I didn’t intend to but I dozed off for a bit. A few minutes ago I woke up I opened up the eye balls. Surprise! A Doe was 10 yards away and was not interested in me at all. My iPhone was laying on my lap and I kept watch on the Doe as I quietly slid my hand down to the  phone and turned it on.

This Doe didn’t even look at me as she casually glanced around the yard. Then the Doe walked over by me. I had some water set out next to the porch for my Mouser cat named ‘Little Johnson.’

I managed one more picture (Above) just before she scarfed down the Cat’s water. Yep! There are some Cool things about living in the Deer Woods.

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Back then, hunting with a bow or a gun was “bucks only.” Does, Fawns and Spikes were not legal harvests. Baiting was illegal. Seasons were short, 2 to 4 weeks, tops. But, the #1 hindrance to learning was there was very limited information on bowhunting; no magazines for bowhunters, no books, no newsletters and the internet was many years away.

Honestly, the way most people learned about deer or bowhunting was to talk to people in archery clubs as well as to other hunters while on a hunt. However, my personal learning method included hunting more days than anyone else, hunting from the ground and from trees, and walking the woods throughly, looking for deer trails and tracks and deer. There were no portable treestands yet so I either sat on a limb or nailed a board to sit on in a tree.

Looking back, one of the major things that I learned was how and where to find Bucks. Locating where Does bedded of traveled was easy. Locating bucks was hard.

Now let’s jump ahead to the late 80’s. As I said previously, I had decided to hunt for the entire deer season, 3 months solid. One month in, I knew that I had done the right thing, this was something significant in terms of my ‘deerhunting with a bow life.’ I could clearly see how little I had actually learned in my decades of bowhunting deer, does and bucks.

Two months later, in addition to learning even more, my view of what happened during the rut and peak rut was totally changed, yes totally, and way for the better.

Three months later something happened that I had never heard of, yet, that opened up an entirely new opportunity to bowhunt bucks.

So, now let’s talk more about the Second Rut and why I think it is such a big deal for a bowhunter.

CONTINUED… 

Back To Part #1: When Bowhunting Changed My Life!