re: Looking ahead to next season - Lessons Learned

I had a horrible season. I honestly can say I spent more time in the woods this season than every before….. and saw exactly 4 deer. No shooters. Hunting public land has become a pain in the arse in SELA. The weather this year didn’t help. Saw a ton of deer moving at midnight every week. But dead in the morning. Made some evening hunts early and saw the deer I saw, but as soon as it got to November the traffic on the land had everything bedded down.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t have the time to invest in a lease, but I don’t have the time to travel around looking for better options on public. I love to hunt, and love my bow. Saddle hunting has opened up a whole new experience for me and made mobility so much easier.

This year is going to suck. I’ll be working thru the fall and doubt I get to do much if any hunting. But I guess we’ll see.

On the flip side, waterfowl was great. Did pretty good for teal season, and bagged my first Goose. That’s become my thing with my FiL, and it’s pretty awesome.

Hunt in the marsh in St Charles Parish.

Saw a ton of does. Chose not to shoot any. Saw one solid 8 pt. Missed him at 200 yds. Next year will try to get into the cypress swamp, rather than staying in marsh.

Lesson learned- never let a buck walk the first day of your hunt, that you would shoot on the last day.

Why would you shoot it the last day. Seems if you decided that he could use another year, then that would stand throughout.

This is my first year hunting in Louisiana (previously lived and hunted in Ohio). I hunted public land and saw more deer, including bucks, this season than I did any other season. I saw several shooter bucks on multiple occasions and took my first buck this year.

But I need to figure out the late season patterns. I’m pretty sure I have early season and the rut patterns down in numerous areas by me, but I need to figure out the January movement. More time in the woods will do that for me.

I also learned that I need to be more selective on who I hunt with. Nothing worse than having the person you went with walk through your area 2 hours after getting there (because they didn’t see anything) or walk through your area 30 minutes before sunset to leave. I know the areas better now so I’ll just go alone.

Get a low temp, high CRI light for blood trailing. Several times this year folks lost blood and I was able to pick it back up and find deer with my lights. Now I can’t believe I ever trailed deer with those really blue LED lights, it’s incredible the difference when I have my old lights and new ones next to each other.

Grandbabies and weddings in the middle of the season kept me from spending as much time as I’d like. Thought I’d raised my two sons better than that. Still saw the most deer I’ve seen in over a decade.

Going to move some cameras around to scout some new areas, get off the food plots and deeper into the woods. Have shot bucks the last weekend of the season in back to back years, but they were both run ragged from chasing tail and lacking in the vittles department. Going to shoot at least one early season doe to take some pressure off. Finding a new place for my buddy and me to take our annual meat hunt in Texas where all the guides are on even footing and it’s not useless if you aren’t hunting with the lead guide or one of his relatives. Probably ISO Axis, hopefully some of the ranches offering hunts have recovered from the freeze that decimated the herd.

I intend to put out a new ladder stand or two, I’m too old for a climber and have trouble getting out of that comfortable chair in the box blind.

Will go back up in the next couple of weeks to load gravity feeders with protein to see if we can induce some better antlers and make more babies. That’ll give me time to take out a second mortgage to afford the feed.