Hunting In Ohio.
I always look forward to hunting in a couple of states each year,
but this year I was able to hunt in Ohio.
It was a self-guided, public land hunt for white tail.
A couple of my buddies went there last year and they asked if
I would like to come along this year. After hearing their stories
about last year I wanted to go. A good friend Bob and I went
together.
My
friends lined up a cabin at a marina and I rented a boat.
The cabin was on a lake that has 43 miles of shore line and
almost all of it is public land.
The boat gives easy access to different areas to hunt that
would be very hard to get to otherwise.
As we drove off the highway to get to the cabin, there was snow on
the ground. The car
thermometer read 45 degree outside.
With it being the second week of November, this would be
perfect weather for hunting rutting bucks.
All the way to Ohio we saw bucks running does.
We got to the cabin about mid-afternoon. The first thing that we did
was
a little scouting around the cabin.
We would not be able to get the boat until the next day.
We were able to find a couple good trails that had smoking
hot sign. I have never
hunted public land that had so much good sign.
Some of the sign looks like the deer was stand in that spot
only a couple minutes before we got there.
The next morning we got up and went to the spot we scouted.
When I got into my stand I turned around and saw a nice buck
looking right at me. He
blew and ran off. I was
feeling optimistic about the upcoming hunt.
As the morning went on it got warn and sunny.
Not just warm but hot.
At
10 we walked to the marina and got the boat.
I had brought a face mask and wet weather gear for riding in
the boat thinking that the cold weather and splashing water would be
very cold. Instead it was 70 degrees and sunny.
It was great weather for a boat ride, bad weather for deer
hunting. We set out to
do some scouting. My
friends had given us an idea of where the deer might be.
Everywhere we looked we saw lots of great deer sign. We also
saw a couple of nice deer.
I was thinking that this was going to be a slam dunk.
I was thinking about what I would do with all the meat that I
was going to get.
That afternoon I hunted one of the spots we scouted.
I had to make sure that the wind was blowing away from the
deer. I was sweating
from the walk in to the stand. I saw a small buck running along the
ridge above me. The deer are in rut and looking for does.
As the week went on, the weather got even hotter.
On one day it got up to 80 degrees.
The deer activity slowed down to almost nothing.
I talked to the guys that hunted the week before we arrived
and they were talking about seeing 50 deer a day.
I was lucky to see one.
As we drove around at night we didn’t see any deer in the
fields. I talked to
some of the locals and they said that they have never weather like
this in November.
On Thursday the second to last day of the hunt, Bob and I were
hunting
on the back side of this
peninsula.
The deer activity has been very slow.
Neither of us had seen a deer for at least a day.
We each have one buck tag
and six doe tags in our pocket. By
this point if it is brown it is down.
After about 10 minutes in the stand I looked to my right and
I saw a small buck.
This would be the fourth buck I had seen from my stand and if I
could have gotten a shot at it I would have killed it.
I grunted and bleated at him.
He wanted nothing to do with me.
I could see it moving toward the area that Bob said he was
going to setup. I knew
the general area he was hunting but not the tree.
I watched the buck walk away, and then it stopped and looked up into
the tree. It acted like
he saw something but must have decided it was safe. Then it looked
away and waged its tail.
The next thing I hear is the arrow hitting the deer.
The deer ran about forty yards and fell over.
It almost fell into the boat.
I heard Bob over the radio saying he hit a deer and it went down.
I told him that I saw the whole thing.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon.
That day I would see seven more deer.
None of them close enough to shoot.
I
hunted on Friday hard core only to miss a small buck in the morning
and to see a couple of does in the afternoon.
One of the guys I was
hunting with shot a nick 8 pointer. It seemed that the deer had
started to move as the week came to an end.
Even though the weather
didn’t cooperate and I didn’t kill a deer I still thought that this
was a great hunt. Out
of the six of us, we all had a chance to shoot a deer.
It was a great time.
That week I saw two good bucks from my stand.
I saw two small bucks and many does.
I have hunted public land all my life and this site had the
potential to be some of the best land I have ever hunted. Thanks to
my friends I saw many deer.
Good luck,
