Kentucky Deer Rifle Season 2009

By KentuckyHunter

I was really looking forward to the upcoming rifle season this year. I had so little time to hunt throughout the fall and only made it out a handful of days during bow season. Luckily for me I had vacation time scheduled for the first week of Kentucky’s deer rifle season, and I hoped to spend most of that time filling tags. The way the season fell on the calendar this year, I was able to get out on Veteran’s Day before the opener to set up my stand locations. My uncle has a 200 plus acre farm in Robertson County, Kentucky and that was where I was headed to on Wednesday morning.

I spent the first few hours of early morning hunting with my bow. Turkey season was also in, so I made a few calls while sitting in my ground blind. I heard a few birds a long way off, but there was no action in my area. Eager to clear out a few tree stand locations for Saturday, I left the woods around 11. The first order of business was to set up a target and see if my rifle scope was still zeroed. I have an old Remington Model 700 in .270 Win that I have used for the past eight or so seasons. With multiple rust pock marks in the outer barrel surface and scratches in the stock, it is not a looker. I am not sure of its exact provenance, but it definitely shows some abuse of previous owners. What it lacks in beauty it makes up for in accuracy. I have taken many deer past 200 yards with the rifle and I am confident that it will do its job if I can remain steady. It is finicky on what loads it likes though. For the first few years I had it I used inexpensive Federal Classic loads that have since been discontinued. The Classic line featured excellent bullet choices though and my gun really liked the Sierra Pro Hunter bullets. Sadly, I used the last box I could scrounge off the internet four years ago. I then tried some Remington Core-Lokt bullets, but they were all over the paper. Another guy at the range saw my predicament and gave me half a box of Federal Premiums with the Sierra GameKing bullets. My rifle also shoots these very well, but they are twice the price of the old Classic rounds. Being confident in my shot is important to me, so it is worth the extra price.

I tacked a target to a cardboard box and set it up on the edge of a wood line. The day was very windy and I was hoping that the woods would help buffet the worst of the wind. I set up about 100 yards away. On top of my cooler I set up my shooting rest and lined the rifle up with the target, which promptly blew over. After setting the target in a small depression, I lined everything back up and made a few shots. The zero was still true so I packed everything back up and started looking for my tree stand gear. I looked everywhere for my folding saw, but couldn’t find it and had to make a quick trip to Mt. Olivet. The town doesn’t have many businesses, but luckily an old hardware store was open. He had a cheap Chinese made bow saw for $5 and I left with hopes of getting a few shooting lanes ready.

One of my favorite locations on the farm is a gas line easement that is cut through two patches of woods. Robertson County is old cattle country. The land has large rolling hills which are typically clear at the crests for hay and the hill sides are grown up in hardwood and cedar thickets. The easement cuts a 70 yard swath down a hill side and back up the other that normally would be uninterrupted woods. Looking to the north from one hill side to the other along the open easement the distance is about 175 yards. To the left and down hill there is a large patch of woods where most of the deer come from. To the right and slightly uphill is a smaller 3-5 acre patch of woods that is a sanctuary for deer. It is littered with buck rubs and scrapes. Around the top is a hay field that winds its way around the small patch of woods and back around to the opposite hillside. The deer travel between the woods along the bottom of the hill where they feel hidden from view from the open hay fields. I normally sit on one hill side and use my pop blind. This year though the gas company hadn’t bush hogged the easement and the sumac trees were too tall to see over. I decided to set up my climbing tree stand in a tree along the easement so that I could look down into the cover. There weren’t many candidates to choose from, but I finally found a small pin oak that would do the job. I spent the next hour cutting back vines and scrub red bud trees in order to open up some shooting lanes. My stand was located on the edge of the smaller patch of woods. I didn’t have much of a shot along the easement on my side because of several large trees with limbs stretching out into the open, but across to the larger woods I would have many opportunities. Using my safety belt, I eased up the tree in my Ol’man climber and surveyed my situation. I made it up about 12 feet in the tree before I had to cut a limb out of my way. Moving up the tree a little more, the diameter of the tree began to lessen to where I didn’t feel safe going any higher. I would only be 15 feet off of the ground, but my vantage gave my views all the way to the bottom of the drainage and also the hayfield surrounding the woods. I was very confident in my setup.

Since I finished up at a reasonable hour, I decided to head to the Ohio River and Meldahl dam in Bracken County, Kentucky to see if the sauger were biting. There were a few guys up on the dam wall that seemed to be hauling them in every other cast. I had some small white Gulp minnows and made a few casts from the bank. Hang-ups are really horrible at this dam and you have to be in constant contact with your bait. After a few casts, I switched to a chartreuse minnow and got a hit. The sauger was the biggest I have ever caught and I estimate it weighed about 2-3 lbs. The rest of the afternoon was pretty slow, but I caught a 12 inch cigar shaped sauger around 4:30 pm. As I was packing up to leave two of the guys on the dam were also leaving. Looking at my sorry stringer, I asked if they would sell me a couple from their bulging fish basket of sauger so that I could have enough for dinner. Those guys were really cool though and just gave me a couple of fish so that I would have a mess.

Saturday couldn’t come soon enough for me. I don’t think I slept more than a couple of hours Friday night, and those with one eye on the alarm clock. Loaded up with coffee, I hit the road early. Parking my truck in a hayfield near the road, I got out my gear. I slipped on my blaze orange hat and vest. In one pocket I slipped a length of small diameter rope to hoist up my rifle with. In the other pocket I slipped my can type bleat call and small grunt call. In my pants pocket I stashed my deer drag. I call it my poor man’s Glenn’s Deer Handle. Using a 6ft piece of heavy nylon rope, I strung it through a hand width length of bamboo and tied a knot in it. I slipped a few bullets into my pocket and headed to my stand. The walk was only a couple hundred yards and only a little way to my stand, I heard a deer blow and crash into the woods! The deer must have been bedded down in the high grass and brambles of the easement. I slowly made my way down the hill and into my tree. As quietly as possible I climbed the tree with my stand and hoisted up my rifle. Before I did anything else, I pulled out my bleat call and turned it over. In the woods across from me I could hear deer walking around in the leaves reacting to my call. I quietly worked the bolt of my rifle, chambering a round and waited for daylight.

Just as the limbs of the trees were becoming visibly distinct, I pulled out my can call again and gave it two short bleats. Again, deer were moving in the leaves in the woods opposite me. Then, in an opening I could see a deer step out into the edge of the easement. I could tell it didn’t have antlers, which was perfect since I wasn’t really looking for a buck necessarily. If a big deer walked out, I would be happy to take it but my real goal was a young doe. I raised my rifle scope to my eye and could see the deer much better with the lack gathering ability of my scope. Bringing the cross hairs on its chest I squeezed the trigger and the deer headed back into the woods. Adrenaline had me shaking a little bit, but instead of getting down from the tree, I decided to wait a little bit and see what else would come out. About 20 minutes later, I heard some whimpering and baying from up the hill and it was getting louder. Soon I heard footsteps running in the small patch of woods behind me and a big doe emerged from the woods and ran up the opposite hillside of the easement. The barking continued and the deer looked at its back trail. The limbs of the trees were blocking my shot as the deer was on my side of the easement. I picked a small opening in the limbs and waited for the doe to give me a shot. Picking her way up the hill she entered my scope and my shot put her right down. At the base of my tree I soon had a mixed breed bird dog and an old beagle looking up at me. They looked up seemingly disappointed that I had ruined their fun. Within half an hour I had two deer down. What a great opening morning!

I climbed down the tree and tried to catch the dogs. They didn’t have any tags on their collars from what I could tell and they dodged my makeshift lasso. I walked down the hill and back up the other side toward my doe. As I looked around for the dogs, I could see that they had found my other deer on the edge of the woods. I headed over to my first deer and spooked the dogs away with a stick. The deer ended up being a button buck, which ideally I would not have shot, but in the early morning light I had mistaken it for a doe. I made short work of the field dressing and then placed his hooves above his head to make the drag easier. He was reasonably light and I headed up hill through the briars to my doe. After field dressing her, I finished dragging the smaller button buck to the top of the hill and the hayfield where I could load him up into my truck. I walked back to the truck and drove it around the hayfield to the deer. I heard a couple of shots not too far away and hoped my cousin or dad had some luck too. I then headed back down to the doe and started to drag her up. She was a big doe and I broke the bamboo handle on my deer drag half way up the hill. After I had the deer loaded in the bed of my truck, I heard a couple more shots and couldn’t help but think that we might have a really successful morning on tap. I drove back to my cousin’s house and saw him headed in from the field. He said he had just seen a huge buck tending to a doe a couple of hundred yards off and headed his way, when two dogs had run in and split the deer up. He had taken a running shot at the buck as it closed within 100 yards of his spot but had missed. We both looked across the road and my dad was heading out of his blind. He had also tagged a large doe and a button buck. We hung the deer up in the old tobacco barn and quartered them out for the ride home where the real work would begin of cutting, grinding, and wrapping.

I decided to take the next few days off and do some fishing instead. I had one deer already from the early muzzleloader season, so I now had three deer in the freezer. I went several mornings to Meldahl Dam and met an older fishermen there every morning who said he fished there almost every day starting at 4 a.m. When I got there he was always set up right on top of the dam wall. The dam runs out from the shore and then makes a right angle out into the river for 40 or 50 yards. The water rushes over the dam on the other side of this concrete wall and makes an eddy of water that runs back along the face of the wall and then circles back along the beach. The older fisherman was always right up again the wall and fished that area where the eddy started. We both caught a bunch of sauger and also some crappie and white bass. It usually only took a couple of hours to get a limit because he was nice enough to give me a few fish for my basket.

As my week was ending, I decided to try deer hunting one more morning. I went to the same stand I had on the opener and waited. The morning was pretty slow at first, but about 9 am I could see three deer walking through the woods to the easement. They started munching on some shoots of green grass at the bottom of the hill and I brought my rifle up ready for one to turn broadside. A large doe started up the hill and I put the cross hairs on her chest and snapped off a shot. She ran back into the woods, but one of the other deer ran a few feet and just looked around. I guess I was too shaky because I shot at that deer three times. I waited about 20 minutes before getting out of my stand and was really feeling unsure. My last shot seemed to hit the deer but it had not fallen in sight. I walked to the spot where I had shot the first deer and didn’t see any blood at all. I made a note of the spot and headed to where I had shot the second deer. At first I didn’t see any sign, but then I saw some hair. I headed off into the woods along the path it had taken, but I didn’t see any blood for the first 20 yards. I was beginning to get desperate when I saw a small pool of blood. Not a lot of blood and it was a dark color. I was not encouraged.

Instead of pushing the deer, I went back to the spot of my first shot and started to look for that deer. I couldn’t find any sign at all. I just started blindly walking where I thought the deer might go, and then I saw the white belly about 80 yards from where I had shot her. The shot had been perfectly placed, but she just hadn’t bled until she stopped. The spot where she had fallen had a huge pool of blood, but there had not been any sign leading up to her. I field dressed the deer, and she was absolutely huge. I hooked up my rope to her and started to drag her through the woods. I was drenched in sweat within a few steps. I got to a good shady spot and decided to let her cool in the morning air and I headed back to look for the second deer. I started searching again at where I had seen the hair. There was a good amount of hair, but no blood. I walked in circles for the next hour looking for more sign, but I never found that deer. I think I must of just grazed the deer and didn’t mortally wound it. The lesson for me is that I need to get myself calmed down before I attempt to make a shot. I was way too juiced after making the first kill and was not in any shape to take a clean shot. I think the deer was probably fine, but I should have made a better decision.

Dejected, I headed back to my deer and started to drag her out. I don’t know if I could have found a steeper, more briar choked hollow to drag a deer out of if I had tried. Just as I made it to the hayfield and was headed toward the road, the neighbor drove by and asked me if I needed help. He drove me back to my truck and I was able to get her loaded up. It took all I had to pick her up and swing her over the tailgate. Now with four deer in my freezer and my buck tag still unfilled, I might just call this season over. I don’t have any antlers for my wall, but I have many great meals of venison and sauger waiting in my future.

Kentucky Fall Turkey Hunting 2009

By Kentuckyhunter

This past Sunday was a nice cool morning in the mid 40’s with calm winds which made it a perfect day to take a drive out to my uncle’s place in Robertson County, Kentucky and make an attempt at bagging a bird. Running on only a few hours of sleep and some take out coffee, I headed down the back roads in the dark trying to find a radio station not featuring fire and brimstone and settled on a Chicago sports station. I pulled up into the driveway of the old abandoned house on his farm and stepped out to see a few meteors arching across the dark sky. Donning my turkey vest, I took a few minutes to freshen up the surface of my friction calls. Into the game pouch of my vest I slipped my folding blind which I hoped to later use to create a camouflage fence around my position. I loaded my 870 twelve gauge with no. 6 Heavy-Shot 3” loads, grabbed a hen decoy, slipped the strap of my seat around my neck, and stepped into the woods.

Carefully I picked my way down the overgrown trail in the dim light of the stars. We haven’t had much time to do maintenance on the trails and numerous trees had blown over and saplings had sprung up everywhere. Resting every few feet, I paused to blow my owl call in order to solicit a gobble and possibly locate where the turkeys were roosting. I have had great luck finding turkeys on the ridge I was walking. You can read about me spooking a huge gobbler from this ridge during last year’s archery season in a previous blog post. Just as I was able to start seeing the tops of the trees and a few squirrels jumping from limb to limb, I reached the spot where I thought the turkeys would be roosted. My plan was to get in among the birds and spook them in all directions so that I might call them back to my location. The birds had not read the script (or perhaps they had!), and no birds were roosted on the ridge.

I slowly made my way down hill, making a few yelps on my slate call. I recently picked up a new Derby City striker. It is made of old growth maple which is over 500 years old. The tone quality of this striker is truly amazing. The company makes their calls and strikers in the off hours of a musical instrument factory using high quality instrument grade woods. I don’t have any of their calls, but this new striker makes all of my friction calls sound great. Far in the distance I could hear a couple of gobbles, so I headed down a creek at the base of the hill toward the sound. I reached a spot where another creek merged with the creek I had been traveling along as well as the convergence of several ridges. I again made a few yelps and purrs, and was rewarded with distant yelps from some hens which seemed to come from the back property line. I headed up a ridge that went off at an angle from where the sound seemed to come from so that I could attempt to circle around the turkeys and not come directly at them. I fitted my mask to my face and slipped on my gloves so as to be invisible as possible to their sharp eyes.

Reaching the crest of the ridge I looked into a large hayfield surrounded by timber and scanned it for any movement. Again, I made a few yelps and heard turkeys yelping back below in the woods to my right as well as yelps to my far left in the deeper woods. My plan was to move between these two groups of turkeys and try to stir them up with a few calls so as to bring them together with me in the middle hopefully ready to take a shot. The damp ground and wet leaves made my steps nearly silent, but a deer smelled me and blew out of the woods in front of me. Hoping for the best, I continued on my path to bisect the two flocks of turkeys when a sharp yelp stopped me in my tracks. Slowly, I dropped my decoy and eased my seat from around my neck and set it next to an oak tree. This tree had on main stump with several smaller trunks coming from the center. I flipped down the cushion on my vest and sat down. I scanned the woods looking for the source of the yelp and directly in front of me across a small ravine was a large black turkey with its neck stretched out looking for whoever was making the footsteps in the woods. The bird seemed to be right at the edge of my gun range as I slowly raised the shotgun to my cheek. I should have checked the yardage with my range finder, but I was so busted that I was afraid that the movement would spook the already alert bird. I took careful aim and squeezed off the shot. The bird flopped and then got back up and half flew and half ran into some thick cover. Racking another shell, I flipped on the safety and took off across the ravine and lost sight of the bird. I picked my way through the thickly spaced sapling and heard the bird flapping ahead. Reaching a small opening, the bird raised its head and started to run. I let loose another shot and the bird was thankfully done.

As I struggled to make my way back through the brush, I finally reached the spot where I had shot the bird. He had a nice thick rope of a beard, but its spurs were less than an inch. I estimate that in the spring he would have been a two year old bird. With the deed done, I reached into my vest to make note of the yardage–63 yards! It was definitely a marginal shot with a 12 gauge and probably not one I would have taken if I had checked the distance first. I think it is important for guys to admit when they do something wrong, and this is definitely one of those times. There is no way I should have taken that shot and I am very lucky I was able to track down the gobbler. I am going to chalk it up to experience and hopefully I will do the right thing next time around. In the meantime, I can’t wait to make up a pot of turkey chili this week!

Squirrel Hunting Opener 2009

By Joel Walters

My very first hunting trip as a kid was to a woodlot in search of squirrels, and I still get excited when the middle of August rolls around. Later will come dove, turkey, deer, and rabbits, but first always comes the hunt for bushy tails. I woke up admittedly a bit late this past weekend and quickly got dressed and headed out the door to a new place for me. On my way down to Adair WMA in Boone County, Kentucky I saw several deer, including a nice 8 pointer in velvet. Pulling in the drive past the Big Bone Baptist Church (no, I am not making this up) I was greeted by the sight up four other vehicles already parked in the small lot. Public land is always a gamble, so I decided to make the best of it and head to the furthest reaches of the property. I broke down the barrel of my Walther .22 caliber air rifle and inserted a Crow Magnum pellet into the barrel. After levering the barrel back, I jumped over a low wire that keeps vehicles from traveling down an old gravel road heading into the property. I eased down a steep hill, searching the beech trees that line the road for any movement. Soon I was at the bottom of the hill and noticed an old barn quietly moldering in the overgrowth. I continued down the gravel road, looking for a likely patch of hickories. The road travels down a small creek valley with thick brush coming in from both sides. After about ½ a mile, I looked to my left and saw a deer trail heading up another creek that fed the larger creek that ran along the gravel road. I jumped the creek, and started up the draw. Soon I was ducking and diving my way through massive tangles of multi-flora rose. As I detached my sleeve from a particular adamant briar vine, I saw a squirrel jump from a beech to a hickory about 40 yards away up the hill and to my left. Watching my steps carefully, I worked my way further up the draw on a path to intersect him. When I got about 20 more yards, I finally noticed a large electric fence. I was at the back of the property and would need to be very careful of where I shot a squirrel. On the public side of the property, honeysuckle, autumn olive, multi-flora rose, and any number of other entanglements seemed to snarl my plans. On the private property across the way was nothing by mowed pasture between majestic patches of hardwoods. I didn’t see that particular squirrel again, but I edge my way along the electric fence using a deer trail. This property is overrun with deer due in large part to the archery only regulations. I had never seen deer trails that looked so much like a cow path before. Pausing for a moment in a good vantage point, I scanned a small patch of hickories in front of me. Soon I saw the movement of a gray squirrel jumping from one tree to another. As he squirmed his way up a branch, I eased off the safety and placed the crosshairs on his head. Pifffff, and the squirrel was headed back down the limb the way he came. My first shot had been bad, and I couldn’t get cocked and loaded again before he was long gone. I continued on the deer trail, making occasional detours around the worst briar patches. It was kind of like making your way through a deciduous jungle where a machette would not have been out of place. On my hands and knees I crawled my way through patches of honeysuckle and autumn olive. As I reached a more open meadow, I was soon soaked to the skin with the heavy dew and sweat from the exertion. Detangling myself from another in a long series of briar patches, I was beginning to think it wouldn’t be too bad to just lay down and live here rather than take another step. Maybe a pack of boy scouts would wander by, find me, and take pity on me. Finally hope came in the form of a barking squirrel a few dozen yards in front of me. With renewed focus I eased into a more open section of hickories. As I scanned the tree tops, movement to my right caught me eye as a small gray squirrel eased down a tree in stops and spurts. Before I could draw a bead, he had jumped across the electric fence and onto the safety of the private property. I slowly made my way down hill. The sun was getting higher and was baking my brain along with the dew from the meadow and turning the day into a real humid scorcher. After about half an hour of stalking through the small patch of woods, I convinced myself that the squirrel I had seen was the same one I had heard barking earlier and started to walk more quickly. About three steps in, I heard a squirrel jump through the trees ten yards away. I quickly flipped off the safety and searched for the squirrel in my scope. He made it about 25 yards quickly through the treetops before stopping to check his back trail. I put the crosshairs on his chest and squeezed. A branch slowly descended from the canopy, but no squirrel. I ran up the hill and searched the area, but didn’t see any sign. Thoroughly disgusted and disgusting to boot (I was a sweaty mess), I hacked my way through the meadow back to the gravel road and from there to my truck. The parking lot was more full than when I had left, but I wished my fellow hunters luck as I kicked on the air conditioner full blast and headed home.

A Successful Turkey Hunting Season

By Joel Walters

Last season was one of my most successful years turkey hunting, and not for the reasons you may think. Last season was my first year of marriage and I was able to take my wife with me on opening morning. She is not a hunter and nor does anyone in her family hunt, so this was a whole new world of experience for her. I was very proud of her for taking an interest in something that is so important to me; however I do believe her favorite portion of the season was getting to go shopping–even if the shopping was only for a new Mossy Oak outfit for her to wear.

Opening morning was crisp and sunny. We walked out a ridge from my cousin’s house that had been mowed for hay. The ridge winds it way for about 800 yards and then ends in a tree line where the neighbor’s property begins. For her first hunt, I wanted my wife to be as comfortable as possible. For this reason I decided to use a ground blind and set it in a likely strutting spot in the hayfield along the woods. This would give us ample room and a comfortable chair to sit in while we waited for turkeys to visit. I set up my strutting decoy at the top of the ridge facing away from the woods and placed a hen in the breeding position a few yards away. A few yards farther away I placed a feeding hen decoy. My blind was positioned with my back to the woods facing toward the decoys in the hayfield which rolls gently downhill to our right until it hits another tree line that starts a 25 acre patch of woods leading down the hill from us. The hayfield is a favorite strutting area for toms because it is hidden from view from the longer expanse of open ground but is clearly visible by turkeys in the woods.

We got situated in our chairs and we could already hear a few gobbles behind us and below and to our right in the woods. I picked up my Cane Creek glass call and gave a few tree yelps. We immediately got a response that cut off my call so we decided to sit and not call for awhile. As the light began to shine in the hayfield in front of us, we heard a few birds pitching down in the distance. I gave my wife my hat, and while I let loose a fly down cackle with my call she beat the hat against her leg to mimic a bird flying down from a nearby tree.

For the next few minutes I made a series of clucks, yelps, and purrs on a Sla-Tek surface friction call by Knight and Hale. We heard a few gobbles behind us in the woods that seemed about 150-200 yards away. My wife had been hearing me practice my calls for weeks now and would soon show me that she had a pretty good idea of how to call in that gobbler. The year before at her parents house in Pennsylvania, while sitting on their front porch, she had yelped with her natural voice and called in a whole flock of birds to within a few dozen yards of the house. She has an innate ear for a good turkey sound, so when she told me to switch to another call I quickly switched over to my small slate call. As soon as I gave a few yelps, the gobbler reacted and seemed to close the distance. As I began to do a few soft clucks and purrs I could see out of the right window of the blind the blue head of a gobbler strutting at the edge of the woods.

Carefully I set down my calls and with a whisper told my wife to hold her ears. I stuck the barrel of my shotgun out the window, drew a bead, and fired. Disaster was avoided as I almost, but not quite, ejected the spent shell into my wife’s face. We quickly exited the blind to grab our harvest.

From start to finish, our hunt had lasted maybe 35 minutes. Never had I had such an easy time in the woods. I told my wife that turkey hunting is very seldom so much of a foregone conclusion, but I don’t think she fully believed me. As I start to prepare for the upcoming ‘09 season opener, I am hoping that the itch will strike her as well so that she might buy a tag for herself. Hopefully she will at least go along with me so that some of her good luck will rub off again this year.

Cabin Fever

By KentuckyHunter

New Year’s Bow Hunt

By KentuckyHunter

New Year’s morning started out about as well as I could have expected. I made a French toast breakfast for my wife and I. In her bacon and coffee induced euphoria she suggested that maybe I would like to go hunting this afternoon so that we could have another turkey for the freezer. Soon I was suiting up and getting ready to head out. This morning was crisp and sunny. The creeks and puddles had a crust of ice coating their surface. I crunched my way through the frozen mud on the same piece of private property I had been successful on just last Saturday. I dressed somewhat warmly, with a thin set of long underwear, two long sleeved t-shirts, camo pants, and a thin camo jacket, but I still wanted to be flexible enough to draw back my bow. As I made my way up the hillside to my familiar blind location, I broke a little sweat from the effort of carrying all my gear. Once I arrived I immediately set about trimming some of the small branches away from the area to create more shooting lanes. I described the area quite a bit in my last post, but basically, I set my blind up in one of the only semi-clear sections of woods on the property. The land is completely infested with honeysuckle that often can only traversed on hands and knees. This clearing has about a 25-yard radius of fairly open ground to allow for a clean shot. This clearing is created as the creek leading up the hillside splits into two and forms a less steep bench of land about 75 yards from the crest of a large hill. I have my blind set up in the land between the two creeks at the base of a large tree and facing up the hill. About noon or so I heard a very loud crash behind my blind and down the creek. I tried to twist around in my chair, but I couldn’t tell what had made the noise right away. I kept searching out the left window, when I saw a doe making her way up the hill on the opposite side of the creek from me. From the continued sound of steps in the leaves, she had brought along a number of friends. She watched my blind for a little bit, then made a few more cautious steps. She was only about 30 yards away, but she might as well been 300 with all of the honeysuckle branches in between us. I sat and watched her for about 10 minutes and hoped she would step into a clearing I had ranged at 40 yards, but she kept tight to the cover and eventually went out of sight. I never did see the rest of the herd, but I expect they were further back in to the cover and out of sight. The next hour and a half was pretty uneventful. I made a few calls on my slate and glass calls, but they went unanswered. I shivered a little bit as the wind picked up and wrapped in through the blind’s windows. About 1:30 I looked up the creek on my right and thought I saw some people walking down the creek toward me. It is strange how your brain will fill in details for what your eyes do not see. All I could see through the thick cover was a couple of dark shapes, but my mind made the shapes out to be people in sweaters hiking through the woods. Well, the shapes soon turned into a good-sized flock of hens, jakes, and poults. Using my little slate call, I made a few purrs and clucks. The turkeys made their way closer and went to the exact same area where I had made the shot on the bird last Saturday. At this point, I became completely unglued. Amazingly, through the next series of events, I did not knock my arrow off of the rest, but nearly every other piece of bad luck was to come to pass. I set my call down and picked up my bow. I carefully fitted the arrow to the rest and began to pull back. The birds had made it to where I could see them through my right window. I attempted to turn in my chair, but the cushion that was connected to my turkey vest had wedged itself into the metal hinge of the chair and I was stuck. I had to let down on my bow in order to try and free myself. That was when the nock came loose from my arrow and it went on a slow motion arc out of the window. I looked dumbly at my nock stuck in my bow’s string, and then back out the side window. The birds were still there! Great! I pulled out another arrow from my quiver and got ready. I tried to move in the chair again, but it was still stuck like before. I decided to shift on the cushion instead trying to move the cushion on the chair. I pulled back my bow, but this time I was closer to the window opening and the rubber bracket for my quiver latched onto the window’s fabric edge. I managed to free the bracket, but lost the battle with my chair. Since I had shifted my weight to the edge of the chair, it decided to fold up and roll under the blind and down the hill. Amazingly, the birds were still there and I was still at full-draw. I scrunched up on one knee and carefully aimed at a poult that was about 20 yards away. THWUNK, I released my arrow and it careened off an unseen branch and off into the hillside. I cursed my ineptitude as I grabbed the last arrow from my quiver. This was my “reserve” arrow and the same one I had shot the turkey with on Saturday. The birds had spooked a little bit and were starting to head back up the hill. I had been kneeling on my slate call, so I poked the worst of the mud off of it and squeaked out a few feeble clucks. Again, the birds came back! These birds really wanted to die. It was just too bad that there wasn’t someone better in the woods that could have obliged them. I proceeded to attempt to draw back my bow, but the broadhead got stuck in the blind’s fabric. I freed the arrow, looked out the window,  and a good-sized jake stuck its neck up and faced me at about 25 yards. I again felt the kisser button, looked through the peep, lined up my 30-yard pin–but not before my release went off in my hand. I guess I hadn’t put the release completely in the loop and only had the loop itself. It decided to let go of its fragile hold at the exact moment I was drawing a bead on the breast of that suicidal bird. UGH!!! “Now what am I going to do?” To reinforce the fact that these birds really, really, wanted to be made into turkey nuggets, they were still out there in the brush at about 30 yards. ”Why not make this melt-down complete”, I thought as I decided to make my move. Outside my window was the nock-less arrow I had unintentionally jettisoned earlier. I stuck my arm out of the blind’s window. This was too much for even these mentally challenged turkeys to take and they scattered in all directions. One poult flew straight up into a tree directly in front of my blind. I put the nock back on the arrow, placed it on the rest. I attempted to make a few clucks on my slate, and birds answered all over the hillside. I started to draw on the poult, but it took the answers to my calls as a sign to head in another direction and flew uphill and out of sight. I sat disgusted for a few minutes, then got out of the blind and started to look for my arrows. I searched fruitlessly for 20 minutes. “Was it possible that I hit one of the birds and it walked off with one of my arrows in it?”, I wondered to no one in particular. After 45 minutes of walking up and down the honeysuckle-covered hills, I gave up and started looking for my arrows again. I shuffled my feet slowly through the leaves looking for the bright orange and yellow  fletching of my arrow. Finally, I found one of the arrows but it was clean of any sign. Five minutes later, I kicked up the other arrow likewise devoid of any blood. Crestfallen, I folded up my pop-up blind and headed back down the hill. As I trudged along the trail I had one clear thought amongst all of the second guessing, “I think it’s time to buy a crossbow.”