Trad Gang
Main Boards => PowWow => Topic started by: gregg dudley on September 30, 2009, 11:31:00 PM
-
Darren (Hackbow)and Ethan Shue are leaving PA in a few short hours to journey down south to Georgia for a little R & R. Reed and I will be meeting them tomorrow evening in Edison to commence a three day St jude's hunting adventure. Hopefully we can get our guests on some game.
This cool weather should trigger more daytime game movement if we are lucky. Armadillos, deer, hogs, squirrels, and varmints are fair game. Fun is guaranteed. Time will pass slowly at work tomorrow as anticipation builds.
Keep your fingers crossed for our hunting party. Ethan and Reed are both looking for their first big game bowkills.
Gregg :archer:
-
:campfire:
-
have fun guys! :archer:
-
:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :pray:
-
Have a great time! I'll be looking for the report :readit:
-
I cant believe dad took the other brother. Just seems unfair. Good Luck Dad and Ethan!
-
Oysters on the half shell. Enjoy :bigsmyl:
-
:thumbsup:
-
Good luck, good fellowship and hunting to all!
Those whistle pigs move good right at dusk.
-
Have fun Gregg!
-
Thanks, guys! Leaving in ten...
Full report on Monday pm! :thumbsup:
-
Just got a call from Gregg and the boys from PA have already scored ! I won't give any details, save the story-telling for Gregg to give it to you first-hand...
-
Joel's right! There is blood in Georgia. Just got off the phone with them. I wont give many details either but from what they said its a "zoo" down there. Just in one day they've seen everything from bobacts and coyotes to deer and hogs. Not to mention all the tree rats. More updates to follow!
-
and it's not an armadillo...
-
Time for another update............
Day two has come and gone and there is another kill down south. Not tellin who it was or what it was. Hopefully tomorrow's just as good as the previous two!
-
Day Three.....
Nothin really goin today. there was something else killed yesterday that is kinda interesting. Guess you'll have to check back later this week.
-
The Pennslyvania father and son team of Darren and Ethan Shue and the Florida father/son team of Reed and I managed a simultaneous arrival at our Calhoun County deer lease just after 7:30 PM on Thursday, October 1. Our arrival afforded just enough time to exchange greetings and get the vehicles unloaded before darkness fell. Each group had seen numerous deer on the approach to camp and excitement was high as we anticipated a great 3 day hunt.
It was quickly obvious that the Shue boys were "good folks" and any nervousness about sharing a camp with relative strangers was quickly replaced as new friendships were forged. We spent the evening preparing our hunting gear and looking over some maps of the property. I had a day one-morning one plan to drop Reed, Darren, and Ethan off on my way to my stand on Friday. The prospect of your first view of a piece of hunting property coming from a treestand as the sun comes up is always an exciting one for me and I could tell that the Shues were like-minded.
On Friday morning we drove the truck out to our planned parking area and did not see a single deer along the way. We walked about a half mile to a point where I dropped Reed off in a stand that was on the edge of a picked corn field. I saw three armadillos as I walked back to meet up with Darren and Ethan. Little did I know that they would be the only armadillos that I would see all weekend!
I dropped Darren off first on an acorn flat. While we waited for Darren to get settled in his stand Ethan and I spotted a deer 40 yards away in the woods.
Then Ethan and I walked deeper into the woods to our stands. All of the stands were proven having produced sightings and harvests in the past. I was optimistic about the morning as I settled in a full 30 minutes before first light with the sounds of owls and other night creatures filling the woods around us.
The morning proved to produce few sightings for everone except Reed. I struck out, Ethan saw one deer in the early morning and Darren saw a coyote. Reed, on the other hand saw 10-15 hogs and 3 coyotes. When he got down to meet us he stepped in the field and busted 5 rack bucks and a doe out of the field! They had been out of sight of his stand and he had no idea that they were there.
Reed is sure that these bucks were in the group he saw:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/bigbucksatOwensFarm.jpg)
-
When we came out of the woods we took the time t show the Shue's around the property and tell hunting stories and anecdotes about our four year experience on the land.
Ethan on left and Reed on right in photos below:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA011468.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021483.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031602.jpg)
Hog wallow:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031593.jpg)
-
Being from Pennsylvania, Darren and Ethan were interested in trying for some hogs. We scouted the swamp during mid-day and found abundant sign. We moved a few ladder stands into promising areas and came out to get some lunch and to prepare for the evening hunt. After a long travel day on Thursday the Pennsylvania boys thought a nap might be a good idea. The Florida boys didn't need much persuasion to agree to the plan. :)
-
After a much needed rest we took a few practice shots on the camp deer target. We were not the only ones who liked the target. The neighbor's dog followed us home and spent an hour "attacking" the foam. This dog was convinced that the target was a real animal. It really has me thinking more aobut using a decoy.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021478.jpg)
-
Reed and I had discussed the situation in advance and decide to let Ethan sit "The Zoo" stand for the evening hunt. My dad had sat a stand across the field from there on three previous evening hunts and watched deer walk out underneath that stand. I was proud that Reed was such a gracious host.
We were late getting to the woods in the afternoon and I was disappointed to see that there were already two deer in the field near the stand. I directed Ethan to approach the stand through the woods and I walked Reed to a stand in the woods about 200 yards away. When I got back to the field the deer were gone. I wondered if that had been Ethan's chance for the evening and if we had blown it by being late.
Darren and I went on to our ladder stands on the hog sign that we had scouted earlier in the day.
A short time later I got a phone call from Darren. Ethan had shot a deer. I told Darren to sit it out and I would go check for sign before it got dark. When I figured out what we were dealing with I would call Darren back.
Ethan was very excited when I got to him. He had seen a bobcat, heard some hogs, and seen a doe and a fawn. He had watched the deer for some time before he had got a shot opportunity. He said the shot looked good. He had shot the deer at about 6:10 PM and since it was after 7:00 we decided to start looking for sign while we still had light to work with.
It took about 15 minutes to find the start of the blood trail. After a few yards we found this:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021486.jpg)
A yard or two farther we found this:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021487.jpg)
-
Thanks to the text messaging tendancies of teenagers, Reed was aware of the drama. Despite my advice to stay on stand in case we bumped something to him he wanted to be in on the recovery. He joined us a few minutes later and we continued to track the deer. We managed to make the trail for about 80 yards before losing it. Darkness was falling and we popped a glow stick to mark last blood and eased out to pick up Darren.
We returned a short time later and took up the trail, but could not find any additional blood. We followed likely trails and searched on hand and knees before finally resorting to a sweeping grid search of the surrounding area. We walked four abreast in a semi-circle around the end of the last sign in the hopes of picking up the blood or spotting the deer. In the process we bumped several hogs and were serenaded by the local coyote population. Both encounters had me hoping to find the deer before the competing omnivores did.
About 4o minutes later I looked back at the faint light of the glow stick and commented aloud to Ethan that he looked like he was on a direct path to the previous blood trail. I had no sooner spoken the thought than he spotted the deer.
Ethan and Reed show off about $10,000 worth of braces as they join Darren in admiring Ethan's first traditional archery deer:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021495.jpg)
Preparing for the drag out. She travelled about 140 yards from the shot.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021497.jpg)
The accomplished archer:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021501.jpg)
Hey! I want to be in the picture too!
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021518.jpg)
-
:bigsmyl: The look on his face says it all.
-
That was the end of Day 1. There are two more days to report on and there are more adventures to recount, but I need to spend a few hours with the family after being gone.
-
AWESOME!
-
Great job guys!
Donnie
-
What a great start..thanks for sharing the pics and story so far Gregg! :campfire: Congratulations Ethan!
-
Wow, isn't that cool! Congrats Ethan :notworthy:
-
OK, Back to the story:
Everyone was really pumped that Ethan had killed his first deer. The property owner came over and Darren and Ethan met him and thanked him for allowing me to offer a charity hunt in the property. He allowed that it was his pleasure and that he was contributing a boston butt from a local charity fundraiser to our table for Saturday night. Ethan and Darren said that the southern tendency to use bar b q as a fundraiser was an idea that they could learn to love.
Saturday morning rolled around and we rolled out of bed a little more slowly due to the late night of boning out Ethan's deer. Reed was going to hunt a groundblind between the picked corn field and a pond. On the way in to his stand we passed four deer that were pretty close to his stand. As I walked him to the blind, I saw two deer about 40 yards away from it. We tried to be quiet walking in, but I made a big production walking out in the hopes that deer really can't count. Remembering Ethan's experience of the night before I was optimistic that they might not be too spooked.
I put Ethan in a stand down on the creek where we frequently see hogs then Darren and I drove down to hunt the stands that we had hunted the night before with all of the hog sign. Darren hadn't seen anything the night before, but was optimistic about the morning hunt.
The morning produced game sightings for everybody but me. Darren saw four deer that were too far to shoot. Ethan saw two hogs. And Reed saw four deer and had a nine yard shot opportunity at one of the does.
Shooting out of a blind is a skill. The windows in this particular blind are small. Reed leaned out to take the shot and thought he had a clear path for the arrow. Unfortunately, the arrow caught the double stiched fabric near the zipper and kicked the fletch end around enough to cause him to miss the deer. Fortunately it was a clean miss over the deer's back. Reed was understandably bummed out by the experience, but soon recovered enough to make fun of the fact that he had shot a hole in his grandfather's blind.
Look closely at Reed's finger sticking out of the hole in the blind below:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031607.jpg)
-
At mid-day, Darren and I left the boys to stump shoot and mess around the cabin while we went out to move a stand. I put on shorts and flip=flops for the task at hand and encouraged Darren to do the same. As it turned out, the creek was a little deeper, the bottom was a little wetter and there were more briars and vines than I remembered. The result was two very muddy and cut-up hunters returning to the cabin. We had, however, had a little luck in procurring ornamentation for the top limb of Ethan's bow. This cotton mouth was killed in tue primative style-with sticks and stones!
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031554.jpg)
Sorry about the sideways post. Photobucket is not letting me edit.
-
That afternoon, Darren went back to hunt in the vicinity of the stand that we had moved. There was good hog sign in the bottom and he was hoping to get on a pig. The boys and I loaded up n the truck and drove to a small tract of property that we are permitted to hunt that is about a half mile from the main lease. I put Ethan in a hang-on stand near a fence crossing.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031555.jpg)
Then I dropped Reed off at a ladder stand near deeper in the woods. I went a little farther into the woods and set up a climber in a gap in an old fence where a commercial hog farm had long-since been abandoned.
All three of us saw the same three deer. In addition, Reed saw a raccoon, Ethan saw three turkeys, and I saw a gray fox.
This is a terrible picture of the fox:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031560.jpg)
-
As the boys and I were gathering at the truck Ethan's phone rang. It turned out that Darren had had some action.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031562.jpg)
-
Darren had been walking out of the woods and nearly been run over by this young doe. He had missed a hurried shot at ten yards, but had redeemed himself when she stooped again at 20. The arrow did not pass through, but broke the front leg and shoulder and took out the heart.
This was Darren's first deer with a traditional bow and it was taken from the ground!
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031573.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031565.jpg)
-
Photobucket is killing me. If someone can turn these pictures right-side-up it would be appreciated.
-
Congrats fella's! Sounds like fun was had by all.
-
The candle burned late into the night again as the deer was processed and bagged up for the cooler. A plan was hatched to sleep in a little later in the morning and then put a stalk together for hogs on the creek.
The third morning of the hunt found us posting the boys in likely spots on either side of the creek and then driving a half of a mile to the other side of the property to walk back towards them. We hoped to push some pigs their way.
While we were putting the boys in place an opportunity presented itself to obtain ornamentation for the bottom limb of Ethan's bow. Reed and Ethan both shot this cotton mouth in the head with blunts. They die hard.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031584.jpg)
-
Yeah, I know...
We should have cut the snakes head off before the picture. They just don't know when they are dead.
-
The hog drive turned out to be a bust. They can't even drive hogs at market so it is not easy to predict what they will do when pushed. We did jump a few deer and at least two hogs, but they all went the wrong direction.
It was a good morning for a walk though and the scenary was good.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031592.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031605.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031596.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA031586.jpg)
-
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021544.jpg)
-
The evening hunt was a good closing to the weekend and almost offered me a shot opportunity. Ethan returned to the stand he sat the first morning and he saw three turkeys. He managed to spot an armadillo, but did not get a shot. Darren went to the stand on the creek where Ethan had seen the hogs, but he struck out there. Reed returned to "The Zoo." He had a fawn under his stand for about 20 minutes and saw the same three turkeys that Ethan did.
I sat the climber that I had placed the evening before on the smaller piece of property and saw four deer and three turkeys. A fickle breeze tickled the back of my neck causing a fickle word to cross my lips and an even more fickle shot opportunity to slip away.
That is the way it goes.
It rained all night and into this morning so we slept in and cleaned cltohes, ate breakfast and packed up. The Shues are fine folks and Reed and I enjoyed getting to know them. We are proud to call them friends and are glad that we got to be a part of their first traditional deer harvests on a charity hunt that benefited St Jude's Hospital through the internet community that we know as tradgang.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021550.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/PA021548.jpg)
As some of you may remember, Chris Surtees generously threw a couple of days hunting at Benning on to this hunt. Darren and Ethan are there now. Hopefully there will be a few more adventures for them to write.
-
The best part about this story is that both men got their first deer. The second best is that Darren promised me some choice cuts from his at the Southern Indiana Bowhunt next weekend. I hope he follows through since I'm not packing any food :) Thanks for the story. It is great.
-
Thanks for telling the story Gregg and for taking and posting the pics. Ethan and I arrived at Ft. Benning this afternoon, got our post permits and Chris got us hunting right away. The short recap of tonight's hunt is that we didn't kill anything. But, we did push a single pig out of a wallow and it crossed a dirt road leaving it's hoof tracks in our Jeep tracks.
We also spotted a doe on a field edge and Ethan was able to move to within 30 yds of her before she took off. A few more steps and he may have had his second deer with a stick.
As we were heading back to Chris' house we saw 2 armadillos - my first live ones ever. I used to believe they were just born dead on the road.
Chris fixed us a late dinner and I thought I'd check out TG before heading to bed. Another early morning of pig chasin' is ahead and you can see by the pictures above I need my beauty sleep.
I will take the time later to properly thank Gregg and Reed for their hospitality and friendship, but now bed is calling.
And yes, Mr. Scifres, you'll be eating from my kill. It's about time I supplied the camp meat. :rolleyes:
-
What a great hunt! Filled with first deer, new freindships, and wonderful memories for all involved.
Thanks for taking the time to include us all, and for helping the kids at St. Jude! :thumbsup: :clapper:
-
Now this is what traditional archery is all about. Way to go fellas!!
:thumbsup: :thumbsup:
-
Congrats Darren and Ethan! Sounds like a great time. Wish I could join you at the Southern Indiana hunt.
-
:clapper:
cant wait to see u this weekend and enjoy some backstrap too!
-
Thanks for the comments, guys. We had a really good time. The chance to see a father and son take their first trad deer on consecutive evenings was pretty special.
-
ah Ya That is great Very nice work guys, congrats on a couple firsts does not get much better than that! Congrats thanks for sharing
:clapper: :clapper: :clapper:
-
Great Job Gregg and Reed! and Congratulations to Darren and Ethan :clapper: ....
-
Awesome Gregg ! :thumbsup:
nocams
-
Thanks, guys! I hope your seasons are going well!
-
Looks like a good time was had by all. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
-
Putting two men on their first trad kill - priceless!
-
Congrats Darren and Ethan. Sounds like you guys had a good time and saw some nice country as well.
-
Well........we're finally home, exhausted and thoroughly satisfied.
After we left the Dudley's lease we drove north to Ft. Benning where we met Chris Surtees who opened his home and favorite hunting spots to us. Chris worked his tail off (and ours in the process) trying to get Ethan and I on hogs and/or deer. We were close a couple of times with the highlight being Ethan getting busted while drawing on a doe at ten yards.
Hunting while hearing guns and artillary going off around you is quite the experience. They break the large expanse of land into sections that are either open or closed to hunting depending upon the Army's training needs for the day. One time we were walking through a low area and Ethan and I were following Chris as he was trying to cut fresh hog sign. We both chuckled after what we originally thought were hog squeals turned out to be the noise from tank tracks in the next section over. Chris did his best to find us hogs, but they just wouldn't cooperate by staying on only the open areas.
We enjoyed every minute of our time in Georgia - even when running into the massive webs of the Golden Silk (Banana) spider - YIKES!!! You Southerners need to warn us Yankees about things like that!
Gregg and Reed are quite the team. At only 12, Reed is an accomplished hunter who adds to the camp comraderie while retaining his boyish interests. When the rest of us were taking a little break between morning and afternoon hunts, Reed was out in the field behind the cabin digging a hole deep enough in which to hide himself. Gregg tirelessly took care of our every need as promised in the auction. Southern hospitality at it's finest!
Chris was a man obsessed. Despite our assurances that the hunt was the reward, he was determined to find us something to shoot. He managed to put us in some great areas and did yeoman's work in trying to decipher the varied sign we found. I appreciate the constant attention to making the next best step toward the goal.
While our personal goal was to enjoy meeting new trad folks and hunting new ground, Gregg, Reed & Chris were all set on getting Ethan and I shot opportunities. Anyone would be fortunate to get the chance to hunt with any of the three. If this hunt is offered again next year, we'll be looking for a return trip for sure. Thanks to all three of you for your friendship, hospitality and a truly great time.
Ethan has to try to get caught up with school work and I am leaving for 4 more days of chasing deer in So. Indiana with some more TradGangers (wish you could be there too, Steve!). Thanks for all the congratulations and positive comments. Getting my first with a stick was great, but seeing Ethan close the deal on his first was incredible. Here's hoping all of your seasons are as rewarding as ours has already been.
-
Well-done, All!
-
Outstanding!!
Congrats to Darren and Ethan!
Great job on your end Gregg, Reed, and Chris as well.
-
Congrats to you and Ethan on your first trad deer. Sounds like you had fun.