Opening Day was here and gone, nary a deer was even sawn

  I know it's a horrible title but I've been very busy lately and that's the best I could come up with. Yes Opening Day, what a great happening, like Xmas morn to most hunters. There's electricity in the air and hopefully in your camp, the aura of getting away and the magic of bagging the biggest buck in the world. All these feelings make the experience addictive and keep hunters like me coming back for more.




  This year the opener fell on a Monday which is bad for most that can't get away from work. It put a little damper on our camp, we lost 5 hunters to the constraints of the working stiffs. To their credit they did make it up on Friday night for 2 nights of camaraderie and remembering hunts gone by. This is the stuff hunting is made of, the exchange of information and experiences to try to out wit the elusive whitetail. Now more than any other time I've been hunting everyone in our group needs help. We hunt in the DMZ, that's the Deer Minimalized Zone. Baiting is outlawed, many does have been taken with extra permits and now you can't harvest a buck unless it has more points on one side than I've seen in 5 years. We hunt state land and it isn't like anything you see on the outdoor shows, but we have a great time.



  A highlight of the hunt is usually the Michigan football game and this year was no exception. The camp doesn't have cable so we try to find the game on a local establishment. This year it was at a local club that one of our hunters just joined. The Wolverines won and the club member only got 2 demerits in the process. Loud cheering is against one of their rules. The biggest project this year was moving Uncle Jerry's outhouse about 2 miles to the camp. It's in good shape and will be appreciated for many years to come.



  The biggest problem with losing so many hunters was the heaters couldn't keep up with the temps outside due to the loss of body heat. It got pretty cold at night and frost covered most of the leaves. Plus with only the 4 of us the deer weren't pushed to move around causing more sightings. There may be others in the area illegally baiting drawing the deer away from us but with only 2 or 3 days hunting every year we don't know for sure. All we can be sure of is that the numbers of deer sighted has dropped off drastically over the last few years. It's probably a number of problems that are hard to pin down but in over 30 man hours of hunting we saw 3 doe and 1 tail. So there's very low interest in missing work or buying a license which will hurt hunts in the future.



If you had some success this year send in your pics so I can post on my slideshow.



Get out Downriver....