October 1 and the opener of archery rewarded me with a textbook hunt culminating on a dandy doe. I did not make the best shot, but she didn't go more than 100 yds before expiring from the liver hit. This Bent Mountain deer was the first to hit the freezer this season.
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I hunted harder than I probably should have for another doe to fill a coworker's freezer for the next few weekends, even taking my father with me during the first cold front that brought with it wind like we are experiencing today. That was the first time I had ever been scared in a treestand. Halloween weekend I decided to spend in Richmond hunting public and private lands in that area.
The evening of Saturday, October 29th found me 25+ feet up a white oak tree with my back to a big beaver pond/swamp. I received an education in wood duck behavior for the entire evening while eagles flew overhead and raccoons and beavers walked the swamp edge below. Around 1600 a doe flew through the draw to my left at mach five. Thirty minutes later a buck came through and went to visit the thick area against the swamp where I jumped him from his bed two hours before. He knew something was wrong as he nosed around where I had walked, but didn't seem to want to leave. A young spike buck came from my right and joined him in browsing on the briars before the two of them went up the opposite side of the draw. A grunt brought the bigger fella back for a better look, but he wouldn't cross the creek and rid the space between him and I of brush. I picked him apart with my binoculars and decided that he was at least 3.5 years old and carried his mass very well through his main beams. I decided that I would take the deer if he presented a shot. But he cruised up the opposite ridge and out of sight.
A mature doe and her two kids crossed the swamp behind me and milled around in the draw forty five yards away. As light began to fade I could hear deer around me but just beyond the holly trees and my vision. Something to my right alerted me to another deer's presence and the same buck was coming from the scrapes I had found sixty yards in that direction. As he crossed twelve yards from my stand, I drew and found a hole between two beech branches and stopped him. The lighted knock showed the arrow finding its mark and bounded away as the buck took off up the hardwood draw.
I found this guy at the end of the blood trail. He was aged at 5.5 years old and weighed 96 pounds, dressed. The deer on this property have the genetics of a smaller strain of deer and, compounded by the big woods nutrition, they maintain a lower body weight than the neighboring properties' ag fed deer.
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I took the entire first week of Muzzleloader season off to hunt the rut around Richmond again. Aside from election day that I spent sleeping in, picking up more hand warmers and simmering the skull from my archery nine point, I hunted dark to dark for nine days. I found some incredible deer sign, saw some incredible deer and spent some great time with great friends.