Doomed by Weather (October 2, 2017)

As I mentioned in “The First Hunt” article, I don’t live very close to the hunting property, so basically any time I get the chance to get out in the woods, I am going to take it.

However, the one thing I will not do is put my life in jeopardy to harvest an animal, and that is what doomed my second hunt of the season on October 2.

I woke up early in the morning, hoping to spend some time out in the woods. Just as I was about ready to drive to the hunting property, the wind whipped up, rain started to fall and thunder boomed. I decided to go back to sleep and hoped that the weather would subside so that I could enjoy an afternoon hunt.

After a pop-up thunderstorm from about 2:30-3 p.m., I was ready to get out in the woods. I decided to sit near a second trail camera, literally three feet to the right of it actually. This was the camera that captured pictures of a group of four does while I hunted just 100 yards to the east on Oct. 1 (going into the hunt, I did not know that though).

(My view for my October 2 hunt)

When I arrived, the temperature read about 60 degrees, but as time ticked by, I noticed it actually getting warmer instead of colder. I knew another thunderstorm was supposed to hit around 7 p.m., so I was hopeful some deer would show up right around 6 p.m., like they had the night before.

Just before 6 p.m., I heard a faint rumble of thunder in the distance, but it appeared pretty far away still, so I sat patiently. Less than 10 minutes later, a second rumble of thunder jolted me from what was a pretty peaceful evening in the woods. In a matter of minutes, I gathered all my gear, zipped as quietly as I could out of the woods and drove back to my parent’s house.

The thunderstorm arrived about 45 minutes earlier than expected and for the next few hours brought rain and lightning near the area I hunted.

Despite a lack of deer, I remained confident in my chances of eventually harvesting a deer with a bow during the season. I also went into the hunt not expecting great deer movement, but still enjoyed my brief few hours in the woods.

Like my first hunt, my second hunt was still not complete despite me already being out of the woods. Before I returned to my apartment on Tuesday, I went back out to the hunting land to create a couple mock scrapes and check the cameras.

After returning to my parent’s house, I put the trail camera (the one I sat by on Oct. 2) SD card into the laptop and quickly glanced over the times of the most recent photos. Wouldn’t you know it, there were multiple photos near the end of legal shooting time on "10/2/2017."

I hesitated before opening them, not really wanting to know what passed by after I left. Sure enough, two does walked just a few feet to the left of the camera and walked into a perfect shooting lane. Had I been sitting there, things could have played out differently for sure, but seeing those does walk just steps from my setup was gut-wrenching. I guess that’s one downside to a trail camera…

With what looked to be a pretty solid pattern on a total of six does, I returned to my apartment, already looking forward to the next weekend when I was planning to be out in the woods again. Like so many hunters do, I checked my weather app on my cell phone and immediately began to grin… A cold front was on its way.

Check back frequently this fall as I will continue to keep an archive of every hunt I embark upon.

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