will continue this post in a couple of segments due to pictures...

conecuh springs christian school in union springs, (bullock county, alabama) held their annual hunt january 22-24. we had registration thursday at noon (sign in with hold harmless waiver, present hunting license and pay any amount due such as lodging or what-have-ya).

this was followed by announcements and prayer.

then we had lunch:
turnip green soup (hot sausage, onions, tomatoes, northern beans and turnip greens), cornbread, assorted desserts and tea


after lunch, we headed to our accomodations to unload/unpack the truck. (this is important when you are travelling with a 3 year old). our second year to lodge at one of the large plantations and we sure appreciate their hospitality.

living room. was nice to have satellite for a couple of late evening cartoons:


our bedroom (there was another bedroom with a double bed and adjacent to that room was a bunk room with 2 double bunks):


nice to have a kitchen with full size fridge to keep the drinks cold. when we first started going on these hunts, we stayed at the local 1/4 star motel with the mini fridge. this is like a resort in comparison:


not that it is needed, as the school feeds us well, but there is a stove/oven for cooking if one was so inclined:


there were two full size bathrooms and just off the kitchen, there was a washer and dryer (very convenient if one had not brought a rain suit. friday morning was a gully washer). anyways, this was home away from home.

after we unpacked, we headed to our guide/landowner's property for the 1st hunt thursday evening. my shooting house:


view to the front:


in stand by 2:42, 61 degrees with wind ene at 7
5 point down at 5:09. he was feeding with a smaller buck so i took the larger of the two.

we wait for the guide/landowner to pick us up and we load the deer (the guys do this) and head back to the city. arrive at the school's skinning shed to see what has been brought in and what will be arriving. i don't stay long as i have to get our daughter and get some dinner in her.

pics from the skinning shed:


when i attended the first annual hunt, these young fellas were about a year old. it has been a great pleasure to see them grow and mature and i am very proud of them. cole and kirkland:


a nice 8. there were only two bucks brought in this night. my 5 point and this one:

hunters with guides/landowners:


in the school gymnasium, the kids were playing. once again, i have loved watching these children grow and hope and pray that i see them into adulthood. i believe the twin's mom was still pregnant with them on my first trip up there. my how time flies.


dinner this night was smoked chicken and it was great, very moist and tender, which is not easy to do when you have so many people to cook for. my hat's off to the cooks and the other ladies who volunteer to help. side items were corn on the cob, macaroni and cheese, light bread, assorted desserts (i opted for red velvet cake and it was mighty fine) and tea. no pics 'cause i forgot and when i remembered, my plate was half empty.

total deer numbers for 33 hunters was 2 bucks and 11 does.

thursday night into friday afternoon was scheduled for just about constant rain. i figured it would ease off a little and the deer would move. our guide would meet us at the plantation at 05:00 and we were to follow him to another area to hunt. we were up at 04:ish and it was drizzling rain. the guys decided to stay with baby girl and go back to sleep. i don't get to hunt as often as i used to (pre-baby) so i have to take every opportunity available, and this one was available. warm part of a cinnamon roll in the microwave and wash it down with a bottle of apple juice and a starbucks frappucino thingy - man, i don't drink coffee but those are delicious!!!

my ride shows up and i grab my gear and load up. this new spot was out in the country (isn't everything in bullock county?) and we had a nice ride out. got to catch up on his family and hunting stories. get to a drop off point for the pick-em-up truck and take a golf cart into the promised land. i always "love" the friday and saturday morning hunts as you never know where you are going to be and of course, you don't know how to get there in the pre-dawn darkness. i am always concerned i will miss finding the stand and will have to hunker down til daylight enough to find it (as you can tell, this has happened once). this morning was not that case; the landowner drove me in close enough to the stand and made sure i was safely inside before he put the cart in reverse and eased out of the area. chivalry is not dead.

my shooting house for friday morning:


i actually stayed pretty dry. when the wind would blow, and believe me it did, i would get peppered by rain on my shoulders and back. thank goodness for a helly hansen cam-er-flage rain parka with hood.

in stand and set up by 5:36. 43 degrees with wind chill of 37. ene winds at 12

view to front:


just like clock work, as the rain eases up, a yearling enters to my left at 6:58. doe enters to my extreme left, top corner at 7:02. she is very skittish and runs and stops, runs and stops, runs and stops til she is behind the yearling at the woodline of the plot. i'm thinking she may have a fella looking for her but after she and the yealing leave the plot at 7:05, and nothing of the male persuasion passes through, i feel it was just the wind making her nervous.

i don't remember how much time passed from when they exited stage left til i saw more deer movement but for grins and giggles, let's say it was an hour and a half. i catch movement in the woods and pick up the binoculars to see two deer skirting the foodplot working from top left to right. i decide to go ahead and take one and wait on the deer to get in a small clearing to the far right. just as the bigger of the two deer get close to the clearing where i have decided to take the shot, she turns 90 degrees and gives me the south end of her north bound self. dern deer. by this time i have concluded these are the two deer that had moseyed out of the area earlier. when the yearling reached the opening, i reached out and touched her with a round from a sweet little .243.

the guide and landowner brought a ranger or polaris or something of that type to get my deer and me. back to the truck, loaded deer and gear and on the way to the skinning shed.

sometime during all of this i had requested, via text, that the guys take baby girl to the drugstore for some mucinex. sinuses were giving me heck in the shooting house. too darn damp...and cold.

meet up with the remainder of my group, who have all by now, gotten some great sleep during the rain. we eat lunch in the gymnasium. chicken tenders, green limas, mashed potatoes, hot-hot yeast roll, assorted desserts and tea.


it was as good as a steak from morton's or ruth's chris. why does hunting and fishing in really cold, wet weather make a hot meal taste so fine?

4 deer from the morning hunt.

to be continued...

Sounds like you had a great time..

Sounds like fun ! Keep laying them down

Always love your report from this hunt. Congrats on the deer and look forward to "the rest of the story"

Sounds Like Fun

It was a very good hunt Velvet. I was a guide this past weekend there. Lots of deer taken. Look forward to reading the rest of your hunt.

here we go with friday evening's hunt:

after lunch, the guide/landowner has court with his hunters and hashes out a plan for the next hunt. it was determined that due to the continued chance of rain for friday, we should all be in shooting houses or under cover of some sort.

the guys would be taken to hunt first. since they would be in the same area, they took the truck to a pre-determined drop off point to wait for the guide/landowner. i was taken off of the main road onto a long, winding dirt road where i was delivered to a gate that entered a stand of planted pines. at the end of the pine thicket was a grandiose green field (food plot).

there was a shooting house about 2/3 up the field from a bottleneck that led to another green field around a bend. seems i had just got settled in when the misting rain began.

3:04 p.m. 57 degrees. don't know the wind. (this picture was not taken until saturday's morning hunt; as i was too excited to get into the stand, i just didn't grab my phone or camera before climbing the ladder. it was not all pretty and sunny, it was dreary and overcast.)



view to the left. i have hunted this stand before and this is always the area i watch for deer. they will enter plot near the bottleneck and either work their way toward me or feed into the smaller plot:


i watched six boy turkey as they meandered across the plot and exited into the planted pines on my right. they would eventually fly to roost somewhere across the road behind me. it is always a pleasure to watch and listen to them. i'm not really a turkey hunter but it was a bummer to know where they went to roost and to know they couldn't be hunted the following morning:



as the evening wore on, the misting rain turned into a heavy rolling fog encompassing the entire plot. i have good binoculars and even better scope glass but i just couldn't justify trying to make a number. it was still a great hunt and is deposited in my memory bank.

meanwhile, back at the ranch (always wanted to say that), the guys were being shuttled by the guide/landowner to a promising area with two shooting houses. one was not too terribly far from a main county road and the other was just past the first, but further into the woods. i have previously hunted the first plot and know it to be a producer. i have also learned, the hard way, to have my gun ready and not have it propped in the corner of the shooting house. it seems there is an opening in the back of the plot to the left. the deer mostly enter from here and will cross the plot and exit about 50 yards or so to the upper right. the first time i hunted this, i did not know the layout of the plot. there is a nice trail that leads down to the second area which overlooks a power line. not one of those 4 or 600 yard lines either. just a short line over an area that was cleared for a plot.

i was told that as the guys were driving into the first area, there was a "wall hanger" already in the field. seems it got their blood flowing; even our guide/landowner was excited and he's not a deer hunter - he just enjoys putting his hunters on them (bragging rights, per se).

the first food plot produced a doe and a robert kitty and the hunter on the next plot over downed a doe for bait. he let a long spike have a reprieve but dropped a six point when he came in to investigate the bait doe.

the guys were brought back to our truck and the deer and robert kitty were taken on to the skinning shed. we left to get baby girl some dinner - at three years of age, she's not much into the food they serve. we will patiently give her time. but for now, it is church's chicken strips...

they were already cleaning deer when we arrived but i did manage a pic or two before everything was in a state of being undressed:




won't be long and she'll be in the woods with us:


dinner this night would be grilled steaks, potato casserole of some sort (butter, cheese, sour cream; whatever it is, it is good), salad, yeast roll, assorted desserts and tea:


random pics of folks getting their grub on whilst listening to some gospel music (eufaula high school):






with 4 deer from the morning and 16 from the evening, we end the day with 20.

more to follow...

Great story. Can't wait to finish it.

denoument (the rest of the story, the end)

saturday morning we awoke to the alarm of our cell phones at 04:00ish. after a continental breakfast of microwaved cinnamon roll, banana and glass of milk, it was time to pre-heat the truck and get rolling.

packed a bag for the baby and loaded our gear. headed out around 04:45 as we were to meet our guide/land owner at his house between 05:15 and 5:20. we had a bit of a drive as he was on the other side of union springs and we were closer to town.

once we arrived, i unlatched baby girl and took her inside so she could finish her forty winks. i returned to the truck and donned my bibs and opened a couple or three hot hands. one was larger than the other two and didn't seem to want to activate. i left it in our truck and placed the two smaller ones in seperate bib pockets - i will later on forget that i did this as hunter #1 would ask if i had anymore and i would toss them to him. he then tossed them back into the truck and i, in an unconsious state, pocketed them.

note - **at some point while waiting for the guys to bib and jacket up, i grabbed a little debbie pecan twirl, spin thingy and threw it in the pocket with the hot hands. this would turn out to be very beneficial, when i climbed out of the stand after the morning hunt to find the hot hand had warmed the little sugary, cinnamon snack.**

i loaded my gear in the guide/land owner's truck and rode with him with the guys following in a spare truck. we convoyed to the area i had hunted the previous evening. turning off the dirt road into the woods, we dropped hunter #1 and the spare truck. hunter #2 and i were taken to the gate at the planted pines. we disembarked and began the walk to our assigned stands. hunter #2 would take the shooting house and i would turn left and follow the woodline to the bottleneck where i would funnel into the smaller green field. i followed the woodline til i saw an old gate against a tree, then i began looking for a flag to mark the entrance to the single man ladder stand that i would sit. (i had been informed by hunter #1 that this would be a lock on with an aluminum ladder (painted)- he had used it on prior hunts. i was quite relieved to find the old stand had been updated.)

40 degrees windchill 33. 12mph wnw wind gusts to 14mph

06:27 i texted hunter #1 and asked if he got the hot hand out of the truck (the big one that didn't activate. i was now concerned as the hot hand in my right bib pocket was a wee bit warm. didn't want to melt the console of the truck). he said, "no". well by now, the wind was whipping a good bit and hitting my back. my neck was cold. i removed a hot hand from my bib pocket and placed it between my base layer and midlayer. at some point i moved, wiggled or twitched just enough to cause the hot hand to slide from the back of my neck down onto my back. that was at 07:10.

no big deal, if that was an ordinary hot hand. you know, the one that is just above the temperature of hot water and you can cuddle it like a newborn pup? this was no ordinary hot hand. this one was made by a disgruntled factory employee who decided to use too much "hot" in the chemical composition. this hot hand was like molten lava.

every thirty to forty-five seconds i would move, wiggle or twitch to shift the molten lava pad over to an area that hadn't been blistered. after five minutes, i had shifted it enough that it fell to my beltline. this wasn't bad as it was near the kidneys and i could stand more heat. by 07:47 i had enough and didn't care how much i had to move to free my shirt from the confines of my jeans and bibs. free at last! free at last!

it was cold and windy. the tree that the ladder stand was attached to would move and cause the metal to cr-e-ak. decayed, water-logged limbs would fall from the tree tops to the forest floor. duck hunters were the only folks shooting. nary a rifle shot was heard. we called the hunt at 09:00 and shortly after is when i found a new way to heat a snack in the woods!

view ahead toward bottleneck and large green field:


hardwoods with a creek to my right and behind me:


view of my stand looking back toward creek. hunter #1 was about 200 yards behind me facing what would be to my left. we couldn't see one another but when i was walking in, i saw his neck light. we both kept our orange on in stand. i have sat his stand several times over the years and know that he couldn't reach out and touch me:


picked up baby girl and headed back to union springs. hunter #2 mentioned his stomach was gnawing on his backbone, so we stopped for him to get breakfast. afterward, we visited with another guide/landowner and his wife and then returned to the school. by then it was time for a brunch of scrambled egg and sausage casserole, cheese grits, biscuit, orange sections, milk and orange juice.

after brunch, car seat was swapped and baby girl and guide/landowner went to his house so she could play with the grandchildren. the guys and i headed to the promised land. already knew the driving directions, as i had hunted there whilst the men folk and baby folk slept through the typhoon.

met with the guide/landowner's relatives and chatted a bit. since i had previously hunted one stand and knew how to get there, i would take a golf cart to my stand. the guys would be taken to their stands by polaris, ranger buggy type thingy.

as i have lost two of these posts before, i will now submit this one and continue...

47 degrees windchill 41. wind 14mph wnw gusts to 18

13:46 cypress shooting house with boat seat on swivel
view to left rear overlooking old sugar cane patch:


view to left - straight across:


caught a glimpse of movement to my left. doe was inside woodline and working her way toward thicker wooded area behind me. picked up binoculars and saw that she was mature. didn't want another yearling. ooops, there is another doe ahead of her. she is moving too fast and is in the thick woods. i see an opening that is clear of branches and limbs but i decide to wait and see what (if any) may enter the area later. it is still very early.

14:36 hunter #1 has already texted that a big bodied deer had entered his plot at the back. he believed it to be a young buck. the deer watched the shooting house for about eight minutes and then left, exit stage right. wind was wrong.

15:08 hunter #1 reported he had a doe working the woodline
15:32 hunter #1 has doe on the ground
16:02 hunter #2 has 7 point on the ground
16:43 hunter #2 has his doe on the ground

hunter #1 let this one walk. he came in the food plot after the doe was down:


another view:


he will be a good buck in a couple of years!

those are their results but not their stories.

back to my hunt:

i mainly watched the front of the plot and to my left. i didn't scout any when i arrived but i believe there may have been a little ditch in the woodline. i just don't see how those does just appeared as they did. i believe they came up a small hill from a creek possibly. every now and again i would look back over my left shoulder to see if anything was entering the field and slipping up on me.

it was one of these times where i had looked back so many times and not seen anything that, what do you know, there were two does walking toward the front of the plot. one of those oh crap moments that you aren't expecting to see anything and aren't prepared. my rifle was in the corner and it wasn't close enough for me to get it without moving a good bit. the does were moving briskly. not running but a real fast walk. as they just passed the shooting house, i made a move to retrieve the rifle from the corner. as i did, wouldn't you know it, they stopped to browse. i chose the larger of the two and she was down. the doe with her ran a little to the right, then back to the left. she blew. she stomped. she walked over to the downed doe. she walked away from the downed doe. she pranced all over. then she browsed. this is a sign of very little hunting pressure. she never left until the guide/land owner and his relative drove into the food plot to retrieve my doe.

this is the doe that wouldn't leave the plot:


i walked back to the golf cart and waited with another relative while the men folk made their way back to us. the deer were loaded into the pick up truck and the guide/land owner was off to the skinning shed.

we stayed behind and chatted more with the relatives and graciously thanked them for allowing us to hunt and harvest the deer on their land.

said our goodbyes and headed to the school to pick up baby girl and have dinner. we always have bbq and this night it would be smoked pork, baked beans, potato salad, light bread, assorted desserts and tea:


our group of three harvested a 5 point, a 6 point and a 7 point along with 6 does. we gave deer to those who weren't as fortunate as us. this is my tenth year to proudly participate in this hunt. i hope we make another decade or two. these are fine folks to graciously put us on deer that they could otherwise hunt themselves. memories are made during this hunt. lots of first's happen during this hunt. i will never forget how proud my guide/land owner felt as i took my first buck on his land. that just so happened to be ten years ago on my first hunt there. we are very blessed to be a part of their families and their community, if only for three days out of the year.

33 hunters/76 deer. the last deer was not recovered, according to our guide/land owner.

Your a Great story teller!

x2