Throw back Thursday? I hate that saying.

I dug up some decent stuff from my break from blogging. I just thought I would share it.

The video at the top is from a farm my brother got us permission to hunt last year. We hunted it twice and took one doe off of it. There were a ton of deer and lots of bucks but things never really lined up to harvest a monster there. The pics of my Journey are from about the time I gave up on humanity and blogging. I went hunting at a place a guy told me about after all my equipment got stolen in Bald Mountain. I thought I was pulling up on a shallow puddle but it ended up being a sink hole. So I hunted anyway. Long story short; almost got bit by some crazy snake, got chased out of the woods by some nut job on an ATV and some one siphoned all the gas out of my tank as I was stuck in the ditch.



It didn't look that deep.

For gun season I needed to cleanse my soul a little so I headed to the most nostalgic hunting area for me. Its some national forest land in Hale Michigan that my family used to make deer camp on when I was a kid. I decided since my brother and dad couldn't make it up with me because of work, I would "hardcore it" which meant sleeping in my car and hunting every bit of daylight. The first night was COLD. I parked between two school buses in the Hale High School parking lot for safety. I drove to my hunting spot super early as to get dibs on the place I wanted. The area hasn't changed a lot but the trail we used to drive back following my Uncle Art and his chainsaw was now blocked and allowed only foot travel access. That was fine and meant less people probably ventured back to our old spots. I got into the spot I wanted before any sign of daylight. Way too early, but daylight greeted me with the sight of awesome buck sign. Rubs and scrapes all over. That morning a dandy 10 point came in to about 30 yards from me but never offered me a shot as I had my open sight 20 gauge with me. That night after shooting light he came back and put on a show as he scraped a tree 50 yards from me with the moonlight gleaming off his 140+ rack. He ran off a bunch of smaller bucks and I decided to sneak out the back way which gave me a half mile walk instead of 1000 yards to my car. My dad and brother came up that night and we got a hotel room together and stayed two nights. It was so great. I saw a few does one day but the deer had our number that weekend. Still, I will never forget it and would give anything to do it again.

The trunk of a "hardcore solo hunter."

My rations. I was on a TINY budget.

Glorious Hale Michigan.

Big Ole Scrape

Even bigger scrape. And fresh!

My view that first morning.



View behind me.



Switched to the .30/30 the second morning. The buck had protected and made a rub in those birch trees the night before. I sat in a blind with my dad this morning.

I guess if he had showed in the fog it would have been such a beautiful sight my eyes would have exploded.

 Its kind of funny now that I live by the ocean I wish I would have taken advantage of living so close to such great walleye fishing. There are no walleye populations worth fishing for in Maine. My grandpa and me tried a few times but I think I was just bad luck since we never caught much and would more often than not have some kind of equipment failure.

My papa and me heading to the St. Clair River. Little do we know we will be turning around very shortly.

 We can see the Blue Water Bridge but our motor died this night so no fishing.