Weirdest Early ML Season

[dannoboone]

Iowa DNR put the season roughly a week later than usual. This
was pleasing when first announced. We may have been able to
get in on a little bit of the rut.

This past month has been very dry, with NE Iowa getting just
a couple of sprinkles. The air itself has been unusually dry for
this part of the country. The temps have been unseasonally
warm. Result......even in the morning, walking on the leaves
sounds like walking on Post Toasties BEFORE adding the milk!

The moon has been very bright with barely a cloud in the sky
after sundown to dawn.

You can about guess the result...no moving deer until after
dark, even though most of the crops are out. "Still hunting" has
been a joke. Might as well carry an air horn and blast it while
crunching through the leaves.

So I tried the tree stand a couple of afternoons. Fortunately,
the second afternoon, there was high winds and the crunches
didn't seem to be scaring everything off. After about an hour
there was movement only 40 yards in front of me in a brush
pile. Yes, it was a deer. How could he have NOT heard me
and/or made me out as I was climbing the ladder stand? He
walked straight away and out of sight in the thick brush, but
I could see the direction he had taken to the right. He was
small, but in light of the hunting conditions, decided to take
him, if possible.

He cleared the brush about 60 yards away. The 10MLII roared,
and the 150gr RedHot/Barnes over the 5/N110 65/N120 .45 load,
smashed through the near shoulder and out the far rib cage.
It actually, truly, honestly rolled him. Never did anything like
that before except with a rabbit and a close shot from the
20ga. He was on his back in a perfect position to start field
dressing...sweet!

Not really what I would have been after had it been weather
more conducive to deer hunting, but he'll be good eating:

[olegburn]

Congrats on the harvest and may it not be the last this season!
What kind of equipment you driving?
You must get lot of attention while driving ;D ;D
As far as deer not catching you that close-it happen to me few times.
Sometime deer simply sleep,IMO.
One time I climbed treestand,set-up and stuff with buck bedded down 30 yards from me.
I watched him for minute or so and he was sleeping!
But other times they seem to have a sixth sense of some sort...

[cfvickers]

tHOSE RED HOTS have done that for me several times. Funny, if you shoot one into a dirt pile they will not expand at all! I have reused a couple just to see if they were still accurate and they were. Did not reuse on on a deer though. But on deer they open and kill dead.

[DBinNY]

Good job! Looks like nice, long backstraps!

[lwh723]

At least you got something. I've given up on Iowa's early MZ season. This is the third year in a row the weather trashed the season. I spent the last two early MZ's hunting very hard and never saw anything bigger than a basket. (I even got in on a trip to some really, really prime land in SE Iowa last year.) I'm going late MZ this year instead.

[dannoboone]

Best of luck to you, lwh. It can be a real toss-up which season is
good or bad. Last year, I missed out on the early tags, so went
2d season. There have been years when the temps were around
"O" during the shotgun seasons, and get back into the 30's for
2d ML season. Not so last year. I got a doe on the last day of the
season when the temp was a balmy 12 degrees, and that was an
actual improvement over the days prior.

First year I had the 10MLII, first season was absolutely perfect
and her first blood was a nice 8-pointer. Ya just never know.

[lwh723]

Thanks. I'm actually hoping for bitter cold and snow for the late season since that concentrates the deer on food and makes the big boys a little more likely to come out in daylight.

I filled two bow tags in the late season last year. It was a bit chilly, but I managed. My wife thought I was crazy. This year I'm going to get those bow tags filled earlier. Late season is a real good opportunity for my 45 PCNR to shine on long shots.

[boarhog]

Olegburn,
I think you are right about deer sleeping. A few years ago, I had the same old doe bed down within 10-30 yards of my stand. She did this on several different days, over a bit more than a month. Must have been something she liked about that spot. Anyway, one warm mid morning, I watched her crawl under her favorite brush pile right next to the stand. For more than an hour, she had her head up, chewing her cud and twisting her ears around like a radar antenna. I sort of forgot about her, and was primarily looking toward a scrape line on the other side of the stand. About an hour later, I heard a loud noise coming from the doe's direction. At first, I thought she was grunting, but when I looked around, I realized that her head was down and she was snoring!! She snored like that for about 30 minutes, until her two fawns, that I didn't know were there, walked up to her. I wish I'd had a video camera to record that old doe!
Boarhog