Trad Gang

Well tomorrow I am meeting up with Fred Gimbel (Greyfox 54)and his grandson to hunt in Edison, Ga for the second annual St Jude Charity Hunt.  Fred generously "purchased" this hunt on the tradgang St. Jude Auction.  I am excited to meet Fred and I know we will have a big time.  

Here is a link to last year's hunt:

 http://tradgang.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=078862  

Hopefully, we can have similar or better success.  Wish us luck!  I will have pictures and lies to share come Monday...

Gregg your in for a treat Fred is a great guy to share a camp with.

Like xroadshunter said, Fred is a great guy and I'm sure his grandson is cut from the same cloth. I'm sure it will be a great hunt; looking forward to the stories and pics.

Good luck.  Should have a great weekend to hunt. The is the weekend to be in the woods up here.

Good luck to guys!  Be safe!   :thumbsup:    :thumbsup:

QuoteOriginally posted by rastaman:
Good luck to guys!  Be safe!    :thumbsup:      :thumbsup:  

Fred's a great guy!  You'll have a great time for sure!!

Good luck guys   :thumbsup:    :thumbsup:

Fred is top notch, one of the great ones I have met here. This will be fun to read.

Boy, Fred sure has a lot of fans!  Add me to the list - top notch guy to share a camp with  :thumbsup:  
Have a great time everyone.  I'll be looking forward to the stories.

Never had the priveledge yet of meeting Fred. However, he was nice enough and thoughtful enough of others a few months back to buy up a bunch of discontinued Summit SOP safety harnesses at a show. He then offered them to the gang and I was able to get the best harness on the market IMHO for a lot less $$$.

Fred, thought of your thoughtfulness  many times this year already when I swing that safety rope around the tree and hookup. Your a good man brother !

Good luck to you and you are sharing a camp with Mr Gregg, whom I have met. None better in my book. He rolled out the red carpet a few years back when Mason and I tagged along with DW, Skyler, JC, Chase, and Connor Coots for the Florida Fall Rendevouz. We had a awesome time in FL with Gregg and crew. Got to see my first black bear in the wild as it ran across the road in front of us as we were coming back from dinner the first evening. Gregg, take us some good pics with that new camera man !

Got this little teaser from Gregg...

•  (http://www.tradgang.com/upload/curt/Greggarrow.jpg)

The hunt is going well    :clapper:

:campfire:     :coffee:

Thanks, Curt!  We are having a big time.  Fred is a great guy.  I read him all this garbage about how famously fantastic he is and he got all embarrassed.  Thanks Jimmy for telling everyone I'm a pretty decent sort too!  Lol!

Fred's grandson, Jason, is a lot of fun to have around as well.   Another day of hunting tomorrow....

:campfire:  Gregg, I see the focus on that nice new camera works well ! Glad ya'll are having a great time and success !!! Looking forward to the full story and pics bud.

good luck to all

Well another St Jude's hunt is in the books and, as usual, a good time was had by all.

The hunt started off with a hunt indeed...Me hunting for Fred and his grandson, Jason!  We had arranged for them to call me when they got close to Edison, Georgia, but when the appointed hour drew near and I could not get in touch with them I began to wonder if perhaps their New Jersey cell plan did not include the metropolitan center of south west Georgia.  

I decided to drive into town and take a stand at the local grocery store.  From there I had about a ten yard shot to the two-lane road through town.  I had only been on post for about twenty minutes when I spotted someone I thought was Fred drive by.  I quickly jumped into the truck and ran him down within a mile or so when he stopped at a jiffy store.  

I had never met Fred before, but recognized him by his distinctive beard, which I remembered from pictures on tradgang.  I introduced myself to Fred and Jason and we made the quick trip to the cabin where we we unloaded gear, flung a few arrows and talked about the hunt which would start on the following morning.

Fred is as advertised in the comments above and is a great guy to talk to and hunt with.  He has hunted all across the globe and I was honored to have him as a guest at my humble south Ga hunting lease.  His grandson, Jason is a funny guy with a lot of enthusiam and a good outlook on life.  I was lucky to get to share camp with these two guys.

The first morning as we walked into the woods, I stopped to check a trail camera.  There were 147 pictures taken since the previous Saturday so I switched my plans and set Jason up in a stand nearby.  I showed Fred to a stand on a gasline right-of-way at a point where it crossed a creek and I went farther down the creek to another stand.  

Despite all the trailcam pictures, Jason didn't see anything on the first morning.  Fred was apparently set up right under some roosting tureys though and he was treated to some fun as he watched around 20 of the birds fly down and feed around him on the gasline.  He also saw two does, but they crossed the right-of-way out of range.

I had managed to resist the temptation to take my black widow recurve out and had stuck to my commitment to hunt with my Dwyer longbow.  I had put the bow up for sale earlier in the year and had repeatedly told people that it was the prettiest bow I had ever seen.  I finally believed my own sales pitch and decided not to sell it.  After years of hunting with a recurve, I commited to taking a deer with the Dwyer Defiant.

Just before 8:30 AM, on Friday November 5, I shot my first deer with a longbow.  The shot was @ 18 yards and the magnus stinger did the job inside of 60 yards.

 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/CSC_0530.jpg)

 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/CSC_0620.jpg)

Great picture Greg!  Congratulations on your longbow kill!   :thumbsup:    :thumbsup:

:thumbsup:    :thumbsup:    :clapper:

Looking forward to the rest of it Gregg.

Awesome Gregg ! Yep, mason has one of them Dwyer Defiant bows as well. Looking forward to more pics and Fred's commentary as well.

Have to ask, When you ran Fred down did you give him the classic Southern welcome phrase that makes Yanks shiver in their boots ??? " You ain't from around here are you boy ? "

I was disappointed that Jason hadn't seen anything and pulled the camera to check the pictures.   Holy cow! or maybe I should say holy hogs!  Three days out of the previous five the camera had taken daylight pictures of hogs.  One picture had thirteen hogs in it!

At midday I moved the ladder stand that Jason had hunted in to cover the area that the camera had covered.  That night he hunted the stand and saw a doe, a spike, and a whole herd of hogs!  Unfortunately, all the game came in from downwind and spooked before he could get a shot.  

 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/DSC_0598.jpg)

The variable wind direction also worked against Fred and I as we went without a deer sighting.

On Saturday morning, I put Jason in "The Persimmon Stand" and he had a close encounter with a doe and forkhorn.  The young buck was chasing the doe all over the adjacent hayfield and eventually the chase brought the doe within bow range.  Jason wanted a crack at the buck and passed on the doe.  You know how that turned out...the buck held up behind some brush and when the doe left he took off after her without giving Jason a chance to shoot.

Fred hunted a ladder stand that Darren and Ethan had helped me set up on last year's St Jude hunt.  The stand covers a creek crossing on the backside of an overgrown crp field.  Fred saw four does and (whisper) missed a shot at one from a pretty close distance.    :archer2:

The stand I hunted had a deer under it when I got there and I saw a three other deer that never came into bow range.

At midday we scouted around and found an impressive rubline that led back into a thick drainage that made setting a treestand tough.  We decided to set a groundblind up and Fred decided he would hunt there in the evening.

We also scouted the CRP field and found a lot of sign there.  We jumped a huge black boar there that let Fred and I walk by before exploding out of the brush at Jason's feet.  We decided that "charged by a wild boar" would make a better story with the ladies back in Jersey so that's what I'm going with.

Here is a picture of the beast from a trail camera near by.  

 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/scan0001.jpg)

Fred hunted the ground blind that evening and saw a young buck at 12-15 yards.  

Jason sat the pig stand again that night and did not see anything although he heard some animals in the overgrown crp field.

I hunted the stand that Fred had hunted ont he first morning where the gasline and creek meet.  I saw two does and the big black boar.  The y were all out of range, but the boar appeared to be heading towards Jason's stand.  

These wallows are visible from the stand:

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/DSC_0506.jpg)

This odd growth on a limb caught my eye:

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/DSC_0524.jpg)

We started off Sunday morning late.  I had been using my phone for an alarm clock and forgot that the time was changing.  It was much lighter than before when we headed for the woods an hour late! Jason and I dropped Fred off at the stand on the creek crossing and then headed out for our stands.  Four deer crossed the trail in front of the truck which made me even more antsy.  

I dropped Jason off at the stand on the gasline and creek and hurried through the woods to my own stand.  I blew a deer that I am certain was a buck out as I approached the stand. I also ended up seeing a lone doe later in the morning.

When I got down I decided to slip along the creek and see if I could push anything towards Jason.  

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/DSC_0488.jpg)

My one man deer drive was unsuccessful, but I did see this cool fungi:  

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/DSC_0554.jpg)

and this cool tree:

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/DSC_0534.jpg)

When I got to Jason I found out that he had seen a four point, but couldn't get a shot at it.  The young buck snuck up behind him walked to the foot of his ladder stand and stood there for a minute before moving to Jason's right and into the woods.  He then crossed the creek and stood out of range looking at him for a minute with his tongue out.     :p      :saywhat:      

Fred saw five deer, but they were all out of range.

That evening was our last hunt.  Fred sat the blind again and had an owl nearly take him out when it flew on to the window ledge.  He had a deer blow at him from behind the blind where he had walked in, but didn;t see a deer.

Jason struck out on the pig stand with nothing seen or heard.  I went to the gasline stand on the creek and saw the big black boar for the third time that weekend.  Again he was heading towards Jason and again I thought Jason would get a shot, but it wasn't to be.

The hunt ended wthout any more game taken, but with great memries made.  The weather was beautiful.  The stars were magnificient.  The time outdoors was wonderful.  The company was outstanding.  If you ever get the chance to spend time with Fred or Jason take advantage of it.  They are great people.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/CSC_0483.jpg)

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/CSC_0613.jpg)

And a good time was had by all.  :thumbsup:

Fred will be home to Jersey on Thursday to make his report.

Congrats on the longbow kill Gregg and a great hunt for Fred and his Grandson.Thanks for the donation to St. Judes to all.RC

How cool!!   :clapper:

QuoteOriginally posted by gregg dudley:
This odd growth on a limb caught my eye:

 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/dudleyg/DSC_0524.jpg)

That looks like an early starting node of mistletoe.

Or a serious bee sting.

Great story and picks.  Thanks for sharing.