12/18/11- PM- Nice evening, cold, but with the calm winds and noisy leaves, it was nearly impossible to get close enough to deer in order to see them before dark at this point in the hunting season. Around here it seems as though deer aren't moving till close to 5:00 in the evening so you gotta be close to them in order to get a shot before legal shooting ends (ridiculous as it is). I was going to sit near a bedding area and by the time I got there at 3:30 some cows had spooked two deer out and they ran in front of me. So I went to get close to the next bedding area and was about ready to sit down when I took one last step and spooked a herd of deer which went running away. So I kept walking to the next spot and sat down. Didn't see a darn thing....nothing....nada....zilch. Squirrels sounded like buffalo. Very disappointing day, never saw a deer while I was sitting. I'm pretty discouraged right now. I had two nice bucks frequenting my property but one got killed on Tuesday morning of gun season and the other one hasn't been in front of my camera at my feeding site since Saturday morning of gun season so I would say he's dead also. No other bucks worth shooting really on my property. So I'm hitting the 2-3 other places I hunt and hoping for the best. Late December and January is always a very tough time to kill a buck around my area. The bucks just simply are hard to see, hang in the thick stuff and probably nocturnal.
