First Muzzleloader Deer

On Saturday morning, I went to my buddies land to go hunting.  Sunrise was right around 7:30, so I got in the woods about 6:30.  I had been hunting for the previous four mornings and exhaustion was starting to catch up with me.  I climbed a less than optimum tree that my friend pointed me towards.  He told me that the previous year, he had seen quite a few deer in the area.  As the minutes marched on towards sunrise, I started to dose off.  I was sitting in that dream like state between consciousness and unconsciousness, vaguely wondering what time it was and being glad that I had remembered my harness that morning.  As the sun started to rise, my hopes sunk.  The tree that I was in had a branch that covered approximately 30% of my effective shooting area.  The "field" I was hunting was probably 15 yards by 30 yards, and I could maybe see 15 yards by 20 yards due to the branch.

About 7:30 I started hearing movement.  The cracking of a limb brought me outta my semi-conscious state like a gun shot.  All of a sudden I could hear deer all around me.  The area I was hunting was so thick that I could not see very far, but I could definitely hear deer moving around.  The way I generally tell deer movement from squirrel movement is by the cadence.  If it sounds like something walking at a steady pace, its more than likely a deer.  If the sound of the movement jumps around, I generally chalk it up to being a squirrel.

Shortly after sun rise, I did a quick buck grunt sequence and waited.

About 7:45, I saw antlers weaving through the brush.  My heart started racing.  Slowly the buck worked his way towards me.  He stopped about 30 yards away.  I might could have taken a shot, but I decided to wait.  He started sniffing the air and looking my direction.  I was absolutely certain I was busted.  Still, I decided to wait and not take the shot.  After an agonizing 2-3 minutes of the buck sniffing the air and not moving, he must have decided that everything was okay.  In fact, he got on the exact trail that I used to go to my stand and followed it up into the field.  He presented me with a perfect 15 yard broadside shot and I laid the hammer down.

Since I was hunting with a muzzleloader, I was immediately engulfed with smoke.  I could barely make out a tail bounding through the woods.  But, I noticed that the movement was erratic, like the deer was stumbling.  I listened as the gun report died down and I could hear the deer making a semi circle loop back around the where he started.  I could hear him falling down periodically.

I reloaded my muzzleloader (all except the primer of course) and worked my way out of the tree.  My buddy called me because he heard the shot and came down to help me track the deer.  I went to the spot that I had shot the deer and found only a tiny bit of blood mixed with bone.  My heart sank.  I thought that I had just wounded the deer.  In the tree, I was certain that I had made a good shot, but on the ground it was beginning to look differently.

My buddy and I followed along the route of kicked up leaves for about 30 yards before we finally saw blood.  Not just a little blood, a blood trail that a blind man could have followed.  About 30 more yards down the blood trail and I found my deer.  A 2.5 year old 7 point.

I was slightly disappointed at the rack size when I found the deer.  For some reason, they always look bigger when your in a tree...

I am happy with the hunt though because I have finally killed my first deer with a muzzleloader!

Predator IV Pendulum Site Review

Its been a long time since I have made a post on my blog, so I figured I would write a review of the newest site I got for my bow. 

My Summit Hot Dot sight has been acting up on me, so I opted to get another pendulum site that was not electronic.  I just feel that the less there is to a bow site, the less there is to go wrong. 

I decided on the Predator IV Pendulum site after researching quite a few bow sites.  I looked closely at the TruGlo Pendulum site and the Predator IV and ultimately decided to go with the Predator IV because it got slightly better reviews.  In reality both products are probably good, but I can only speak for sure about the Predator IV.

Right out of the box, the Predator IV appears big and ugly.  I am used to the smaller sites, so this Predator IV just looks old.  The site itself was patented in 1994, and probably not much has changed about the site since then.  I quickly found out that the reason for that is because there is no need to change a good thing.

Setting up the site was a complete pain in the neck.  Most sites take me about 30 minutes to get it dead on.  On fixed pin sights you just have to adjust windage and elevation, but on pendulum sites you have to set bow speed, etc.  I shoot a Mathews Q2, which is a relatively fast bow for this site, so I had to dial the bow speed up to maximum.  A testimate to the age of this site is that it is good from 170 fps to right at 300 fps.  That range shows tells me that the site was designed a long while ago.  It took me the better part of an afternoon to get the site setup and working correctly.  This is probably due to the fact that I had to flip pendulum bracket over to to get the windage correct.  The instructions to do this are included with the site, but that does not mean its easy.  The total time it took me from taking it out of the box to drilling bullseyes at 30 yards was about 3 hours.

Once set up this is probably the most accurate pendulum site I have ever shot.  The key will all pendulum sites is to take your time setting them up. Once set up, they are extremely accurate.  After the initial setup and dialing in, I was hitting bullseyes regularly at any yardage between 5-6 to 30 yards.

All and all I would say that it is a great bow site aside from the aesthetics.  In practise, the aesthetics don't matter to the deer on the other end, but they do matter to your buddies.  When I showed my friends the site, they were less than impressed.

Pros:
Extremely Accurate, much more so than the summit hot dot.

Cons:
Setup was a nightmare
Aesthetically unpleasing

Reflections after the deer season

This year, I saw more deer than I have in the past three years.  I think the reason for this was obsessive scouting, and gaining experience.  The longer you stay in the woods, the better you are going to be at figuring out what the deer are doing.

I only killed 2 deer this year, but I passed up several. 

Anyway, here are my reflections from the season:

Early season: Tons of deer.  I saw much more deer during this part of the season.  The key to this is to find where the deer are.  Unlike the rut, in the early season, a deer might only move a couple of hundred yards, if that, during the day.  The food is plentiful, so there is no real reason for them to go very far.  If you want to kill deer during this part of the year, you need to find exactly where they are, and put a stand up near there.  Try and find a huge oak tree that is dropping acorns, and set up on one of the game trails leading to the acorn tree.  They are there, you just need to find them.  If you do this, you will see deer.

Rut:  The rut is the rut.  It is exceedingly difficult to figure out where the deer are going to be.  What makes this fun is that the deer are much more responsive to calls and esterous scents.  Also, you have the chance to see lots of deer that you haven't seen before.  The rut is not my favorite time to hunt.  Its too unpredictable.  I like figuring out where the deer are, scouting and hunting a single deer, and killing it when I want to.  During the rut, it doesnt take too much skill to shoot one.

Post-Rut:  For me, the post rut part of the season was abismal.  I think I saw maybe 2 deer, and one was a fawn.  It seems that post-rut, hunters are getting more aware of the end of the season and putting lots of pressure on the deer.  Their response is to lay low.

My plan next year is to hunt like crazy during the early bow season.  Now that I *think* I have figured out the trick (sitting on acorns and scouting like a mad man) to early season hunting, I am looking forward to it.

Who am I kidding.  I am going to hunt like crazy the entire season.

From here, I am going to try and take advantage of the Urban Archery Season that a few cities in NC participate in.  My girlfriend's family lives in Elkin, so I will probably be hunting around their house.  The urban bow season is pretty fun because the deer have not had any pressure all year, and feel extremely comfortable in close proximity to humans.

Good luck to all!