I wished that you would have discussed location more.
you mentioned fishing the down stream side of an island, and some weed lines. but you didn’t mention depth or what ever. I would have thought that you would be fishing much deeper holes say like zero to 20 foot of water, but it didn’t look like you where fishing very deep at all.
are you just fishing like very small current breaks or a 50 foot section of a current break?
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James,
Thanks for your respose! I’ld like to investigate the areas around sartell or brainered. I quess basically where I could fish from my boat.
Here’s a list of DNR maps that cover all the pools on the Upper Miss with all the available boat launches. Pick your area of interest and that map will show you what is available.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/canoeing/mississippiriver/index.html
I hope that helps. I’ve used those maps myself and have found them to be very useful.
I don’t have class on Friday’s so I headed down to my aunt and uncle’s farm early to check a few stands and do a little last minute scouting. Between school, work, and fall fishing, I hadn’t been to the farm in a few months.
Driving down looking at all the corn still in the fields and watching the thermometer climb, I had doubts about the deer activity in the woods. Upon arrival at the farm, I saw that they hadn’t been able to start picking the corn yet because of the 7 inches of rain they got in October.
I checked a few stands then decided to sit and scout in a stand that has great visibility down a wood line along a field edge. Normally I would glass this field from afar, but this year the corn was planted up to the woods instead of alfalfa.
I risked possibly spooking the deer when I didn’t have a gun in my hands, but I wanted to see if deer were entering the field during shooting hours. My weekend plans would be based on what I saw. I didn’t see any deer enter the field that evening so I switched my plans.
On opening morning I elected to climb to a narrow CRP topped ridge that is flanked by two ravines. In years past, deer would funnel out of the corn on top of the main ridge through this field during the first hour of light and bed on the steep wooded/brushy sides of the ridge.
Five minutes into legal shooting time I see a shadow at the end of the field. In my binoculars, I see that is a large 160’s class ten. It looked like the brother of a deer I shot two years ago, but with more mass. Following that deer is much smaller buck. Both slowly work there way down the field towards me. At about a hundred yards out the big buck stops while the little one passed him and continued towards me. I don’t think he saw me but his big buck sense kicked in and he slowly exited the field into a draw that led to the valley below. My gun easily had the range for the shot, but shooting offhand, with open sights in the low light, I opted to pass on the shot. Would I regret it?
Between 7 and 10, I saw three more bucks and a doe and two fawns briefly cross the field from the ravine to ravine. I had intended to take at least one doe this weekend, but passed on this doe because the temp was going to climb into the 70s and I didn’t want to deal with hauling the deer straight to the butcher and missing out on opening day action.
Normally I hunt through the day, but with the high temps and no else hunting the farm to push the deer around I elected to still hunt back to the house and have some lunch. I snuck within 15 yards of a button buck browsing on acorns. This deer definitely didn’t have the buck sense of his older brother on top of the hill.
I set up around 2 on the same field that I sat that morning. This time I picked a stand that was a chip shot from the trail the big buck disappeared down that morning. I sat in the tree reading financial statements for an MBA class until dark. The deer movement was definitely slower. I saw one basket 8 and about twenty turkeys.
The next morning I sat in the same stand trying to intercept the big buck. I saw two more small bucks before 7:30 then things shut down.
Time for a change in tactics. I would have to get closer to the action and away from the field edges. The deer weren’t moving much during the day so I would have to get closer to their bedding area if I was going to intercept them. I moved over a couple ridges and slipped down into a ravine. I didn’t have a stand in this ravine so a sat on a log a hundred yards up and across the ravine from a bunch of cedars that the deer bed in.
Twice throughout the afternoon I heard a bunch of grunting and rustling in the thick brush but I could never see anything. At one point I dozed off and woke to see a small eight heading into the cedars. The afternoon was wearing on.
I had been sitting there for 4 1/2 hours and was second guessing myself, when the ravine was overtaken by shadows with the setting sun. Minutes after the sun left the ravine I heard steady footsteps.
At first I couldn’t see anything, but eventual I picked out a mature buck working his way up the opposite side of the ravine. When he was parallel to me I grunted to try to bring him closer. He stopped and looked but then kept walking. I took the forty yard shot with my open sight Winchester model 1300. The deer wheeled around and ran twenty yards back from where he came and stopped. He was looking up hill the other direction like he didn’t know where the shot came from. I started thinking that I missed him so I took aim again. Before I could pull the trigger, he tipped over out of my sight.
I scurried down the ravine and back up the other side. On my way to the buck, I intercepted a blood trail that anyone could follow. Double lunged him. Up ahead I saw my prize.
I said my thanks and took a couple quick field pics before it got dark. Sorry about the tongue.
His antlers aren’t the biggest, but he was definitely a brute. Field dressing him and hauling him out of that ravine took two hours. I almost considered quartering him. After hauling him only fifty vertical feet, I went to my uncle to see if he had a winch. Luckily the neighbor did. The neighbor came over and with the entire winch cable and 200 ft of rope and a 40 feet of more manual dragging we were able to haul him up to a dug road. When I finally loaded him on my truck I thought my backs was going to break. When I look at him on the wall I will always remember listening to the coyotes howling echoing through the hills while I grunted and groaned for every inch as I muscled him up the hill.
I hosed him down at the farm and drove him to town to register him and pick up a few bags of ice. At 8 PM it was still 65 degrees.
The next morning I drove him to the dug road that I shot him near and snapped a few more self timer pics.
Great buck, great story, and great pictures thanks for sharing looks like you put quite a bit of time in your report 
Great Read with a super nice buck! 
Congratulations on a nice buck, great story as well.
Congrats. Loved the story. I hunted the bluff country for 20 years so your story was really vivid to me. T hanks 
Great story,Great pics and awesome buck! Congrats! 
Congrats. You have shot great bucks the last two years, you are on a roll.
DT
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Great story,Great pics and awesome buck! Congrats!
x2!!! Congratulation!!
awesome story and great pictures. congrats man! QDM once again.
umichjesse Another year.. another BBD 
Nice job 
Awesome great job and story
Nice buck and great read
Good story ~ Great deer! 
Great job way 2 stick with it buy your self!!!!
Thanks everyone, it was a great hunt that I will remember. I look forward to hunting some does next week. Here are some pics that I modified on photobook.
Awesome Job what a dandy great read thanks for sharing your story . He looks pretty heavy bodied deer
Great deer, good story to boot!
Eric
Great Buck + Great Story.
Way to stick it out.
Great story! Thanks for sharing, Congrats!
Great story and deer
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umichjesse
I was thinking the same thing.
NICE job! Thanks for the story!
Sweet story and dandy buck, Jesse! Way to mix up the hunt and go where the deer are.
Hard work becomes alot easier for a great buck like that! Congrats!
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You can see by the next day in the daylight pics that I was all smiles. The I had after I got him on the back of my truck never tasted better.
I invited some friends down for the last three days of the season. We hunted hard all three days and as luck would have it we got zero. We had 8 tags to fill on does and mature bucks. Between 4 people and and three days of hunting, this is unheard of on our farm. Not one of us had a shot at a doe that wasn’t being pushed by a buck. I would have shot those does but my friends were hoping a big boy was behind each one. We each saw many small bucks but of course I was the only one to have a mature buck in range because I had already shot my buck for the year.
I guess that is why they call it hunting and not grocery shopping. At least I will get plenty of meat off the big boy I shot, but I was looking forward to some tender does. I may have to buy a muzzleloader and give late season a try.
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