I made a day of hunting yesterday, Saturday the 8th of December, it was the final day of the two week gun season in Maryland. Took my bow out to Loch Raven into the fog and sat for a while in the morning, I tell you it was hard to see and impossible to hear anything! Well with the lack of hearing them coming or seeing them coming I really blew it. I had 5 does come in around 7:30 and I didn't have a clue, until one ran past me. Stopping about 20 yards away I started to think I might get a shot, but she took off. So I turned to look up the hill because my friend that was hunting with me had texted me to tell me these does were coming down the hill too me. Well, as I turned I found that I had 4 sets of eyes all on me, they had picked my movement out and found me before I found them. They didn't really spook but they made there way back up the hill and in the totally wrong direction for me or my friend. About 10 minutes later here comes the 1 doe that had passed me, she came back up out of this bottom on the same trail she came down. She stopped in the same spot she had before, I got ready and was just waiting on her to come out from behind this one tree, haha yeah right. When she finally did come out after she spent a good 5 minutes looking back toward the bottom where she just ran from she took off back up the hill and was gone. Well, I know rut has really slowed down or even in fact might be done at least where I am hunting but I kept hoping whatever she was watching in the bottom would follow her up. Well nothing came up to me, so I never did figure out what spooked her back up to me, but if it was a buck he stayed out of sight of me. That was all I saw the whole morning,.
I headed back out in the afternoon to the land I can gun hunt on, beautiful evening, nice and warm. I heard a lot of shots across the street and off in the distance but nothing real close to me, and I didn't see a single deer before dark. I will however note that I saw 9 deer on the way home.. Deer seem to be acting very odd right now maybe because of the time of year and the weather but makes hunting very hard. I have also started to notice the does seem to be grouping up already, not sure if that means the weather is going to change soon or if they are just herding up already for the winter. Regardless I have started to see does in groups of 4, 5, up to as many as 8.
No trail cam photo's of bucks it's like the last week of November they all just vanished! Other than a couple little guys which have been traveling with the does anyway... Odd, try again with the bow later this week or weekend and then heading to Maryland's eastern shore for a few days of muzzleloader hunting next week.
Anyone else get out this weekend? What did you see or not see?
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