Laura's worst deer recovery ever...

Have I got a doozy of a story just for you! This is how my father and I bond while we are bow-hunting…(you may have seen him on ROATV's 13th show while we were bear hunting)

            As most of you know, I have just moved to the great north of Wisconsin. Before that adventure came into being, my dad and I would travel 300 miles, one-way, up to his property to go bow-hunting for whitetail every year. This was by FAR my favorite time of year.

            A few years ago we were fulfilling our Wisconsinite duty of trying to fill the freezer like every other year. Well on this particular evening of hunting, my dad shot an 8 pointer. AWESOME! He tracked and located his deer before I ever got down out of my stand. Like the intelligent man that he is, he took his walkie talkie and hung it on a branch above the downed deer. That way, when we met up to recover the deer I could just page the other walkie talkie with my own. Voila! North woods GPS!

            This works…in theory…and probably not on a day where everything that could go wrong-DID GO WRONG. What was supposed to be a simple recovery mission turned into a giant mess that I will remember for the rest of my life.

            My dad and I met up at the hunting “shack” like normal after the evening of hunting. It was now very dark and it had started to rain sometime during our respective outings. My dad informed me that we had a deer to recover. He told me about the walkie talkie paging system. Perfect. I’m thinking this will take no time at all and we’ll be in the bar registering and celebrating in an hour.

            THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN.

            I figured I would drive my truck out to the north food plot and we could just throw the deer in the bed to haul it out. Field dressing a deer on a tailgate is a prime way to go about handling that chore plus then we’re ready to go register because the deer is all ready loaded to be transported. It’s win-win. It wasn’t very far into the brush supposedly, so what’s a little dragging? No big deal. I turned into the south food plot with my dad to go recover this deer…

            …And promptly sunk a foot into the mud. Apparently, it had rained a lot more than I thought. Plus, it was STILL raining. And remember, it’s dark as pitch. Unfortunately, my 4WD had NOTHING on this mud hole. I was stuck in the worst way. The next 45 minutes were spent pushing, pulling, and manipulating our surroundings to try to get my stranded pickup truck out of the deep mud.

            Thank God I drive a stick-shift because in the end it was our atv pulling and the truck rocking between reverse and first gear that got my truck yanked out. Now both of us are soaked, coated in mud, and we have not even gotten close to recovering this dang deer.

            Plan B consisted of hooking an archaic rusted trailer to the back of the atv. The problem was that the ball of the hitch was rusted to the atv and couldn’t be removed to make use of the hole and pin system the trailer had. Great. (this is sarcasm by the way) So, like any true ingenious hunters, we tied the trailer to the atv with rope.

            We’re on our way! We get to the north food plot and I start paging the walkie talkie. I get nothing. I tried numerous times. Not one damn sound. UGH. Seeing as how mother nature was so kind as to dump enough water on us to rival the great flood, there is absolutely no hope of a blood trail.

            So my dad and I start doing circles in the dark.

            It probably took a good 20 minutes before I stumbled upon his buck. My dad’s walkie talkie had fallen face down onto the ground.

            We drag the buck to the north food plot and into the dilapidated trailer. The trailer was no longer capable of holding the slide-in back closure, however. So, of course, on the way to the shack the deer slid out onto the trail. We haul the deer back into the trailer. I then spent the rest of the ride sitting behind my dad twisted around backwards, like some screwed up gymnast, hanging onto the antlers to prevent the buck from sliding out again.

            We get back to the shack and my back is killing me. My dad is going to start field dressing this buck… Until he informs me that he accidentally forgot his hunting knife in his tree stand. Oh boy. We both agree we are not going back to get it. I had a brand new hunting knife that was given to me as a gift from someone who didn’t hunt. I hadn’t used it before. The blade was pretty wide. I offered it to my dad.

            He promptly slices his left index finger from the end knuckle to the middle knuckle down to the bone on the first swipe of the hide. OH MY GOD. I run to get towels to stop the bleeding. (It’s a good thing he has an EMT for a daughter) He needed stitches but seeing as how my dad is an ex-paratrooper of the 82^nd airborne, he refused to get stitches. No amount of yelling, coercing, and bribing could get him to change his mind. But really, I should have expected that.

            The next half hour was spent trying to stop the bleeding. Good thing I pack a pretty extensive first aid kit when I go up north. I had some butterfly sutures that closed my dad’s gaping wound.

            With my dad being too incapacitated to field dress his deer, I undertook the task myself. I was being extra careful seeing as how I was using the same knife my dad cut himself with. I was almost done. I just had to cut the windpipe.

            To this day I still have NO IDEA how this even happened. I was incredibly conscious about everywhere that blade went inside the body cavity. I ended up cutting myself too. IN THE SAME SPOT OF THE SAME FINGER AS MY DAD. Yep, down to the bone, too.

            My dad didn’t think I was serious when I told him I just cut myself. He did when he saw the extra blood pouring out of my finger that obviously wasn’t deer blood. Now I needed medical attention. And probably stitches. Which I didn’t bother getting seeing as how I am the daughter of an ex-paratrooper of the 82^nd airborne. He stopped the bleeding and carefully applied the butterfly sutures to my injury to close my matching wound.

            It was probably sometime after midnight that we got into town to register the buck and have a beer…or several. Mud caked and bloodied champions that we were. But at least we were a team and got the job done. Even if it took half the night. I think that beer was the best tasting beer I ever had.

           

 We now have matching scars from that day and every time we head out to our respective tree stands we shake our scarred fingers and wish each other luck.      

  
        P.S. I got rid of that damn knife.

Laura's very first Muskie Ever-FAIL

This story took place when I was 8 years old. (Young I know, but I was big into fishing when I was 3) My dad, my brother, and I used to spend 2 weeks in summer up at "The Shack." My dad's property with a quanset hut dropped on it. We have no electricity, no running water, no telephone, and no bathroom. We have an outhouse and propane hookup.

We got used to it.



Anyhow, we all went fishing on the Chippewa Flowage in my dad's skanoe one day. Unfortunately for my dad and brother, I was the only one catching anything. Small mouth, large mouth, northern pike, you name it. Although I'm sure my dad was happy for me, he became increasinly frustrated with his lack of catching anything. He is an excellent fisherman-don't get me wrong-but today was evidently NOT his day. He even resorted to a worm and bobber just to catch a blue gill. Which he couldn't even hook into. His frustration increased.

I don't know if I was taking a break or what, but my red and white striped jawbreaker with a white rubber skirt was dangling some feet in the water off the side of the skanoe. I didn't have my hands on my pole, it was just propped up against the side. Well, apparently my non-chalant attitude and the fact that my line was in the water, which I was doing absolutely nothing with, pushed my dad a bit too far. He had been casting all  day without so much as a nibble. So he yelled at me to get my line out of the water if I wasn't going to fish.

Being a child, I rolled my eyes at him and grudgingly picked up my pole. 




I watched my pole bend in half and the drag started screaming!







OH MY GOD!!!!!!!





My dad started yelling at me to set the hook but I was in such a state of utter shock all I could do was hang onto the pole and try to keep tension on the line. I have no clue how long this went on for. Suddenly, about 30 yards out from our boat this well-over-36inch Muskie crashes through the surface of the water and into the sky. My jaw dropped. The moment it hit the water my line went slack.

I never did set the hook.

*facepalms*



Well, to this day, my dad refers to the Chippewa River as "No Fish River" due to this particular day where he didn't catch one fish. He did manage to hook into a nice piece of driftwood, however. He demonstrated excellent catch and release technique when putting it back into its natural habitat.

Laura: Ground blinds are out to get me...

This is a combination of two stories actually. Further justification of my title.

Most people think ground blinds are GREAT. I was no different. My family's property was under the forest-crop program in Wisconsin for years. In 2002, the property was selected to be cut. About 40 acres were clear cut and 50 acres were select cut. This left a TON of random logs and brush laying all over our property.

What is now what we call the South Food Plot, or Laura's Field, used to be a big giant muddy open area. My father spent countless hours putting a food plot in when I was a kid. He, and his hunting buddies, also put in a North Food Plot. Anyhow, a few years later, after a TON of sapplings created the PERFECT bedding area for whitetail on our property, I thought it would be AWESOME to use some of the downed random rotting logs to build a ground blind for bow-hunting right on the edge of this field. The giant attraction to this mindset was that I would be using logs already almost in the position I wanted them to be in. I just had to do some minor adjusting here and there, clear out some raspberries and scratch all the leaves and annoying noisy plants out of my "floor" so it was just dirt (and therefore silent) then I would construct a makeshift window to shoot through. I would hardly disturb the natural layout of what was already there! I felt like such a hunting NINJA!

I typically like hunting from a hanging tree stand. I can hear and see to the best of my ability. When this story took place I thought it would be a good idea to try hunting from a different position to give me a broader knowledge of hunting techniques, plus shooting from the ground makes my target slightly larger and I don't have to worry about the angle of my shot from a tree. How could this logic possibly go wrong?

I had the perfect doe enter the field from the south. My ground blind was to the east of the field. This beautiful deer was clearly going to give me the perfect broadside shot as soon as she made her way a little further in. I got ready.

As she came further into the field I realized she was hugging the East side of the field rather tightly. I'm talking yards in the single digits here. She would not move out. Alright, compensate, girl. 

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I'm sorry, I don't care how professional of a hunter you are, there is just no compensating when your deer STICKS HER HEAD IN THE WINDOW OF YOUR GROUND BLIND.



Let me repeat that: She stuck her head INTO THE WINDOW of my ground blind. Really?! Nothing as a hunter prepares you for THAT situation. I froze. More out of pure shock rather than "Oh, don't move so she can't see you." Because I was TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY BUSTED.


I watched in complete disbelief as she literally high-tailed her pretty delicious butt out of my field. 

On the bright side, apparently I did a great job of eliminating my human scent...



It was YEARS before I hunted another ground blind. But inevitable in retrospect.


About 2 years ago I met a young gentleman that wanted to get involved in bow-hunting. He had no prior hunting experience and didn't even own a bow. Under Wisconsin's DNR Hunting Mentor Program-a non-hunter-educated person may hunt with someone that does posses a hunter education certificate if only ONE weapon is present during the hunt. (amongst other several other regulations)

Being a GIANT promoter of passing down the love for hunting/fishing/outdoors to people who are not otherwise acclimated to to what I am so passionate about, I WANTED to teach and educate this man and be his hunting mentor. I wanted to show him that hunting is something to be respected and preserved. I also wanted to teach him objectively so that in the end, it was HIS decision to continue hunting and not because of anything I pressured him to do.

Long story short. He aquired a bow and other needed equipment. I educated him in proper technique and he spent hours shooting under my instruction as well as preparing for an actual hunt. Zero hour approached. I was confident he could competently and ethically kill a whitetail.

A few days before his hunt, we went to his aunt's property to scope out potential hunting areas. I offered him the use of my tree stands, but in the end I found this AWESOME giant downed maple that had a BIG split trunk with heavy deer trails about 20 yards to either side of it. This was about 30 yards in the woods from the edge of a cornfield. We cleared out the floor between the big trunks to make for silent movement. And otherwise prepared it for the hunt.

Well even though this was a GREAT spot to sit and catch deer just before they got to the cornfield (we saw a NICE 6 pointer out of range), the gorgeous does that came in entered within 6 yards of our "blind." They did not enter whatsoever on either of the heavily used trails that were apparent in that area. My mentee looked at me, and I silently mouthed "try, but I think you're screwed." He tried. We were indeed screwed. 

This is hunting. Some tactics work, some fail. Others crash and burn to such a degree that they leave you wondering why you even tried it in the first place. No matter however, I think half the fun of hunting is trying new things and learning what works and what doesn't.


 All was not lost! This story has a happy ending! My mentee harvested a beautiful doe the following day after we moved into the branches of the downed tree. I field dressed his deer to show him how it's done, and he dragged it out.

 I have since learned he is getting his hunter education certificate completely of his own accord and 2012 will be his first season bow-hunting independently.

Laura VS. the bottle of doe urine...

 Here in Wisconsin, during deer-bow season, many people head out into the woods to try to harvest a nice plump deer for their freezer. I am no different. My dad and I make a special trip up north and spend several days to a few weeks trying fulfill this duty.

About 2 years ago, I made a temporary tree stand overlooking a well-worn road on our property. I thought this was the PERFECT site given the amount of deer tracks and the nearby bedding area. I wanted to lay a scent trail in hopes of luring a decent buck into my bow-range.

The scent I chose was "Doe in Estrus." This is doe urine collected from a doe that is ready to be bred. Whitetail deer breed once a year during what is called "The Rut." This typically happens mid-to late fall/early winter. The doe will "cycle" and special hormones are released indicating her readiness to breed. Her urine contains pheromones and hormones that will attract a buck to come and "breed" her. You know what I'm talking about.

*Bow chicka wow wow*

ANYWAYS, you can hang scent pads (or any absorbent material) on bushes to create a trail, use a contraption that causes the scent to drip at certain times of the day, or go old school and drag your scent-of-choice through the woods to create your trail. No matter which method you use, the NUMBER ONE thing you need to remember is to keep your grubby human scent off of ALL OF IT. Deer have an amazing sense of smell and if they get one whiff of YOUR scent-you're SCREWED.

I chose the old school method of making my own drag. I've had luck with this in the past. I use disposable gloves and string that have been kept in a scentless bag. What do I use to dump my doe pee on? A TAMPON. Yes, you're good old average tampon that every female has had experience with. Cringing yet guys? Let me explain-They are freakin' perfect! They're cheap, sterile, come in their own individual scentless packaging, and are incredibly absorbent! I couldn't ask for a better drag tool!

I was using a brand new FRESH bottle of Doe urine. I got up before sunrise and dressed for my morning hunt. I put on my scentless clothing and made sure I doused my hair/skin and boots in human scent killer. I then added an earth cover scent as my perfume. Feeling confident about my plan of attack I hiked to my spot of choice, dropped my equipment, and readied my materials for my drag. I donned my gloves, grabbed my tampon (tied to the string I brought along of course) and set off with my treasured bottle of doe urine.

While hiking to the spot I wanted to start my trail, I uncapped my bottle. Being an early mid-fall morning in Wisconsin, it was pretty chilly and there was a bit of fog making it hard to see. (Not to mention pitch black due to the early hour) While trying to hike to the place I wanted to start my trail I attempted to push the tampon into the bottle of scent- a.k.a PEE. I have found that this method works the best while using tampons and various kinds of scent attractant for deer.

Problem was, the tampon didn't want to go into the neck of the bottle. It was too fat. Being somewhat sleep deprived (as I am not a morning person) and concentrating too much on where I walking, I just decided to shove harder-no big deal. More force solves ALL problems right?


WRONG!


As I was hiking and simultaneously trying to force the tampon into the bottle of doe urine, my wrist bent which sent the bottle of doe pee FLYING.


FLYING INTO MY FACE.


My face and most of my upper clothing was now DRENCHED in doe urine. Not only doe urine, but DOE IN ESTRUS urine!

I stood frozen. In complete shock. I am literally dripping deer pee off of my face. I tried to wipe my eyes to clear the nasty fluid from them, but it just made them burn. OH MY GOD. WHAT DID I JUST DO?!  During this ordeal I kept seeing the video in my head about the guy who decided to douse himself in deer scent and this is what happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWxIYX-CHFQ

I said to myself: "I am so @#*!&%!"

With my eyes burning, I HAD to do something. I managed to find an iced over puddle and after breaking the ice off I washed my eyes and face as best as I could. While being cleaned up minimally enough to function (and potentially spreading my human scent over part of my hunting area)  I HAULED ASS to my tree stand.

I don't think I have EVER climbed my tree stand faster than that morning. Once I was safely in my tree I reflected on what just happened.

I had deer pee all over my face! Not only was it on my face, it was in my eyes, nose, and lips. Pretty sure at some point it ended up IN MY MOUTH. This was an EPIC FAIL. All of my scouting/planning was for nothing. No longer was I the cool, clever, and confident deer hunter I was when I left for the morning. I became the TARGET.


Perhaps I was overreacting. But when you can only see 5 ft in front of you and you are covered in prime whitetail buck attractant- not gonna lie-it makes you freak out a bit. But I made it to my tree safely! =) 

Needless to say, the only deer I saw that morning was a spike buck I let walk.