11-26-2011 Sat

11-26-2011 Sat
7:30 AM – 3:00 PM
Weather: NW10, fog/mist, 45˚ (1200)
Location: Strum, WI
Bagged: Mark Jr. six pointer, Jake eight pointer
Partners: Jeremy and Denny Pank, Mark, Jake and Mark Jr. Tupper, Tom Weber

Comments

It was the eighth day of deer season and I was hunting with a group on Jeremy Pank’s land and some adjacent forest cropland. The plan was to drive the forest cropland first and then we would focus our attention on Jeremy’s eighty acres.
We started out driving the forest cropland woods first. We wanted to get an early start on this land in order to get to it before any other hunters decided to drive it as we were doing. We got in position and me and the other drivers started the push to our standers. Unknown to us drivers, hunters from another group started a drive on the adjacent hillside. These hunters walked right past our standers and set up on the edge of our drive and amongst our standers.
We were both on public land but it was quite unethical and downright dangerous for that other group to move into our drive. We were there first and they walked right past our standers in order to make their drive.
We did manage to get two bucks off that first drive, but it was pretty much mass confusion with the two groups competing for the woods. One interesting thing that did happen on the drive was that Tom basically herded a deer to Mark Jr. and he was able to make a good shot on it. This deer basically had no fear of Tom and like I said he basically herded it for a couple hundred yards to Mark. When Tom got to Mark Jr. he asked him if he had hit the buck, Mark said yes. Then Tom asked him how he knew and Mark replied “because after I shot he jumped straight up in the air and they always do that when you hit them with a 243”.
We also made a couple more drives on Jeremy’s land without bagging any deer. However we did manage to push a nice doe past Jeremy but he missed it.

Observations:

Jeremy’s land and the adjacent land have lots of deer sign, but I did not see much for large buck sign.