappointing in the "finding" department.  

After lunch we loaded up the truck and headed to another location.  Our luck started to change as Ryan saw an antler from the truck out in the middle of a wheat field.  As he ran out to get it he found another smaller one he didn't see at first.  

Another mile down the road he spotted another from the truck (on a spot we had permission to be on).

We had doubled our shed count on a 2 mile drive, but it was time to get back out on our feet.

It didn't take long for Clint to spot this one.  Followed by another that Ryan spotted with his binoculars from several hundred yards across the pasture.

We were nearing the end of the main canyon when I found what I considered the best find of the day.  Nobody else knew that they were pre-historic dinosaur fins until I showed them how they would have looked back then. 

When we turned around to head back to the truck, we split in pairs and walked the smaller "tributary" canyons back.  Charlie and Ryan headed East, while Clint and I took the Westerly route.  It had been a long time since I had found an antler, and I didn't appreciate it when Clint "poached" this one from out in front of me. 

 I took the high ground back.  It didn't lead to any more antlers, but the views from atop the vast hills were better than you'd expect to see in western Kansas. 

 We beat Ryan and Charlie back to the truck, but could see them coming from a long ways off.  It appeared they hit the mother-lode, as we could see they each had both hands full of bone.  It had been a long day, 14 miles in all, and I was glad we finally had a little something to show for it. 

 

We covered a lot of ground, but I see some good looking stuff we didn't get to off to the East.  Maybe have to get back out there another weekend and match some sets.   

'Twas the Night before Christmas (and Creatures were Stirrin')

I was back home for Christmas, and the ground was covered in snow.  Not too many things could keep me out of a tree stand.  And the fact that it was Christmas Eve wasn't one of those things.  Besides, our plans weren't scheduled to start until around 6:00 p.m., and it gets dark early these days.   It had been a pretty tough year for me so far.  I had hunted hard nearly every weekend since mid-October and hadn't even had the opportunity to draw my bow.  This would be my last opportunity to fill one of the two tags still in my pocket with archery equipment.  I had the video camera duct-taped to my bow's stabilizer, and I was ready to go.

Staab's 2011 Buck Recovery

Friday morning just before sunrise I was sitting atop a canyon overlooking a winter wheat field with about 7 deer running around on it.  The overcast sky had just lightened up enough for me to see that the one buck was probably a shooter.  I look at my cell phone to check the time and saw I had a new message.  Staab says he "just smoked a decent buck".  I hunted for about another hour or so until the deer out on the wheat headed to bed in the opposite direction.  It's always fun to go help blood trail a deer, so I hopped in the truck to go look.  The trail was pretty spotty, without more than a couple drops at any given spot.  We lost the trail completely and decided to just fan out in the direction the deer was headed.  When that search came up empty, we went back to the last blood and made the assumption that the deer made an unexpected 90 degree turn.  Here's the footage of the seach.

Deer Camp 2011

Another annual Deer Camp is in the books.  Another year when the "new guy" to camp made it happen. The Vanilla Gorilla (Aaron Goodman) missed camp for the first time since we started in 2006.  But the addition of Chandler Lockert picked up the slack.  The long drive was over, and we were all looking forward to the next 4 days with nothing to do but hunt.

A warm front was moving in, and the full moon was rising in the East shortly after the sun set.  Not exactly the ideal forecast, but our hopes were high.  The first morning we dropped everyone off well before the sun was scheduled to rise.  The moonlit pasture made headlamps unnecessary walking in.  I headed up one of my favorite trees anticipating an exciting morning.  Phil had decided to take a high vantage point for the day to get a feel for what was going on in the area.  We sent Chandler down the fenceline to a ground blind near a natural funnel, and Bayes into a tree stand in a cedar tree overlooking a fresh scrape.  The crisp morning air had the deer on the move, and at about 10 am Bayes sent out a text informing us that he'd just stuck a doe.  We hunted a few more minutes before heading over to take up the blood trail.

With four guys to carry out meat, it wasn't long until we were back at camp ready for lunch.

The weather had warmed considerably by the time we headed out again. Everyone saw a few deer, but nothing too exciting.  This would be a trend for almost every evening hunt the rest of the trip.  The next day played out in a similar fashion.  Phil would sit up on a high vantage point and get to see all the action while the rest of us waited it out in a tree or blind with only a few deer in sight.  Chandler had moved the ground blind for the evening hunt because his view was limited to under a hundred yards where it was.  He had the pleasure of watching a shooter buck walk right past where the ground blind WAS.

Friday night we pulled up Google Earth and devised a new game plan.  This time everyone but Chandler was going to sit up high and hopefully spot a nice buck headed in a direction where a quick ambush could be set up.  I watched some pheasant hunters push 8 does and 2 small bucks in my general direction, but they went south when I needed them to go East.   Bayes and Phil spotted a nice 10 and Bayes was able to run downhill and somewhat cut him off.  But he had to settle for a longer shot than planned, and ended up shooting right over the bucks back.

Chandler had decided to stick to the ground blind that morning, but move it once again.  This time he had a good view and the wind in his favor.  He sent me a text mid-morning saying he'd just smoked a buck.  So we rounded up the posse and took up another blood trail!

Bayes and Chandler took it easy Saturday evening while Phil and I sat up on a different hill to the South.  It didn't take long for Phil to spot a nice buck bedded in the shade alongside a doe nearly a mile away.  He was after something a little bigger, but I decided it was my turn to try a stalk.  We worked our way around where we had marked the deer.  The wind was non-existent as I approached the top of the hill the deer were beside.  They must have heard me coming because when I crested the hill they were nowhere in sight.

Sunday morning Bayes had another opportunity to spot and stalk.  He took his time, spending nearly 2 hours getting into position.  He was within 14 yards of the plum thicket the buck was in when he got a better look at the deer.  It wasn't as big as he thought going in, so he decided to pass.

The fun was over.  With a long drive ahead of us, we were already counting the days to next year.

Deer, Farm Dogs, Porcupine

Hunting Season's in Full Swing

The weather finally cooled down a bit, and the calendar's showing that time.  Time for me to be in a tree.  I took a little video from my stand Sunday morning.  It was a great morning to be in the stand and I saw 9 deer I think. I wasn't able to get the greatest video, but enough to justify a post. 

Taneycomo Fall Camping Trip

I know it's been awhile since my last post.  A new job in August, combined with the late summer heat, kept me off the water for the end of Summer.  And now with the leaves changing colors, my free time has been spent hanging treestands and trail cameras for the fall hunting season.  But the weekend's warm weather put a weekend camping/fishing trip to Taneycomo on the agenda.  I'd never fished the tailwater before, but the reports I'd been reading sounded promising. 

I guess everyone else was reading the same report, and I think the water level rose each time another angler waded in.  The water itself looked great, in about 3 or 4 different places.  Those were the few places with any kind of current.  The rest of the river opened up into a wide, featureless flat, with frustratingly slow current.  Rachel and I didn't find the thought of fishing within rod's length of strangers very appealing, so we walked downstream about 50 yards past the last fisherman, and gave it a try.  I just didn't have the patience for drifts lasting 15 minutes, but Rachel enjoyed not having to cast as often.  She ended up hooking the first 3 fish of the trip.  We decided to head back to camp to cook breakfast and reevaluate our strategy.

We headed into Branson for a few odds n ends, then hit the fly shop on the way back to the campground.  We thought we could use some help from the trout gods, so we downed a couple "Trout Slayer's" before heading back to the dam.

 

When we returned, the River was up a bit.  The generation was only scheduled to last an hour or two, but I liked the way the water looked.  The fish were a little more cooperative when I found a nice little run I could actually drift a fly through.  With the water falling out and the sun going down, I realized why this short stretch of tailwater keeps people coming back.

 Back to camp for the night.  This time we had firewood.  Some more beers and the K-State game on the radio as we waited on our hobo pies to slow cook in the coals.  Delicious.  The plan was to rise early and beat some of the crowd to a decent looking, less-popular riffle on the opposite side of the River.

We were up on time for once, and even had time to teach Rachel how to tie a dropper on.

The trout were in trouble today.  We made our way over to the riffle we were hoping would be vacant, and it was open.  On one of the first casts into the lower riffles, this twenty incher thrashed onto my sculpin imitation before it could fall into the depths of the pool.  The fish didn't make any long streaking runs downstream, but it did stubbornly avoid being landed for quite awhile.  

It didn't take long and Rachel was in on the action.  I think this tops her personal best trout caught on our trip to Little Piney earlier this summer.  

As the sun cleared the horizon the fishing began to slow.  We managed a few more here and there, but it wasn't long before we had company all around us.  We left the honey-hole and tried to fool a few still-water fish without any luck.  By mid-morning a breeze picked up, and orange and yellow leaves started to dot the drift.  It was time to go break camp and drive home.