First gun hunt:

So, I left the wife in kid with her parents and drove back through the night from south-east PA to my house in MD on Friday to get ready to go out for the first day of gun season here in MD.

Might as well have just stayed in PA.

I hunt a 400 acre farm which backs up to public hunting grounds. Normally, for gun season, this is a great thing. All the yahoos push the deer out of the wood on the public grounds to our fields and (theoretically) we get the pick of the litter so to speak. This year was different apparently. We got out there in our stands at 0-dark-thirty and waited for the official opening at 6:38AM. At 6:40 we heard the first shot come from the woods. The next one was at 6:50. After that, it sounded like the invasion of Baghdad all over again. Whereas normally there are just enough hunters to push the deer to the fields, this time, there were so many hunters that it might as well have been a skirmish-line around the perimeter of the farm. The farm to the south of us had 20+ people on it hunting, the treeline where the public land abuts the farm looked like a damned pumpkin patch with blaze orange every 20-40 yards down the line, and the guy who farms the land (not the owner, just the guy who leases the ag land) was on Safari so all of his buddies took advantage and pushed through his side of the property into ours and sealed the deal. I saw one frikken deer all day, and that was a yearling booking it through the field where I was having lunch and a quick warm-up I didn't so much as see another single one all the way to sundown.

It was pretty disheartening really. Especially seeing guys flaunt the regulations so freely by putting up tree stands and blinds that had obviously been there for days if not weeks. MD law states you have to put it up and take it down within 24 hours total. Our stands stay up year round, but we're on the ag lease, so we're okay with the law. I'm pretty tempted to go out there with marking paint and paint the suckers solid blue and leave them on the ground.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get back out there soon, hopefully one evening during the week, and hopefully get a deer when the rest of the world isn't blasting away with reckless abandon.

I feel your pain. I was out opening day, and saw three other hunters, and could account for two more from tracks and shots fired. One dude fired his gun FIVE times.

I abandoned the hunt and went home. My next chance out was way too warm, and yesterday I tag-checked a 10 point buck that had been taken from the EXACT spot I'd been trying to get back to. My season was a bust.

I wish I was lying when I recant this story, but one of the old timers I work with told me he had pulled over a hunter from New Jersey whose rifle was still loaded in his car. When questioned, the guy told him "Yeah, I didn't have a chance to shoot it." Turns out, the guy had never unloaded his rifle outside of shooting it. If he didn't shoot a deer, the gun went back into his car, loaded and chambered.

We always used to joke that it was illegal to return to NYC of NJ with ammunition, so they have to shoot it all, if its brown its down.

My own uncle lives in Staten Island, he came small game hunting with us. I was off to his left, pushing for grouse. All of a sudden he shoots. At what, I have no idea, but he maintains that we flushed a bird and that I "Must have seen it, it was between us" ....he made me spend 10 minutes looking for a bird that I swear didn't exist...he just hadn't had a chance to pull a trigger in a while, so he either blew away a chipmunk, or took pot shots at falling leaves.

These guys make hunting not only less fun, but far more dangerous. The upside is that by Thanksgiving, they're usually out of the area around here.

See, you're way nicer than we are Cees. We'll hold them and call the DNR.

Just this week, my buddy went out and cut down 6 hanger stands that were on our side of the property line, painted them blue, and left them by the trees they were on. We'll go back around in another week or two and see how many are still there and then sell the scrap for ammo money.

I'm hedging my bets now. Weather around these parts is going to be piss poor the two days I could conceivably get out there before gun season ends. Not cold, but rainy, and the deer around here don't move in the rain unless they're forced to. So I've set up my ground blind in the apple trees behind my house and cleared a shooting lane into the area where a lot of deer feed in the woods behind me. I have permission from everyone involved property-wise, so I'm in the clear to bow hunt back there. No big bucks around now that the rut is over, but plenty of fat does.

[QUOTE=tallen702]See, you're way nicer than we are Cees. We'll hold them and call the DNR. /QUOTE]

In America, only assassins need/want suppressors. So they are highly restricted for the children's safety.

procarbinefreak wrote: Went duck hunting this morning and got one merganser drake.  At least we got out there though.

Mmmmm nothing like a duck that tastes fishy!



Still, you've shot way more animals this year than I have.

So, I went back out Saturday morning only to get blanked again. My buddy who hunt the farm regularly said he hasn't seen a single deer all frikken week. He thinks part of it is that the farmer has done nothing but soybeans for the past 3 years. That means that we'll see deer in the very early season since they eat the plants (but not the beans) but won't likely see any in the fields since there's no leftover seed that they'd want from the harvest like there is with corn.

The good news is, I've been invited to hunt another farm next year with a crop damage permit. That means I'll have one full year regardless of season to harvest as many does as I want, and then can harvest bucks during season. This farm does both soy and corn every year, so that means I'll definitely see more that way.