A Couple Hunts

I have been spending most of my free time chasing fish lately, so not much going on in terms of hunting. I did, however, get a spike (yeah, I know, shooting a little buck is a no-no, but it was a 10 yard broadside shot!) with my bow back in October, and a pair of geese in November...that's about it. Here they are!

Swhacker did a good job

Virginia Bow Kill

   My little brother connected with this awesome deer on Saturday morning. In his words: "I looked to the top of the hill and saw him headed towards me about 100 yards off. He wouldn't present a shot when he got close, and kept coming closer, I had kept my cool, but I lost it and started shaking really bad when he was 10 yards away, still not presenting a shot, and looked straight up at me. I held still for a while and finally he took a couple steps and went behind a tree, I drew and shot him at roughly 8 yards."
   I was in a stand close enough to him that I heard a loud "whack!" when he hit the deer, but I was confused when I only heard it run for a few seconds, not really crash, and certainly didn't kick around. Turns out the buck simply ran 35 yards and keeled over, never flopped a bit after hitting the ground! 85 Grain thunderhead proving itself...

Here are the pics:

Congrats to Wyatt for such an awesome deer, and thanks for reading!

Snow Birds

 

Yup...

Sunday Hunting in Virginia

   Looks like things will be different this fall! http://hamptonroads.com/2014/02/end-sunday-hunting-ban-near-after-va-senate-vote
    I am very excited to see the lifting of the Sunday hunting ban in Virginia, it will be awesome to have the option to hunt Saturday and/or Sunday. I am not sure on details yet, but it is almost certain that we will be able to hunt Sundays next season.

Here are some pictures of ducks and others from the last day of duck season and youth waterfowl day:

January 26th

 Youth Day

Buffleheads and Thunderbolts

   This Saturday, my brother and I went duck hunting (at least as close as we can get to duck hunting in Virginia) with a friend on Lake Anna. We arrived at the lake well before daylight, and headed to a small island just below the power plant. We anchored the boat up as close to the island as we could, set out decoys (2 dozen goose floaters, a dozen bufflehead floaters, and 3 bluebill floaters). We had a drake bufflehead swim in to the decoys just after daylight, my brother shot it but it still managed to get up and fly to a boat dock where we couldn't pursue it (he short stroked the gun trying to make a follow up shot). Three buffleheads swam in after that, on my brother's side of the boat, what it came down to was 5 empty hulls and 3 buffleheads laughing at us from the safe cove with all of the boat docks in it. We got out of the boat to moved the bufflehead decoys closer, and the next 3 that cooperated died. We had a single goose, that we assumed was crippled, swim in to about 45 yards and decide that he didn't like the looks of our spread, he turned around and swam back to where he came from. We also had a flock of about 15 (geese) pass over without looking at the decoys, we guessed they were going out to feed. Our hunt was cut short at about 9:30 when out of the blue, a bolt of lightning struck less than a quarter mile away from us. We quickly threw the decoys in the boat and motored back to the ramp! On our way back in, I was surprised to see many rafts of buffleheads and possibly other divers in the middle of the lake. So my plan is to go back in my kayak after I camo it with burlap, and try to hunt some divers and possibly geese. We'll see how it goes! Thanks for reading.

  (all 3 of our buffleheads were not-so-attractive hens and I was too embarrassed to take a picture of them to post!)