BRoth hunting '21 season

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BRoth82
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BRoth hunting '21 season

Unread postby BRoth82 » Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:09 am

This is my first year keeping track on paper of my hunting season. I'll try to recap my scouting from earlier this year and now going in to the hunting season, our archery season opened here in MN on Saturday, and then I have a 5 day rifle trip to Nebraska that I get to do with my dad again this year.

My wife also is bow hunting this year, it's been 8 years since she shot a deer so hoping she'll be able to get a crack at anything this year. Also my 9 year old daughter has shown a lot more interest in going with hunting this year, so I'm going to try to get her out more with me.


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Re: BRoth hunting '21 season

Unread postby BRoth82 » Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:20 am

Since I tagged out early last year with my bow, I started scouting in December last year and scouted 7 different public land places during that time. I’ll go through each one to cover what I found and why I scouted where I did.

To give everyone a background on the location I hunt. In MN if you buy a bow tag it covers the entire state and is an either sex tag, but with a gun you have lots of different areas and each area is managed differently. The area I hunt in was again a lottery for a doe tag and the quota was only 25 tags, the area I hunt is mainly flatish farmland with small groves of 5-10 acres that house a farmhouse. Then ag fields with drainage ditches gridding the fields, most of these are narrow maybe 10 yards across and 8 feet deep or so. Some have grass around the edges and are a little wider, but most have the crop ground going almost up to the edge of the ditch.

I hunt one private farm that is a CRP field, and gets pheasant hunted hard once that season starts, then the rest of my hunting is done on public land ranging from 20 acres up to a thousand acres.

The private land pieces I'll include a map, and maybe some of the public pieces. The public pieces I'll just call out by a number, instead of the name. But excited to share my season with you guys.
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Re: BRoth hunting '21 season

Unread postby BRoth82 » Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:15 am

I guess I ended up scouting 8 different public land properties, these are in order of how I scouted them and not priority.

#1- 200 acre WPA (waterfowl production area)
#2- 50 acre WPA
#3- 800 acre WPA
#4- 900 acre WPA
#5- 80 acre WPA
#6- 115 acre WPA
#7- 45 acre WPA
#8- 340 acre WMA (wildlife management area)

I'll just go down the list,
#1- I was drawn to this parcel because of the lack of stand out factor, that I was hoping other deer hunters would pass it by. It consists of 2 open water sloughs that have cattails surrounding them, then a slight ridge that has scrub brush on the top of it, also a very tiny strip of trees in the far corner, maybe 10-15 bigger trees with brush on the edge. The West, South and East sides are ag fields and a gravel road to the North. The rest of the public is in CRP grass, with the only access being a parking lot on the Northside.

If you look at this property it screams pheasant and duck habitat.

Right off the parking area maybe 75 yards away there was a lone tree that had a nice waist high rub on it from last fall, I took this as a night time rub but it let me know that there were deer using this property. I circled the sloughs looking for beds and found some on the southside and Eastsides of the sloughs right where the cattails meet the CRP grass, it looked to me like doe bedding since they were several beds together and several were smaller. I then walked the slight ridge that had the brush on it and it was tore up with rubs, but no beds in or around it that I could see, to me it seemed like a community spot where the bucks would cruise through at night. I then made my way to the trees on the Southside, this creates a very nice cruising funnel between a thick presumed bedding are on private land and the sign I saw on that ridge, I picked out a couple trees that would work on a NW wind, and marked them up as more of a rut spot. All in all I'm not sure I'll hunt this property this year, since some other properties looked much better.

Here's an image of what it looks like and where I found the sign, If any of you have thoughts on where I should look on any of these properties let me know.
#1 public.jpg
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BRoth82
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Re: BRoth hunting '21 season

Unread postby BRoth82 » Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:31 am

Spot #2:
I’ve scouted this spot a couple times and going off the information that a co-worker saw a nice buck cross the road and head into this area I thought I’d give it a look. This public is under 80 acres total between the 2 pieces.

I marked up what the fields were when I scouted last year, this year they are the opposite this year. The red dots are where I found beds, I did find a few rubs but not many which isn’t uncommon in my area. The best bedding that I think is buck bedding is in the SW corner on the south side of that slough, they can bed with the wind to back and look out over an open area then the fields.

I did see a little human activity, around that pine grove to on the Eastside but nothing on the West part. There are a few spots that I marked for sets, one is in a hard leaning tree that you can climb up onto a large branch so no need for a stand at all, the other is in a tree that would be very tight to the bedding but I should have enough brush/trees in the way that I can get up 5-10’ off the ground and be good to go on a NW wind.

#2.jpg
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Re: BRoth hunting '21 season

Unread postby BRoth82 » Thu Sep 23, 2021 1:37 am

I'll continue to add to the scouting segments through out the season. Now I'll switch to my hunts so far.

Saturday was the archery deer opener here in MN, and with my wife getting a bow tag this year, I had her sit out on the private parcel that I have permission to hunt on. It's basically a 68 acre CRP field with a couple small trees otherwise it's just pheasant habitat, I do have a waterhole I dug in last year and have the grass cleared around it. Last year I had a bunch of bucks on camera, but this year with the crops changing I wasn't getting much at all, but she wasn't going to be picky she would shoot anything that didn't have spots. The wind was just off to where I expected them to come out, and it worked good for her except that the sun was in her eyes so she was moving a bunch and a big doe and fawn picked her off.

My hunt actually started on Monday, coming home from work on a South wind I caught a nice doe out on a drainage ditch south of my house this was at 5:00pm. The next day we had the same wind and again she was out there, I found out who owns the land and called for permission and was given access to hunt it this year. I wanted to set my wife up on that spot, but she didn't like the idea of walking through a corn field that might be too muddy. MY plan with the given wind was to go deep into a public land piece that I scouted, being it was 90degs and I would be 1.5 miles in I didn't want to shoot anything that was a mature buck. So Sunday morning rolls around and we have a south wind again and it's blowing like crazy, so I'm not sure if I want to hike in there or not. My 9 year old daughter has been asking like crazy to go hunting with me more this year, the problem is she has ADHD really bad and can't sit still for more then an hour. Well she talked me into going after that doe I had been seeing and with the wind and what not I thought it would be good to give it a try, the blowing corn should mask our movement really good and we'll be close to home if we need to bail early. Here's a picture of the ditch since it'll make more sense looking at a picture.
9.19.21.jpg


The red marker is where we jumped the doe she was standing at the yellow marker, the blue marks are the bucks and the yellow line is our path.

The ditch is about 20 yards across and has 10-15' of grass on either side of it that is roughly knee high, my thought was that on a southwind they would be bedded on the north side of the south corn field and on the southside of the ditch. That way they could see across the ditch and smell anything behind them, the ditch is also close to 8' to the bottom and it has water in it.

My plan was to walk the West side of the North corn field then cut in right before the corner, we would stay 4-5 rows into the corn until we got to where I thought the doe was coming out. then setup a little make shift blind and wait for her. We got a later start then I wanted to and didn't get going until 5:30, as we were creeping through the corn rows, I looked over and that dang doe was out there already and picked us off. She couldn't smell us just caught us moving, she bolted down the edge of the ditch, so we ran to the edge of the corn and watched her run out of sight.

It was cool to see and deer and my daughter was excited to see it as well. We made our little hide 2 rows deep into the corn field and waited. After 45mins or so my daughter asked if we could walk the corn field just to see what was down further, to be honest I really didn't want to do that because I thought our best chance was right where we were, but I could tell she was getting antsy and wanting her to keep having a good experience I said sure let's go for it. The blowing wind should cover our movement so what do we have to loose, she also brought with a little video camera I have so she could record the hunt like on TV. Every 50 yards or so we would peek out of the field and look down the ditch.

We made it 100-150 yards or so and she says dad I see something white up there, I take a look and sure enough it's another deer standing on the edge of the south corn field, and me being the smart man I am thinking we wouldn't see anything I didn't grab my binos or rangefinder (that's not going to happen again). I told her that when the wind blows hard let's move quick and see how close we can get to it, at this point we still didn't know exactly what it was. The wind would pick up and we would take off, then the wind would die down and we would move slower. It didn't take long and I caught it's movement on the edge of the corn field, at this point we're about 50 yards from it and it picks it's head up, sure enough it's a 1.5 year old basket 8 pointer. We got to watch him for a couple mins, when he looks down into the ditch, I told my daughter to watch I bet another buck is down in the ditch. Sure enough up climbs another buck, this one is a 2.5 year old or so that is essentially a really big fork horn with 8-10" G2's. As soon as he gets up to the other buck they start lightly sparring and pushing each other around, the whole time we're only 40 yards away, then down the corn edge comes another basket 8 pointer and they all start sparring and taking turns pushing on each other. My daughter turns to me and asks if they have a girl friend that they're fighting over? I answered no it's just boys being boys, then she asked if I was going to shoot one. I said why don't we just watch them for a while and if that older buck gives me a shot I'll try to take him.

We watched those bucks mess around with each other for close to 15 mins, then they slowly made their way towards my shooting window. I guessed that they were 20 yards away and directly across the ditch from us, I was able to get drawn and settled right in the crease on the bigger buck and touched off the shot. I can see my lighted nock flying perfectly, then I hear the impact "CRACK", and the buck takes off trotting limping on his front leg. I knew right away what had happened, after 100 yards he stopped to look back, I told my daughter let's get into the corn and buggy up there, maybe I can get another arrow in him. Sure enough we were able to get back up to him, I nocked another arrow and drew back, but the corn was all over my sights, I told her I just going to walk out of the corn at full draw and shot him. So that's what I did, slowly walked out of the corn and he stayed there, got on him and guessed he was 30-40 yards but my pin center mass and touched off the shot, only to see my arrow sail right under him. He took off down the corn edge and a doe and fawn joined him, we watched as they all trotted off across a bean field until we couldn't see them any more.

We took the wheeler down the corn edge and found my first arrow, sure enough broke off right at the broadhead and not a drop of blood anywhere. I think what happened is that I directly hit the leg bone, and that was the crack sound I heard. I was disappointed that I messed up that opportunity, and could make good on my end, I turned to my daughter and said you know with bow hunting you can be off by 2" and it can make you kill the deer really fast or hurt them bad. She understood and said that's ok dad we'll get him next time, then she says I wonder how many people get to see 3 bucks fighting that close, I told her not very many and we are very lucky we got to see that.



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BRoth82
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Re: BRoth hunting '21 season

Unread postby BRoth82 » Mon Sep 27, 2021 12:33 am

My wife, daughter and son have all had a cold this week, and I finally caught it on wednesday. I'm over it now for the most part, but with the family still fighting it off, I wasn't able to get hunting. With the wind direction we have today I'm going to stay close to home and stalk the edge of the corn field where I hit that buck. Going to make a long trek through the corn till I hit the ditch the slowly stalk into the wind. It's going to be slow going since there won't be much wind but it's all I'm able to do at this point, till the family gets healthier.


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