Opening Day Sh&t show summary. This year I decided to expand my portfolio of state land knowledge. The good.....my nice bow buck. The bad.....opening day of gun. I don’t want to get too specific on the whereabouts of this parcel but I will say it sounds like “Royce Hill” near “Branklinville”. When I did a brief scouting mission on the property I was not overly impressed with the deer sign but there is QDMA land on the southern border so to quote the movie Dumb and Dumber, “so you are saying I have a chance”. The lack of escape cover had me concerned but there is a small block of thick near the parking lot. So I hatched a plan, zig when I usually zag, ie. go short instead of my usual deep trek. Mind you there were zero cars when I went during bow season scouting mission...,.opening day we pull in and there are already 11 cars in the lot. My brother and I shrug our shoulders and say f-it we don’t have many options at this point. My brother goes deep and I go into my climber overlooking the thick. Up on the ridge I can see headlamps from hunters every 200 yards (scary)- looked like an airplane runway! Light comes and I actually have a doe come by. Ha! my master plan is working! It was mostly down hill from there. I could smell guys smoking, talking on the way to their spots, talking on cell phones on their way to spots, road hunters driving up and down the road all day. I had one dude set up fifty yards from the road, break out a rattling bag and proceed to make the worst sounding deer fight in the annals of deer hunting history. After the historic deer rattling sequences resulted in no deer seen, the hunter left the woods after 30 minutes and drove off. I decided my master plan sucked and got down out of the tree, placed my climber in the car and ducked into the thicket for plan B. Rubs, scrapes and deer poop told me I was in a bedroom at least. Still hunting carefully into the thicket I find a spot to sit out the rest of the day. After an hour I spot movement. Head down and birddogging so I figure has to be a buck. I can’t see the head and the deer is moving away out of range. I give the deer a Hail Mary grunt and snort wheeze. The deer locks into my direction and I am able to get the scope on ......her (crap). This is a strange finding a doe by herself I thought. Not sure if she she got separated from the group by hunters walking in or chasing bucks but she clearly was lonely. She walked right over to the strange orange grunting snort wheezing deer to within 15 yards and settled in. She knew I was not a deer but she hung out for a good two hours. I was hoping she would attract a buck but alas no. The capper was at 4:00 witching hour a truck pulls up and a guy comes walking into the thicket still hunting on what are now cornflake leaves. I grab my pack in a huff and say out loud “that’s it”! and walk off like a brat. When I got to my car I found out the car doing burnouts in the parking lot had done so to spray mud all over everyone’s cars. Such is the life if you covet the challenge of hunting state land. Back at it on a new to me block this weekend.
