View from the stand

[gstoneberg]

Nice pictures!

I hung a new stand yesterday afternoon, about 75 yards away from the feeder where I saw deer walking the previous sit.  Here's looking forward:



And here's the view to the left.  That little opening in the elm leaves is where the 7 pointer walked through about 10 minutes before I took that picture.  Sadly, our county has antler restrictions so he had to have a 13" inside spread and I'm betting he was about 11" wide.  He was 2.5 years old too.  A shame.



I tried to get a picture of the buck with my camera instead of my cell and it's battery was dead.  He was too far away by the time I get the cell phone out and ready to use.  Bummer.  Also in that picture is a squirrel hole in the big tree on the right.  A big fox squirrel sat in there and watched me for awhile.  A big owl swooped right by me as it was getting dark.  Never heard him coming.  If I had known I could have reached out my bow and touched him as he flew by.  It was a great night of hunting.

George

[H Rhodes]

View from a loc on stand that I put about twelve feet up a pine tree.  It is a good spot in a stand of white oak trees.  Trails intersect in this prime feeding spot right under the stand.  It overlooks a creek and hardwood bottom which gives me some nice scenery while I wait.  I have watched hogs and coons feeding in the creek bottom while I was waiting on deer.  A busy trail runs between the stand and the edge of the bluff. 

[Josh B]

I haven't used my treestand for ten years, but here is a couple pics of little spot I hunted from this past weekend.  To my left is a mostly dry creek bed that runs through my backyard .  There are three spring Fed pools just out of view on the first pic.  They are the only water for a mile in any direction.  You can see the old deadfall hackberry that I was using for cover in the edge of the pic.  To my right is a soybean field that they have been feeding in.  There are huge scrapes along the edge of the field.  The trail between the field and the water was directly in front of my hide.  It looks like a super highway running through there.  I had a great weekend of hunting and passed on a lot of deer that i would normally have taken.  My wife informed me that as soon as I got my first deer , my hunting would be done for the year.  For some reason, no matter how close the deer got, I just couldn't quite get a good enough shot. . Oh well, looks like I'll have to do a little more hunting,  don't you just hate it when that happens!  Josh

[gstoneberg]

Pretty spots guys.  My wife stopped saying that Josh because I was doing the same thing, and then later so I would shoot more deer when the kids were home.  Now she knows better (and there are hogs) so it's pointless.  These days she's scared to death I'll retire and she'll have me around all the time.  

I was deer hunting Sat night out of that second stand I posted.  A big boar walked through the woods behind me.  If my stand had been on the other side of the tree I'd have launched an arrow.  Unlike with deer, I can't seem to influence those silly hogs with a call to come by a stand.  They go where they want and if you aren't close enough that's just the way it goes.  Probably just as well, that boar was likely too armored to get an arrow through with that light bow I'm shooting.

George

[RabidApache]

I don't have a particular "spot" or stand but I have vast areas to hunt. Very open terrain, Ponderosa forests, Juniper/oak woodlands to thickets of Mtn. mahogeny and oak brush, rugged, and quite frankly beautiful Apache Land. Abundant wildlife from world class Elk, Coues deer, Muleys, Bear, Mtn.Lion, Turkey and many other small game.

A view from my "stand" that day.


Oak and Juniper woodland.


High Desert.


Also High Desert. Pictured is a hunter I guided for Archery Javelina. Can you find the Javie in the Pic?


Juniper woodlands.


Ponderosa Pine forests above 6,000 ft elevation. My favorite pic. Caught this boar while it was digging for termites or possibly getting into a woodpecker/squirrel nest.


Enjoy.

[gstoneberg]

Nice pics RA, looks like a great place to spend a weekend or 3.  I wish I could see the pictures on the big flat screen here at work, but I couldn't pick out the javi on my phone.

I spent a day and a half hog and deer hunting with the rifle in central Texas earlier this week.  It's quite a contrast from the ash, osage and hackberry woods I've been posting up to now on the east side of Dallas.  It was a rifle hunt out of a box blind so it doesn't fit very well here, but I thought you might like to see the change in terrain between northeast and central Texas.  Of course, the Texas hill country (and you could argue this is too far north to qualify) is box blind territory.  The first picture was taken in the dark from the bed in the blind as I was hog "hunting", LOL.  Hard to hold the phone still enough with such a long exposure. My night vision equipped AR15 is standing in the corner.  A sensor overlooks the feeder so I can sleep and be woken up when hogs (or deer or coons or pocupines) are there.  It's rough hunting, but fun.



And here's the view from a different box blind looking first to the west and then to the north at the feeder.  I slept/hunted there the second night.  You can see the pop-up bow blind in the second picture.  No luck there this year.  The acorn crop is huge and all the normal patterns have changed.  All the trees visible here are mesquites and junipers.  I have one nicely reflexed juniper sapling I cut here seasoning in the shop, waiting to become a bow.





This ranch is at the very edge of live oak territory.  10 miles to the west and the only trees you see are mesquite.  Sadly, the ranch is up for sale so this is the last season.  Hope to get one more knapping get-together done there this spring before he sells it.

George

[gstoneberg]

I moved my ground blind and a feeder to the hottest hog sign on the property.  Looks like this:



George

[half eye]

Had a couple warm days and most of the woods snow went away so used to chance to build me one of my temporary "fightin holes".....it's a dug-out in the middle of a pile of "tops" been down for 3 years.....the hide is LOW I shoot with the bow flat, the arrow clears the ground by 1 inch when I shoot. Set legs folded and the butt on a boat cushin.....in these woods there aint squat to blend in a tree stand or a ground blind so this is what I use.......damned crazy old men anyways
rich

[Fred Arnold]

I haven't hunted yet this year, not because of time restrictions or lack of interest but our weather has been unreasonably warmer than the norm. I've never hunted from a stand but have several natural ground blinds erected.
My son Jeff uses a climbing stand and oldest son David took a doe last month from the ground.
This is the back of my small acreage (big yard) looking across from the top of  about a 80' drop to the bottom of the creek bed.
I generally like to stick pretty close to this natural funnel working its path down to the creek from the corn field directly south of the property line.
The last two photos are of the creek bottom just east of the building looking to that side of the property.
And these two shots were taken on the west side looking south west to the other side.