Well yesterday was a typical October Day in hunting (slow). I went out in the morning to one of my spots that I normally always see deer. Well it was a very slow morning, but around 8 am, the highlight of my morning was watching a fox trying to eat a raccoon. I watched them run off with the fox hot on the raccoon’s tail, a little while later the raccoon came back by me still alive, so I am guessing the fox lost that battle. Made for a little excitement in an otherwise very slow morning, never did see any deer finally got down a little after 10.
The afternoon hunt I went and tried another spot that I cannot remember the last time I did not see any deer, in hopes of having better luck than the morning hunt. It was a perfect afternoon for hunting, however as I went back to this spot for the first time since August when I did my scouting, I found the tree I normally hunt out of had been blown over by the hurricane I am guessing. So as I started walking around the area to find a new tree, I found that there has been others hunting this area and what looked like fairly often. So the normal story of Loch Raven begins, lots of hunting pressure, normally does not look good for an exciting afternoon. As the afternoon went on I started grunting in hopes maybe a buck that was in pre rut mode would hear and come. I switched back and forth between doe bleats and grunting. Finally after seeing no deer, it was 6:30 and I could barely see my pins on my bow I finally heard something a ways off. I sat there waiting what seemed like forever, it was really only 10 minutes. Finally, I could not see my pins and could barely see the ground for that matter and no more signs that the deer was heading in my direction. So I lowered my bow to the ground and started packing up to come down, a couple minutes later I hear something only 30 yards away, so I sat back down and waited and sure enough a good sized deer walked right under my stand. It was too dark at that point to tell if it was a buck or doe even right under my stand, I even tried looking with binoculars, too dark.
So I let the deer walk on by as it was after shooting hours anyway. That was my whole experience hunting yesterday. I think what I took out of this is that both areas I hunting in the morning and afternoon appeared to be seeing above average hunting pressure for Loch Raven and this would tell me the deer are getting smarter and probably moving after dark. The next few outings I will be trying a few other spots I picked out as good pre – rut and rut locations. Maybe everyone has not found all my good spots?
The other thing I learned is I normally hunt the northern and central part of Loch Raven, perhaps I will be trying some of the southern parts in the near future as I know there are big deer down there and more land to hunt, but I also know a lot of people hunt down there as well. The northern parts seem to be getting hunted hard this year, more so than in the past.
Finding locations within Loch Raven that have average to below average hunting pressure is difficult to almost impossible. But I am making that my November task, in hopes of finding one the giants hiding out that I use to find the antlers from shed hunting before Loch Raven was opened to hunting.
Did you get out yesterday? What did you see or not see?
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