I thought since I had posted that we had shot some game that I would share a picture of the fox I shot.

On Saturday morning the weather couldn’t have been better, it was a perfect day to ice fish.  I got to lake Emily a little later than I wanted to but it didn’t matter to me because it was my break from all this studying.  We only had three flags in 3 hours which was a really slow day and to top it off we didn’t even get a fish.  So I switched up my tactics for Sunday.  We woke up earlier and made a little further drive to a lake that I know would produce.  We arrived to White Lake around 7:30 am and by 9am we had 12 flags and 3 pike on the ice!  It was a slow after that so we decided to leave the lake early.  Later that day I joined up with my coyote hunting group.  We drove a couple of wooded sections and had a great amount of luck getting 2 coyotes and 1 fox!  Previously on Saturday the same hunting group that I go with had shot 5 coyotes and 2 fox.   So all in all the weekend was a great success for me and jam packed with action.   What a way to end the semester!

This weekend I will be hitting the lakes to go do a little ice fishing.  A couple of my buddies have been out fishing already and have been pulling a couple walleyes through the ice on lake DuBay none with a whole lot of size.  The size ranges right around 14 inches so far.  I’m really excited to get out there but I have to wait till Saturday because of a strenuous finals week about to begin.  According to my friends there is about 12 to 18 inches of ice already on the lakes!  I will give you guys the fishing report on Saturday telling you how it went.  In the mean time stay warm in this frigid weather!

After the deer season I usually take part in a lot of  ice fishing and predator hunting on weekends or whenever I usually get a good opportunity to make it out.  I will begin to be posting on how the hunting of coyotes and fox went or how the ice fishing was.  This weekend I didn’t make it out ice fishing but I did test to see the thickness of the ice.  The ice so far was about 6 inches thick which is plenty enough for a person to walk across and maybe even take a four wheeler out but don’t take my word for it because every lake is different and with different styles of ice too.  I also seen a pair of coyotes in a field when driving but didn’t get a chance to get out and call for them yet.  I keep everyone posted!

I went deer hunting for the last time this season.  It was a sad day when I left the woods but and the last time I would ever go back in because we now have new leased hunting land.  I spent all day Saturday in the snow storm pulling out all of our old stands which after 10 years of hunting on this land we accumulated 27 different stands.  There were a couple of stands that I was sad about taking out since some of my best memories were in them.  All in all the 2010 season made it easier that it should have to leave this land because of the poor hunting.  On Sunday moving our hunting job trailer and was a pain in because of the snow and the drifting but when we arrived to our new land my hopes were high already about the new season to come!

We have about 2 inches of snow on the ground and the storm seems to be winding down.  I’m going to my hunting land tomorrow morning to shoot some does in the Zone T hunt that opened today.  I haven’t shot a doe off that land in 6 years because we were trying to increase the population to help out the deer herd in the area.  Well as of a week ago we found new hunting land so this weekend for me means a free for all on the does!  I probably will use my bow even though a gun can be used because I enjoy the challenge.  With this snow tracking deer should be a breeze and seeing them at further distances should benefit my hunters.  Hunting in snow is probably my favorite experience in the woods and will always will be.  I’m really looking forward to this weekend!

I had promised you pictures of the bucks that some guys in our hunting group got so here they are!

During the 2010 Gun Deer Season I saw plenty of deer but none were big enough to shoot.  Opening day I saw 13 of does a couple had their fawns with them but I thought that was a good sign for sure.  Well I was wrong.  I saw no buck opening day It kind of was a disappointment.  The second day brought even worse hopes with rainy weather in the forecast.  I did end up seeing another 10 does and two small bucks but none large enough to shoot.  The sad news came to me a couple days later when my dad called me and said the 12 pointer that we have been seeing and chasing all week was shot by our neighbor on a Wednesday night.  I had been mad that the deer had been shot but I still kept a little bit of hope for some of the other big bucks on our land.  I had hunted all day Friday and had seen plenty of does and another couple of small bucks but nothing to special to take a crack at.  I found out more bad news on Friday night,  another one of our big bucks that we had been seeing all bow season had been shot.  It was our 10 pointer.  Later in the evening on Friday when we were driving home from the bars, we saw a dead deer on the side of the road.  When we pulled up we instantly noticed it was our giant half rack that had been hit by a vehicle.  To sum up this gun season I would say it was an extreme disappointment considering considering how the bow season had ended.  Hopefully late season bow will prove to be better!

The long-awaited rut is finally here!  I’ve waited two months for this to happen and now that it’s here I couldn’t be happier.  This last weekend I’ve seen more deer just on the weekend alone than I did all season, approximately 52 of them and of those were to giants.  It was non stop action in whole time, I only left the stand one time to get something to eat and then came immediately back so I wouldn’t miss much of the action.  Besides seeing two giant bucks, I had a nice 8 pointer and a doe bed at the base of my tree around 7 yards away!  They were there for a little over an hour until the buck got anxious and started pestering the doe again.  The good news is I’ll be able to hunt all weekend, Friday thru Sunday, the bad news is that it’s the last weekend of regular season bow.  With the gun season starting the next weekend I have mixed feelings of excitement because the bucks I’ve been chasing all year with the bow will be easier for me to shoot but also easier for our neighbors.  Either way there is some sort of excitement coming up for me in these next couple of weeks.  Also one of the guys in our hunting group bagged a  nice 10 point.  Hopefully I can get those pictures posted as soon as possible.

We need better weather so the hunting can pick up, and when I mean better I’m talking about cold, snowy or NOT windy conditions.  This years weather has been unusually warm for this time of year which has been slowing down the deer movement, not to mention the recently high winds that we have had.  Better weather appears like it might give an appearance on Thursday, when the temps are forecasted in the mid to low 20′s and even a chance of snow, but sure enough it is short lasted and temps will begin to rise back into the upper 40′s low 50′s.   I feel like the rut has started but to be more effective the weather will have to be better.  I haven’t been on our land since one of the first weeks of October due to the Zone T, youth hunt, and crappy weather last weekend.  So this weekend will be a treat baring weather conditions.