Off and On in West Heard

Man one day we are covered up with does and rutting bucks and the next day we are shut out. What a week.

Early in the week bucks and does were everywhere.

Middle of the week shut out completly.

On Saturday morning between the three of us we probably saw 20 deer. Several of which were bucks chasing does, with either no shot offered or no shot taken. More shooting that morning than most of the year combined.

Then we saw 4 deer total Saturday night, one buck chasing.

Then we were totally shut out all day on Sunday.

Will be back soon

Jim

Jim,

We had a lot of shots going off around us, though I believe a lot of what we heard was target practicing someone was even firing off an automatic as in a machine gun with 10 and 30 round burst... :speechles

Mike has been the only one to have seen one possibly chasing so far that I'm aware of and we have had reports from other members of spikes and yearlings with doe's and the spikes not paying any attention to the doe's they were with. Rubs and scrapes are still popping up everywhere, though with all the wind and rain of late it is washing out and covering up scrapes faster than they can make them or clean them out.

Mike and I went up to North's cooler Saturday afternoon to see what had been brought in there and to see how they were doing for the year and man was I surprised. They had a lot of nice bucks hanging including a couple of sho'nuff bruisers. A fellow there said that things had been slow the last week or so, though they probably had a 100 deer or so brought in that past week. He said they were running over what they had done last year, though with the recent slowdown in deer being brought in they are probably around even now with last years numbers and currently they have had about 1,100 deer brought in. So I guess you could say the numbers of deer being taken is about normal for the Heard and Carroll County area at least according to Norths past records.

Hopefully the rut is gonna kick in in our area soon. I just hope I'm there to see it....

Nut, We started seeing chasing 2 staurdays ago when D2D and I saw one bust across a pasture on the heels of a doe at 11AM. Then on Monday a bruiser was shot chasing a doe across an open pasture at 4PM and then on Saturday past all three of us saw borderline shooters or shooters chasing does between 8:45 and 11AM.

I just hope they will be still active by the end of the week when I am back.

Jim

Jim, we just started having scrapes show up about 3 weeks ago.

I just got a report a few minutes ago that one member saw a couple good bucks on the property Saturday morning by themselves. I think their still in the seeking phase where we're at and we're not that far apart as a crow flies.

Me and my dad hunted Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Like you said it was on and off. Thursday morning my dad saw 4 does and I saw 1. That afternoon my dad hadn't even got sat down and a buck chased two does right in front of him. He thinks it was a buck he got a glance at in bow season. It looks to be a good 8 pt. Saturday morning I shot a doe that was working up a draw at 8:15 a.m. No deer seen that afternoon or Sunday morning. Ray at North's said that Thanksgiving (usually his busiest day) was slow due to wind. They did indeed have some nice ones on Saturday morning.

Was slow this past weekend in HEard where I was. Had a small spike in the field behind me at 9:30. Rained a little bit in the afternoon, went back out for the evening and saw nothing. Sunday morning saw nothing. Buddy on the same property shot what he thought was a huge doe Sat. morning on the power line, but when he got up to it, it had small nubs. Too big for a button buck, had to be 2.5 yr. old. Game warden just happened by and looked at it and said the same thing. He said things had been slow all over the previous few days. Did see a whopper 8 checked in up at Edna's off of Straylott, which is just a couple of miles from where we hunt. Full moon sure as heck did not help us.

Thanks for the updates on Heard County. I haven't been able to go for the past two weeks, but hope to get out there this weekend. This hasn't been the best year of hunting for me so far. Seems like my job is cutting into my time in the woods.