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Put the hammer down on this doe this evening. CVA Wolf does again

Nothing but a beautiful sunset. I'll take it!

This is not about a deer , but about a woodchuck . Years ago a couple of my buddies loved hunting them in farm fields. There was this one smartass chuck that had his hole right next to a small island clump of trees in the field about 150 yards out . Of course they had to get out of the truck to shoot . My buddy missed the shot at this chuck . Every time afterwards when they drove down that farm road that chuck would run like hell back down into his hole before they could even get out of the truck . One thing to note is they always took my buddies old truck that had a louder exhaust on these hunts . After 7 or 8 times seeing that woodchuck run down his hole , he figured that chuck knew the sound of his truck meant danger. We thought he was nuts and that chuck probably runs scared now with any vehicle going down that farm road The next time they tried they took his friends car instead . Sure enough , that freakin chuck met his match and just sat there and got blasted. LOL . We had so much fun making jokes at my buddy for years after that. Sent him anonymous birthday and christmas cards with a woodchuck pic on it with different sayings like " Miss Me Yet ? " or " Did You Fix That Exhaust pipe Yet ? " LOL Critters do decipher different sounds and actions

Deer conditioned to human presence are not a lot different than forest deer with respect to this: When you get busted inside their comfort zone they all bug out and get harder to hunt. If you get busted hunting farmland deer you can probably kill the same ones tomorrow 1/2 mile away on the same farm from a different stand. Get busted hunting city deer and you might be able to kill them them the next day 150 yds away sitting on a bucket behind a neighbor's shed. It's the same idea but the size of the playing field is different. And the tactics differ. I find city deer more nocturnal. They move around all night guided by motion sensor lights and barking dogs. Seems to me they move later in the day, shrinking shooting time. That being said the city bucks do the same thing as big woods bucks during the rut. Get stupid. Make mistakes, get hit by cars etc. Same for the late season. They both hit food sources and hunker down.

I almost always go for the heart-lung shot, that being said if I had a real whopper of a wall hanger present himself for a shot he would get it in the high shoulder for sure. Al

This brings to mind an old alpha-doe that I killed about a dozen years ago, in a very remote area that was roughly 25 miles outside the NW corner of the Adirondack park. She was probably between 4 and 6 years old, and very likely had never encountered another hunter. I was able to get into position, up on an oak ridge that was very far from any public road, about an hour before sunrise. It was a short hike from a lakeside cabin that my in-laws used to rent for a couple long weekends each fall. The seasonal road to that lake was treacherous on that end, and the long, winding driveway to the cabin, even more so. The year prior, I had been fishing the lakeshore below that ridge, with an onshore wind direction. I heard deer snorts from up top, so I decided that I would check that spot out the following year, on opening morning of early ML season. The next year, I heard the sound of branches breaking, just as the sun was starting to rise. The big doe was leading a group of (6) antlerless deer in my direction. I was seated on a big flat rock, near some white oaks. I could see that she was clearly the largest of the group, and that none on the “followers” had antlers. When she got up next to me, about 20 yards away, I settled my crosshairs behind her shoulder and pulled the trigger. When the smoke cleared, I’ll never forget the look that she gave me. It was like “what the heck just happened”. It made me believe that she really had absolutely no clue what I was (I was in full camo with zero blaze orange required back then). All (6) deer stood there, frozen like statues, for what seemed an eternity. After what might have been 20 seconds or so, her knees began to wobble, and she fell over sideways and away from me. The ground there was very steep, almost a cliff, and she slid down. The other (5) deer began to wander around up top rather aimlessly, none following her down the cliff. Clearly they had no clue what to do or where to go, having just lost their leader. They dispersed, after another minute or two, and I reloaded and butt-slid down to the doe. She had landed on the winding driveway to the cabin, which I did not even realize was down there. She started to stand up and I put a second round into her neck to finish her. I left the gut pile right there in the drive and went back for my father in laws atv to drag her back to the boathouse for hanging.

Find the ladder stand lol.

Ok. But who remembers the electric socks form back in the day that ran on D batteries? I bought a pair 25yrs ago for my #1 hunting buddy that always had cold feet. Sorry to hijack your thread @airedale but I didn't think a new one was worthy.

I can back that up for you, shot some nice bucks thru the years or some of the nastiest, windy, snow blowing sideways days...on a couple of those times I can remember that most guys wouldn't even venture out in.

Now that sunrise is so nice to watch brighten. Makes it all worth while Here was my sunrise this morning, lol.