bow hunting | Deinert in Delaware

Well….I have not posted in over three months. Buying a house, getting married, having appendicitis, and getting a puppy have put a damper on my outdoor activities, as well as distracted me from posting about them on this blog.

This post is to catch up to the current time…and going forward, I will be posting more actively as I do things outside.

On Thanksgiving day, I hunted my friend Dave’s farm in Port Penn. We jump-shot the march at the back of the property, and only shot two Canada geese and one mallard. The weather and timing were terrible. There were no birds in the air, and we didn’t have the best setup.

I continued to bow-hunt for the rest of the season, but with no success. I resorted to baiting the ground in front of my one fixed stand on private property with cheap bags of corn. One hunt in December resulted in me bumping what sounded like a whole herd of deer that went crashing through the woods. I was late getting to my parents’ house (and by late I mean that I was only there 30 minutes before legal shooting time instead of an hour before legal shooting time) and while walking to my stand with no light, I stepped into a hole and broke a stick at its bottom, leading to the stirring of all the deer. I also hunted a few frigid days in January, refreshing the corn pile before each hunt – but with no success.

As the bow deer season came to a close at the end of January, I still hadn’t harvested anything near what I thought I would have this season. Therefore, I decided to dive into rabbit hunting….which lead to more disappointment. I am still learning a lot about hunting every time I talk to someone about it and every time I actually go, so I know there is a lot of getting better to do. Some picture of some rabbit hunting spots that I found and GPS trails that I recorded while rabbit hunting in the Blackbird State Forest.

I also decided to use these long walks to scout for turkeys for the Spring. It is even more convenient that I drew Blackbird State Forest for my public land hunting spot for Spring turkeys in the State lottery. While on one of my rabbit hunts, I startled a wild turkey hen in one of the back fields of the Peters Tract of the forest. I marked it on my GPS, and watched as the turkey flew about a half mile over the field and nearby tree line, to what appeared to be a roost. More to come as I scout further. I cannot hunt that land until the weekend of April 22nd.

Peters Tract – Blackbird State Forest

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Blackbird State Forest Hiking/Scouting

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While rabbit hunting, I did not manage to shoot a single rabbit, but I did flush two woodcocks in the state forest that almost caused a heart attack. I have heard a lot about woodcock hunting, and I plan on hunting them next season. Unfortunately, I was already about a month out of woodcock season when I flushed these two.

Finally, in the last couple of weeks, I have been preparing a boat that I purchased back in October. It spent most of the fall sitting, while my dad and I worked on the engine and I re-wired the trailer and boat for lights. I got both titled and registered, as well as have been slowly purchasing all of the necessities and accessories that I need to fish and crab in the Spring/Summer, and more importantly, get it ready to be able to duck hunt in the coming hunting season.

It is a 14ft Grumman “Jon Boat” with a 25hp Mercury 2-cycle on the transom, and a pull-up mounted Motor Guide trolling motor on the front. The funniest and coolest part about this boat is that the previous owner rigged it up with a Quicksilver gear and throttle box and Ezy Glide stick steering system up front, so the driver sits in the front seat and controls power and steering one in each hand.

Dad and I took it out on Garrison’s lake to test the gas motor once we got it running. After years of apparent sitting, it runs like a dream, and has a ridiculous amount of power for that size boat. The following weekend, we took it fishing on Lums Pond, and this last weekend, me, dad, and a buddy took her fishing on Garrison’s lake. Although the fishing is not the best right now in the cold weather, I’m psyched to have a working boat, and should have all the finishing details done by the time the real fishing/crabbing kicks in soon.

Below is a picture of her when I first got her. I will post updated pictures soon.

Last weekend, the weekend of 11/4/11 and 11/5/11, I went bow hunting 3 times with no success. I went for morning and evening hunts on the Milford Neck Wildlife Management Area – Penuel Tract. The morning hunt was from my favorite stand (#3), which is positioned back off the main access road, further than most of the other stands, and positioned overlooking a field that is normally planted with various grasses and surrounded by clover. Now that the main fields on the WMA have been cut (sunflowers, corn, and soybeans), the deer have been confined to feeding on a smaller set of fields. There is a small field of what look like turnips by stand 7, and a single line of some new crop around the perimeter of the field in front of stand 3 (see photos).

I arrived at the stand about 1 hour before legal shooting light and got situated. Besides my normal sprayed coating of cover scent on my clothing, I added some doe estrus urine to my boots, as the bucks have officially entered the seeking phase of the rut. The doe scent definitely worked, as a small spike buck appeared from the woods about 45 minutes after dawn. He was cruising for does, and moved too fast to present a safe shot with the bow, but did wander within easy kill range of the stand.

My afternoon hunt that day was in my neighbor’s stand positioned over an uncut soybean field. There was no activity at all that evening.

The following afternoon (11/5), I moved to a stand that I have yet to hunt. I hunted from the #4 stand at the Penuel Tract, which is positioned in the woods at the end of a dividing line of woods between two cut fields. Again, there was no activity, but I had begun to expect that from the beginning of the hunt, as the wind was blowing across me into the woods where I had seen the most activity, and there were 3 other hunters using stands 5-7 this evening.

Regardless, I continued to take pictures of my surroundings…