Well thanksgiving found me in the deer stand in Gentry County Missouri. I elected to skip out of the family festivities and spend five days seeing if i could put the hammer down on a missouri whitetail.
Things were a little tough when we got down there. The rifle season had just closed, so the deer were acting very skittish. We had permission to hunt a farm that wasn’t rifle hunted at all, so we were banking on that being our little gem.
First evening out was elected to turkeys, does and fawns. Driving out of the property driveway that night we had one real nice 130″-140″ buck cross the driveway in front of us chasing a doe 
Anyways hunted a different farm, and checked out some public land on Turkey day. My buddy and i did have two different bucks grunting back at us but darkness proved to be our problem maker.
Friday went back to the farm we started on, and ran into more problems. The ever terrible combine was our downfall. The field the farmer had was probably 50 acres and he had something like a six row head on the combine and was not making any progress on that field. Now ive hunted at times around farm equipment and not had deer worried at all, but for whatever reason the deer did not like the equipment by us. All the does and fawns we saw back in the woods were extremely spooky and very nervous even though the combine and tractors were a quarter mile or more away.
Saturday was excellent with new snow falling and no combine running. Turkeys turkeys everwhere for me, yet i didn’t want to shoot because they came around prime time. My buddy had a decent evening seeing 12 deer including 5 different bucks, and electing to pass on a nice eight and seven.
Sunday morning we had 3.5″ of fluff on the ground. By this time i was getting kinda antsy in that we had been hunting hard, but nothing to show for it. Well with all the turkeys around i figured maybe it was time to see what my rage can do to one. So partway through the morning i put the stalk on one and was able to get within 25 yards and put the 
on one. The skunk was held off for another trip 
The drive home was fairly uneventful with the roads through Iowa kinda sketchy.
All in all a great trip, and the potential is down there for some real giants. The Missouri DNR is excellent in my opinion their public hunting areas all have food sources (food plots) thier are antler restrictions in the areas we hunted, and i think they are managing a great resource very well.
Needless to say next fall come October i think im heading down there for some early season bean field hunts. My buddy that i went with shot one that was 137″ the first day down there in Oct, and their are pics of some other big boys running around.
December 4, 2008 at 5:11 pm
#200087
Even though you guys didn’t connect it sounded like you were pleased with your hunt. And congrats on your turkey! 