Illinois Muzzleload Hunt
Dec. 2nd thru 5th , 2010
Sunday December 5th
Temp: Max Temperature 25 °F, Min Temperature 11 °F
Wind: 9 mph (North West) gust to 23
Snow: .3” overnight
Overcast
pressure: 30.41
The Last Morning!
Just after shooting light I was sitting down when I glanced over my right shoulder and caught sight of a chase coming down the CPR. I stood as quickly as I could, staying as close to the tree as possible. I started swinging on the doe as she came out from behind my tree. A small buck was chasing her and turned out to be the tight 8. At 80yds out I dropped the hammer on the doe and she went down. It looked like at hit to the ham and when I got down to have a look that is exactly what I found. The “Shockwave” bullet had broken her right femur. It was not text book but I had a deer down.
Right after I shot the doe I realized there was another deer coming behind on the race but he was not a shooter. It was just the half rack and at that point the two bucks split up. About an hour later the tight 8 came back down bottom from the sanctuary with a 4pt following him. They ended up smelling me and went off to the east to the breaks on the hill.
On the way out I was slipping along the edge of the corn field at the golden oaks when I jumped three small antlerless deer. They ran down the edge of the woods and I could see they were angling to enter the field. I just kept walking and readied the rifle. The deer entered the field single file quartering away at about 100yds. I thought I’d just go ahead and dump the middle deer. With all confidence, I swung on the deer and fired. All three deer just kept loping along and exited the other side of the field some 400 yds away. A clean miss, not even a flinch. All I could do was just watch in disbelief. I just can’t seem to get in front of them far enough with the muzzleloader.
I pressed on and headed back to the truck to get the pack so I could retrieve the doe I had killed in the CRP.
I had the doe skinned, quartered and in the pack in about 20 minutes. Rick drove the pickup to the top of the field and cut the pack job down to a manageable 150yds.
Rick had taken a stand at the “Knob” but saw zero deer from the stand. He did jump three on the way out and that wrapped up the mornings hunt.
The Last Stand!
The PM hunt found me back at the kill zone stand hoping the visibility would pay off.
About 4:00 PM. I was glassing across to the neighbors hillside and spotted a group of bucks moving down the hill to come into the field. One was a decent shooter. There was another possible, the half rack and 2 smaller bucks. They moved east down the edge of the field to feed in a cut bean field across the dike. I only had one deer enter our corn field and my muzzleloader hunt was over.
Rick hunted the wood lot and saw 8 does but neglected to shoot one as he just has a difficult time bringing himself to shoot a doe even though it’s necessary. The herd is just to large and we have to take out as many as possibly or the farmer will bring someone in during the summer with permits to do it for us. They all but wiped out the corn last year as it was so wet they could not get it harvested until January.
The big bucks were pretty elusive this year and we had much fewer sightings than last year. We caught a few shooters on trail camera and saw a few nice bucks but all in all it was a tough year. We have tentatively planned a cull trip for the week between Christmas and New Years, depending on the weather but it will be a real long shot to see a shooter that time of year as we will not have a good food source this year.
There’s always next year!
Here's a few more trail camera pictures from this hunt:
Best of hunts,
Larry S.
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