September 12th 2009 400am:
I spent most of the previous night trying to get my equipment together. Clean my truck go get my buddy's canoe. I get into my stand about 5:10am and after getting settled waited for daylight which was scheduled for 647am About 652am I get a text from one of my students Jake Van Polen wishing me luck. I literally was texting a reply when out of nowhere a doe and two fawns are RIGHT IN front off me the big doe gets past me and so does one of the fawns the last one however waits a little two long and I nail her with a Muzzy tipped arrow. Unfortunatelly I did not have the camera on.
Note to self get my motion activated system complete today. This is the opening day of the Ottumwa Urban Deer Management seasonwhich runs through Jan 31 2010. I do believe I shot the doe a little too far back but literally from the time I saw the deer till they were out of my shooting lane was less than 12 feet. I am pretty excited to get a doe down on the ground. Note to self if filming with my video camera start recording 3 minutes before sunrise and let it roll for at least 30minutes During this very short hunting excursion all I saw were the three deer a racoon ans two squirrels. I don't know how long I am going to wait to collect this doe which I shot at exactly 712am. Pictures to follow. I text my buddy Jake and tell him I doe down he's squirrel hunting.
Well I decide to use a Bowgrunter set to bleat and get my camera together. I then put on my bowgrunter call (which I think is by far the best deer) call when in comes a very small 8 pointer. Two seconds after he came in his big sister appears! I cannot turn down this opportunity. I let a Muzzy tipped arrow fly and down goes another Doe. Watch the video to see what happened.
Two deer down before 8am. The doe and buck actually came in from the south and I shot her quartering away within inches of where I shot the first doe. This is one of those killing trees. I have shot literally from this tree a large spike I believe 6 does an 8pointer I do believe I got this on video we will see in a few minutes as I am checking the footage now.
My youngest son gamohunter0909 and I are going back (tomorrow) to the same stand that I hunted today. its one of my only double stand set-ups. I hope the boy gets his first deer tomorrow. He's got all of his gear ready, amd I just got my gear put together. Right now I am downloading the files from my digital camera to the computer so I can delete a bunch of the files. of my camera. I actually got a harvest on video today. I had to radically modify much of my set-up for my camera.
I have an Ameristep Archer's Choice camera arm, but the problem with this thing was the trouble with carrying it into the field, A short piece of rope and a cabiner fixed that, it was also fairly unstable. but a few strategically placed 5/16 x 1-1/2" fender washers fixed that as well as replacing the long arm for adusting the up and down with a key screw and a chrome spacer. Because all of the inexpensive cameras arms have a pivoting head that is junk. so I bought a Bogen/Manfrotto professional tripod head.
What I did was get a 1/4 to 3/8" adapter plate and I attached the Bogen
to the quick release plate for the Ameristep. That way I have angle adjustment that once its set gets tightened down and won't move again. The Bogen is a professional grade true ball bearing fluid head.
IT makes a world of difference when you are trying to bowhunt and videotape your hunt. ALso since my camera has ifrared remote I had to attach a fiber optic cable to it in a way that I can shoot the infrared light down the toslink cable and it directs it into the decoder on the camera. Now I have a "wired" remote We will see how much better it will tomorrow.
