The weekend started off slow.  Some nasty winds on Friday had the deer movement almost completely shut down on Saturday, or that is the excuse that I'm giving to explain the lack of activity that we saw that day.    Sunday however was a different story.  Sunday morning started off slow, with Sydney and I in a box blind over a transition area where the deer move from the corn into the woods.  About an hour into the morning hunt, I spotted a young deer out about 60 yards between the woods and corn.  I showed Sydney and told her to get ready so that when the deer continued our direction, we would have a shot.  Then a large doe and another yearling stepped to join the first deer.  As mom surveyed the situation, I helped Syd get ready for a shot.  The group of deer began to make their way to our large shooting lane.  They stopped with about 15 yards to go and the large doe went on full alert, then turned tail and ran.  Confused, I looked around to try and figure out what happened.  Just then, here go two foxes darting out of the woods right at the location that we were waiting on the deer to get to.  A little frustrating, but we didn't let it dampen our experience.  Syd had a great time and admitted that it was cool to see the foxes, a first for her.

Sunday evening found Trevor Marie and I in the same familiar box blind.  Trevor focused on doing some school work and reading a book to pass the time.  With about 15 minutes left in legal time, I noticed a deer moving through the corn, not 15 yards in front of us.  Trevor got her gun up and I told her to wait until the deer exited the corn into our nice shooting lane.  I was keeping an eye on the deer through the video monitor on the camera and also keeping an eye on Trevor to see that everything looked good.  When she told me that she was on the deer, I told her to squeeze the trigger when she felt ready.  BOOM went the muzzleloader and off ran the deer.  Trevor told me that she thought she missed the deer.  I couldn't tell, but watched the deer run into the woods and shortly after thought I heard a crash.  We went back and looked at the video footage and it looked like a good sign.  After some celebrating, we got down to check for blood and ended up tracking her deer a short 30 or so yards to find it piled up in a thicket.  Trevor got her first antlered buck, a young 5 pointer.  We were both ecstatic.

It was a late evening, so photos and video will have to wait.

Derek Craig