wolc123

This reminds me of a story your buddy Al told me, a bit over a year ago. Many years ago, a woman who boarded her horse at their farm, asked about the dead and skinned “horse” that was hanging from a beam down on the far end of the barn. The “horse” was actually a moose that his mother had shot out west with her .243. They had gutted it out there and hauled it whole, all the way back home to WNY, in the bed of their pickup truck.

That’s the main reason I went for the Marlin 336 over the Winchester 94. My father in law has 336 30/30 with a scope on it, but I only use that when the weather is nice, because he is supper fussy about “his stuff”. With his permission, I put a hammer extension stud on that last year, which makes it much nicer to draw back with the scope. I’ll be needing to get one of those for mine also, after I put a scope on it. They cost less than $ 10. The pistol grip Marlin 336’s are heavier than the straight stock Winchester 94’s but that little bit of extra heft is nice for limiting recoil. My 336BL model is definitely as or more compact and easy handling than any Winchester lever I have held. It just needs those damn semi-useless fiber optics sights swapped out for a low power scope. After I put the scope on my 336BL, on Adirondack rainy or sleety day deer hunts, when scopes are trouble, I’ll bring my open-sighted, short smooth-bore Remington 870 slug gun.

The snow is just as deep over at my parent’s place as it is at home. I am glad I brought my snowshoes for the 200 yard walk to my stand this morning. I walked back 1/2 hour before sunrise and I crossed at least 10 sets of deer tracks. Several of them looked quite large. With all the leaves down and snow in the woods, I can see more than 200 yards in almost all directions. So far I seen 4 or 5 grey squirrels but no deer. Maybe all the deer action is pm or early am over here also, the same as it seems to be at home. It’s quite comfortable in this big roomy upper deck. The temp is about 32 now and rising and the wind is sw about 5 mph. I’ll stay here until 11:45 or so, go have lunch with my parents, then hit my clover plot edge stand for the evening hunt.

I am up and getting ready for the 20 minute road trip to my parents this morning. My wife just confirmed the full nocturnal activities of the home deer herd. Our daughters got home from a party after midnight last night, and there were (3) deer, (1) of which had horns for sure (they didn’t say how big) in our yard, when they got home. My plan is to give that group the next (3) days off and get back after them after Friday. We are hosting a New Year’s Eve party for our friends, so I have to stay home and help get ready for that, meaning no road-trip hunts for me that day. I think there is a pretty good chance that the antlered buck they saw was the wide 8-point, that came and licked my ground blind while I was in it, during the early September antlerless season. He hung out with (2) smaller bucks out back thru August and September. Their little fork and spike horns (one had broken one side off the last time I saw him) were probably not visible in the dark to our girls last night.

Thanks, I’ll look for a used Redfield. If I cant find one by fall, I’ll go back to my 30/06 Ruger M77. That does not carry nearly as nice in the mountains as the little Marlin 30/30 lever, but it has a nice 3-9 Redfield on it, and has always got the job done for me, on deer. It probably makes sense for me to give my 30/30 a year off on the deer next season, because I doubt much ammo will be available for it before then. I have a very good supply of 30/06 ammo.

Why not go with a 7mm-08 instead ? Maybe a slightly better deer round, with less recoil, and cheaper and easier to find ammo.

As expected, nothing seen tonight. Too much pressure on this spot, over the last (2) days, has the deer full nocturnal again. Hopefully, there will be little more daytime action on some fresh ground over at my parents place, on the opposite corner of wmu 9F, tomorrow. It looks like that should be the last day that I need the snowshoes. I’ll hit the upper deck of my 2-story blind over there in the morning, and my cherry-tree blind on the edge of the clover plot, in the evening.

I couldn’t help but notice that all those levers have scopes on them. I think if I had one on mine, there would be another deer in our freezer right now. That’s definitely something I’m going to rectify before next season. What would you recommend for a scope on a Marlin 336BL ? I’m thinking of something with a fixed low power (2X or 3X) and a wide field of view and good light gathering. The fiber-optic sights, that I put on mine, didn’t work out so well for me this year. They are especially disappointing in those extra 1/2 hours of hunting tine that we now get, before sunrise and after sunset. They are only visible for about 10 minutes if that. I can clearly see the reticles on my old Redfield scopes, for those full half hours, and even beyond that with snow. My new Redfield Revolution/Luepold is not quite as good in low light situations, and my old Weaver 1-1/2 X is particularly bad. I prefer to stick with American made.

I am out for hunt #4 of the Holiday ML season. I’m up in my front poplar tree stand for the last 2 hours today. No fresh tracks on the way back and not expecting much but slightly better chances out here than from in the house 200 yards away. The conditions are the best they have been so far: 24 degrees and 8 mph sw wind. I’ve got a fairly fresh powder charge in my gun and I am hoping to get a chance to use it. I don’t want to deal with a long track in this deep snow, so I’ll be aiming for a shoulder blade if I get a chance. It definitely feels weird to be deer hunting when the daylight hours are increasing by a minute or two each day. I’m legal until 5:16 at this wmu 9F location. You don’t get much clearer proof than that, that Christ really is the light of the world. Now, if He’d just set me up with a fat tasty deer, to top off our freezer, all would be well.

I stayed in the stand over (2) hours this morning but nothing was moving. It seems that all the action is in the pm back there. I will try again this evening. Walking long distances thru 3 feet of snow with snow shoes and heavy Mickey Mouse boots is a pretty good workout. I am only going back as far as my front tree stand this afternoon.

I missed (I think) a doe a few hundred yards to my right at 5:00 pm last night. I got up into the upper deck of my two-story blind 15 minutes before sunrise this morning. I can see several spots where they were feeding in the adjacent clover plot last night. Hopefully, a deer stops by for a bite before noon today. The wind is from the sw about 8 mph and the temp is about 15 degrees. Conditions are better this morning than they were yesterday for sure.

We have about 2000 sq. ft, 3 or 4 residents, and our gas and electric bill has never been over $ 200 per month. Our (2) gas furnaces are set at 67 at night and 69, if we are home in the daytime. If the outside temperature is below 32, then our gas bill is lower, because most of our heat comes from the wood stove. It gets too hot in the house to use that, when it’s warmer outside.

That could be. About 18 years ago, I lost a basket-racked 8-pointer under similar conditions . Besides the plugging, light fluffy snow is not always the greatest indicator of a hit, because hot blood will burn through it, leaving now trace on top. I still think last nights was a clean miss, because the shot didn’t sound right and she did not appear to be hit, in addition to the lack of blood on the snow. The only way that I am ever 100 percent sure of a miss, is if I can kill the deer with a follow up shot, and count holes in the carcass. That’s tough to do with a ML. I’ve changed my plans for today’s hunt, which was going to be over at my parent’s place. Travel between here and there is still not great, even though the travel ban in our town was lifted at 5 pm yesterday. I’ll hunt the upper deck of my middle two-story blind this morning. There are a couple thick bedding areas near that, which I have not yet disturbed. I noted lots of tracks towards it on last night’s hunt. There is no wheat or turnips close to it, but there is some nice clover, that looked like it had been getting some attention. Tonight, I’ll go back to my poplar-tree blind. That’s got good wheat/clover close by, that was definitely getting hit based on the tracks in the snow. I didn’t see any deer from it yesterday morning, but it might be better in the pm than the am. Another reason I want to hunt at home today, is because flooding might make it un-huntable later in the week, by the looks of the forecast. This is about the lowest-lying land in the area, and there will be plenty of melting snow around to put most of it under water.

I missed one tonight back on the turnip plot. I’m guessing it was the 1.5 yr old doe that was with the older one that I killed during the early antlerless season. I’m not sure what went wrong. The shot didn’t sound quite right. Maybe some moisture got in there, over the last (2) weeks, since it was loaded. I made it to the blind at 3:30 and sunset was 4:45. At 5:00, she stepped out of the heavy cover and stopped in the middle of the turnip patch, almost exactly where I killed a small spike buck on Thanksgiving morning. The range was about 75 yards. I cranked my 2-7x scope up to about 5, rested my elbows on my knees, and settled the crosshairs on her front shoulder. She was quartering towards me. At the shot, she lifted her head, spun around, and ran back into the cover with her tail up, showing no signs of a hit. I followed her tracks into there about 50 yards, finding no blood. Her reaction and the lack of blood make me about 90% sure that it was a clean miss. Not happy missing, but carcass recovery would have been difficult with about 3 ft of snow. My reworked snowshoes worked ok, with the Mickey Mouse boots and my feet stayed warm, but it was still quite a workout getting back there. I don’t think my tractor could get back thru the deep drifts. My best option would probably have been to call my neighbor and see if he could come over with his snowmobile. I seen him dragging his grandkids around on a sled with it, for the first half hour or so, that I was back there tonight. I’ll get my ML cleaned and get a fresh load in it before heading over to my parents tomorrow morning. Hopefully, they didn’t get quite as much snow over there. I’ll bring the snowshoes and a sled, just in case they did.

I capped my ML and walked back to my front stand with the snowshoes at 7:14 (1/2 hour before sunrise). I didn’t see any deer on the way, but did cross a few tracks on the front wheat field. It looked like maybe 3 or 4 deer were feeding there last night. The snowshoes worked real good with my old Sorrels, but as expected, my feet started getting numb after about an hour up in the stand. I didn’t see any deer, and I packed it in after about 1-1/2 hours up there, just before my toes froze solid. The temperature was 15 degrees and the wind was from the sw at 14 mph. I probably would have been better off this morning, hunting that field from my bedroom window. The shot would have been a little longer to the wheat field, but at least I would have been warm. I suspect that the larger part of the local deer herd has been feeding from my other fresh wheat/clover plot, way out back. That one has several advantages over the front one: 1) I seeded it heavier 2) it’s closer to bedding cover 3) it’s more hidden from human observation 4) it’s got an excellent turnip plot right next to it. The few deer, that were feeding up front last night, were probably just outcasts from the main group. I’m going to get back there after the big group this afternoon, after I warm up and eat lunch. I didn’t get a chance to break a trail back there with the snowshoes, because I was worried I’d snap off a frozen toe or two. I’m going to trim open the rubber bindings of my snowshoes so that they will fit my Mickey Mouse boots. I’m also going to bring a warmer orange hat. I need to do all I can to hold out in my natural blind, on the downwind side of my back foodplots, until 1/2 hour past sunset. I think that there will be a lot of deer trying to get at those turnips and that wheat before then. We shall see in a few more hours. The feeling is finally starting to come back to my toes.

One hour and 14 minutes until “go-time”. I am wondering how much snow I am going to have to pull out, from behind the 3 ft barnwood wall, up in my stand. I think I’ll bring along my wool-lined deerskin snow-plowing mittens for that job. If all goes well, maybe I’ll get one off the snowshoes, on the walk back, and I won’t need to worry about that.

The big day (opener of 22 Holiday ML) has finally arrived. I have been up since 4:30, unable to sleep in anticipation. I took this picture, of my front wheat/clover plot, on January 29 of this year. The tracks indicated that there was a big herd of deer feeding on it then. Our local herd seems even larger now, and I have a new plot about 50 yards closer to my poplar tree stand. That’s planted where standing corn is in the picture and the stand is in the tall tree behind it in the center. I’m hoping for a few firsts, mostly for a first kill out of that stand. It will also be my first walk-in with snowshoes. I believe that sunrise is 7:40 ish , but I will verify before my 200 yard walk back, starting exactly 30 minutes prior. The old Redfield scope on my Omega is very good in low light situations, so a shot off the snowshoes is a possibility.

Didn’t she also say that she wants everyone on electric heat in a few more years. I wonder how that’s going to work out with winter power outages. Maybe she’s anticipating some type of miraculous end to global warming and “climate change” storms like the (2) recent blizzards. Sure glad I have a wood stove. Thanks to that, the colder it is outside in the winter, the less gas I burn. It gets too hot in the house, with it going, when the outside temps are above 30 degrees:

It seemed to me like a heavy snow, fine and granular. I got stuck down in southern CA on a work trip for the November blizzard. I was damn close to getting stuck down there again for this one, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to miss a second opening day of deer season (Holiday ML) and Christmas and my birthday with my family. I flat out refused, telling my boss that I’d flip burgers before I went. That turned out to be a good move, because there is no doubt that I would be stuck there right now. I had to shovel a fair amount on this one, in order to get my daughter’s car to my tractor to jump start it. I guess I’m going to have to buck up for a battery with more CCA for that tractor. I did have to shovel about 3 ft of that last one off of my wife’s van, when I got back to the Buffalo airport. It didn’t seem as heavy as this one but I had to shovel a lot less of it.

It looks like the wind is supposed to be from the SW tomorrow, so I should be able to stick to the plan, and hit my front tree stand in the morning. A nice thing about the big storm, over the last few days, was that the constant high winds kept a lot of big areas free of any snow buildup. That should put lots of wheat/clover within easy reach of the deer, on a few of my plots, including one of about (2) acres near the stand I’ll be in 1/2 hour before sunrise. I’ll hold out up there as long as I can in the morning. That stand has a nice barnwood wall, that protects it from SW wind, which will help. Cold feet will probably be an issue, because my Mickey Mouse boots don’t fit my snowshoe bindings. My old pair of felt-lined Sorrels, that work with them, are not nearly as warm. Hopefully, a deer will show up in range, in the first hour or so. At the end of the morning hunt, I plan on breaking a trail with the snowshoes, back to the stands where I will hunt at mid-day and evening, then go back to the house for lunch (leftover liver and onions). I’ll wear the Mickey boots on those hunts, which are good all day to about 30 below zero. SW wind protection is lacking at my midday and evening stands, but good boots, a face mask and wool hat, long underwear, thinsulate bibs and jacket, lined flannel shirt, hand-warmer in a muff, and a quart of hot cider, should keep me plenty warm. My in-line ML has been loaded and left out in the barn since last Saturday. I got all the other gear ready to go today, even my Barnett Recruit crossbow, which I plan on using Tuesday morning at my trailer park stand by my parent’s place.

Thanks, so far so good, and you have merry Christmas. My wife gave me my favorite TV series on DVD, and I just completed an hour of fun plowing snow: Hopefully, tomorrow’s ML hunt will go well.

It took me about 20 minutes to shovel out my daughter’s sonic. That got a brand new battery in it, down in White-Plains, last week. It worked good to jump start my tractor. It was too cold for that to turn over fast enough on its own. Our 4-Wd and fwd SUV’s were both trapped in the barn. I usually jump the tractor with the Durango, but a 6 ft drift in front of the barn door stopped that. After I got the tractor started, it took me over an hour to dig out our two driveways and my neighbors. The plows hit our road soon after, so we are no longer stranded. I’m not planning on going anywhere, until Tuesday morning, to hunt at my parents. I guess I’ll be wearing my snowshoes, on my way to the stand out back tomorrow morning. I don’t think we got much over a foot of snow, but high winds made some deep drifts.

I’m eating good anyhow:

Merry Christmas to all and may we all get a 9-point buck on the wall.

One interesting Custer hunting story, was about the time when he was left stranded alone and deep in Indian territory out on the plains, after he accidentally shot his horse. His favorite Buffalo hunting method, was to ride up next to a bison as it was pursued by his dogs, and dispatch it with his revolver. A shot went astray that time, catching his favorite horse in the brain. Fortunately, the luck that he was famous for held that time, and he found his way back to his command on foot.