That's pretty nice for your first and only!!!

 

Thx...was buck only and I had seen 5 does that day...last day of hunting, was slammed by snow squall, freezing cold, getting dark and head hung way down low...then that fella walked out in front of me on my way to the truck...gift from the gods for all my suffering over the years :P

 

I hope you still get out in the woods

 

Oh yeah...every year...I see lots of deer, but the doe season is short (2 days) and I often see does during buck only.


Should have had another 4 pointer couple years back, but was hunting with handgun and blew the shot...that one still haunts me

 

We all that one that haunts us

 

My biggest problem about hunting was trying to get time off work to deer hunt. I could small game hunt on several weekends in the fall but could never get any time off for deer season. When I had 10 years of seniority at GM I walked into my department's office in January to put in for a vacation. The clerk told me don't even think about trying to get time off for deer season. Firearm deer season was November 15-30 but already booked up in January, so all I could do was hunt on those 2 weekends in November. Actually I only went deer hunting once. One November weekend was Thanksgiving and I had to stay in town with family, which only left me one weekend out the whole year to deer hunt. I never even saw anything and lost interest in hunting sometime after that.

The closest thing I ever got to a trophy class animal was a really big squirrel. It was so big I thought it was a rabbit when I first saw it way down the road. It was a fox squirrel that had been castrated by a red squirrel. If I had a picture I'd post it.

 

Most deer seasons start Saturday mornings; you can probable go then if you have a pace to hunt near where you live.

 

There are 7 separate deer seasons in Michigan this year, counting muzzle loader, archery, etc. The only one I was ever interested in was Regular Firearm Deer Season: Nov. 15-30. It's been the same date at least since I was a kid. This year it starts on a Wednesday and ends on a Thursday. I'm not working anymore so I could go opening day if I wanted to.

I could drive north for a couple of hours to hunt on state land with thousands of other people, but I heard that you really don't want to be at any of the places that I'm already familiar with. Too many people with a gun in one hand and a beer in the other that will shoot at anything that moves. My brothers have property 280 miles away but I'm not invited to go there even if I did want to drive 4 hours to a place with hardly any deer. And if I was still married and wanted to hunt on my brothers-in-law's property they don't own it anymore. I don't know any farmers whose fields I could hunt in either. At this point I don't know where to go but that's okay. I'd rather just sit here, stay warm, and look at everyone else's pictures.

 

You could always try a guided hunt. They do 90% of the work for you including scouting, skinning, etc...

 

I hunted public land for years in Southern California. Lots of folks you want to stay away from out there as well, but I made it work.