SYC Deer Hunt 2011

Last weekend the SYC Deer Hunt was held in NW Iowa, and I was fortunate to be able to participate as a guide for one of the hunters. The weekend was full of excitement as 28 hunters harvested a total of 23 deer. Due to the passing of my friend Greg Somers the week before as I mentioned in my last post, I was paired up with a different co-guide for this hunt. This year Danny Dodge of Spencer, Iowa and I were assigned to guide for a young man named Logan Slay. Here we are before the first morning's hunt getting ready to go out into the field. (From left to right: Terri Slay (Logan's Dad), Logan Slay, Danny Dodge, and myself)

The first morning in the stand turned out to be a good one. We saw a total of 7 deer, all does and fawns, and Logan was able to harvest a nice doe. This was Logan's first deer, and it was great that he and his dad were able to share the moment together.

Another successful hunter this year was Zach Olson from Minnesota. I had the privelege of guiding for Zach the last couple years and he bagged one doe the first year he hunted with me. This year he was being guided by my friend Marc Gustafson, and Zach shot two deer - a 7-point buck and a doe!

The biggest buck of the weekend was shot by a young man named Graham who bagged this really nice 10-point!

Overall, lots of good memories were made and the weekend was exciting for everyone involved. A speaker delivered a powerful message of how God changed his life, and lives are constantly being changed by the work of this ministry. I'm thankful for the opportunity I have to participate and for the wonderful friends I have met through SYC.

"Don't Leave Yet!" - Josh Nelson's Buck

On Tuesday evening of this week, my phone alerted me to a new email in my inbox. I normally don't get many emails in the evening so I grabbed my phone to take a look at the message. It was an email from my friend Josh Nelson in Iowa. That grabbed my attention, as I knew that more than likely meant either: A)new trail camera pictures, or B)a picture of a deer he had taken with his bow.

This time it was the latter, as I opened the email to find this picture of Josh with a very nice Iowa whitetail that he had harvested earlier in the evening.

There wasn't any text or details with the picture so I couldn't wait to congratulate Josh and find out the story on how he was able to get within bow range of this buck. So I quickly shot a congratulatory email back and asked for the lowdown.

Josh was bowhunting from a treestand and had been in the stand for a couple hours on a very pleasant Northwest Iowa evening. The temperature was around 55 degrees, which is unseasonably warm for this time of year. During his sit in the stand he had tried rattling and using a grunt call, but to no avail. He hadn't seen any deer all evening (other than a doe he spooked as he was walking in to climb into his stand). So just as last light was fading, Josh packed up his backpack, took his arrow off the bow and put it back in the quiver, and was ready to climb down out of his stand.

That's when he saw this buck walking directly toward him. So he takes his backpack off, takes the arrow out of the quiver and gets it nocked, leaves his quiver on the bow (which he had never shot that way before), and he draws back on the deer. The buck had closed the distance to 25 yards and had turned broadside. Josh loosed an arrow and it found it's fatal mark.

He knew darkness was rapidly approaching and that he'd better get some assistance in tracking the deer, so Josh contacted his friend Mark Tielbur (who also happens to be a friend of mine) for some help in locating the buck. A few hours later they were back at the house with Josh's buck. Josh told me this is his biggest buck to date, as he has been able to harvest a bigger deer each year since he started hunting.

It looks like a really nice buck to me and one you should definitely be proud of Josh! Congratulations on taking him with your bow! I'm glad you didn't decide to leave your stand a few seconds earlier!

Post-Season Trophies

I got an email today from my good friend Marc Gustafson in Iowa with some pictures that I have to share. Marc has already been out looking for shed antlers, and judging from the looks of things, he is doing pretty well!


Here is what Marc had to say in the email:
"It has been tough-going shed hunting as I believe most of the antlers were shed between snow storms, and a good portion of them are buried under the snow. I have found most of them in the deer beds and a few in the standing corn. We had snow again last night, as it just keeps coming, which makes it hard to find the ones dropped not long ago. The matched set up close in the pictures measured around 135 inches and will be a dandy if he makes it through the winter."

I have only found three shed antlers in my life, so after seeing these pictures I wanted to pick Marc's brain and get his thoughts on shed hunting and see if he had some tips and techniques to use when looking for shed antlers.

Marc says his favorite spots to look for sheds is first the bedding areas, then trails leading to and from feeding areas, and then the feeding areas themselves. He says the harsh winter in Iowa this year has really caused the deer to congregate around food plots, and he hopes to find quite a few sheds around those feeding areas once some warmer weather arrives to melt some of the snow.

I also asked Marc how many antlers he will generally find in a year, and what was the biggest matched pair he has ever found. He said the matched set in the picture is the largest pair he has found to date and that he averages about 45 antlers a year. But this year he hopes to find 50 or 60 with the deer spending so much time around the food plots. He estimates that over 200 deer are wintering on one particular property he hunts, which makes shed hunting pretty good when there are that many deer congregated in an area that encompasses a couple hundred acres.

Maybe that is why I have so much trouble finding them! It sure makes it difficult when you are searching a 600-acre piece of property that might hold 50 or 60 deer, of which probably only about 15 are bucks. Also, the deer here in Texas usually don't start dropping their antlers until mid-March, after the vegetation begins to green up and grow over what antlers might be on the ground making them less visible. But regardless, I still plan to get out there and look. After all, you can't find any while sitting on the couch!

Thanks for the pictures and the information, Marc. That shed hunting sure looks like a lot of fun! I wish I could spend a weekend up there with you looking for them. Congratulations on finding all those trophies - looks like you have enough to make one heck of a chandelier!