I tell ya what….. this deer season can only be explained as “different”. The one thing that I noticed in the areas that I hunt is the lack of people and the lack of the sound of gun shots in the air. Usually I see a good number of people while driving to and from my hunting areas. I also usually see several deer in the back of trucks or trailers, this year I seen very little. I’m not sure what the cause was for the lack of people but the weather didn’t help the deer movement. The rut was the only thing keeping them moving during the day. Most of the people that I talked to around were I live didn’t see very many big bucks running around in the daylight. I know several people that hunt up in northern Missouri and they were seeing deer moving all day, every day, including very big bucks. Not really sure what the difference was between Mid-Missouri and Northern Missouri deer activities.
As for my hunting season…….. very slow up till the end. I hunted for 7 of the first 9 days. The first 7 days were almost a clone of each other. The deer movement was around daylight and just before dark. There were several doe’s and little bucks moving around this time. When I say “little bucks” this is what I mean. Missouri has a antler point restriction on bucks that are legal to harvest. They must have at least 4 points that are 1 inch or longer on one side of their rack. The little bucks would respond to calling but never seen one trailing a doe. I had been watching several groups of doe’s in several different locations thinking that eventually there would be a bigger buck that would show up. For 6 days I never seen a legal buck to harvest.
The place that I went on opening morning had the highest potential for a big buck. I only seen 3 doe’s and 1 small buck which was very strange for this area. I moved to 3 more areas over the next several days and was seeing quite a few more deer but still the same thing…… no legal bucks. I didn’t give up on the first area due to it’s potential for larger deer. I wanted to give it at least one more day. I tried to go back during mid week and wouldn’t you know it, the rains came down and the river came up in a hurry. The river flooded and put my whole area under water. The good thing about high water is that it goes down just about as fast as it comes up. So, on the last day that I had to hunt I decided to try it one more time.
The morning started very very slow. There wasn’t any deer movement at all. I was beginning to questions my choice for my last day. It was about 9:30 am and the lack of deer movement along with my fading hope for seeing things pick up made me decide to leave and go somewhere else. As I was bending down to pick up my deer stand to head to the 4 wheeler to leave thats when it happened. One very distinctive sound……. a GRUNT. I quickly grabbed my grunt call and made about 3 soft grunts. All of a sudden here they come around the corner of a patch of trees right in front of me. First thing I see was a doe run out and following very closely behind was 6 bucks. Thats right 6 bucks chasing this one doe. They were completely oblivious to my me even being there. They chased this doe all around in front of me at about 75 yards. There were 4 little bucks and 2 big bucks.
Now you have to understand that all this is happening very fast and I know the doe isn’t going to say around for long. It wasn’t hard to find the biggest buck of the bunch so I quickly leveled off and put him down. You would think that this would make the other deer at least stop and look. Well, not so much. They just kept on going about their business. The doe and the larger 8 point even came running right to me and then turned at about 20 yards before they all went away. They left just about as fast as they showed up.
Just remember all it takes is one grunt, one twig snap or a few leaves crunching and you luck could change in just a few seconds like mine did. So never give up you never know when it will happen but you have to be ready.
Here is a pic of the buck that I harvested November 22, 2009.
11 point
