Pre Season Deer & Ducks

Done quite a bit of scouting the past few weeks for the approaching deer and duck seasons. Started out a bit dry and HOT... but had plenty of signs to keep motivated and checking on spots. The North Central Fl deer were confusing me for a bit as I was not finding any new scrubs in places I'd seen tons before and I suppose the rut was a bit behind or later than expected. As of Sept 4th I have only started seeing rubs within the past week, and some very promising ones! I moved a trail cam this weekend to a nice tall rub and hope to have some pics of the buck when I grab the cam in a few days.

This spot is Archery only for deer, and only season is a few weeks in October so I'm hoping to get some deer patterned and be ready to hunt them hard in the cooler weather- hopefully get my father to come up and harvest a nice deer from a cool area. Macy always finds some quail to kick up and practice pointing on which is always a plus since it's hard to find them many places.


On to the ducks... checked a few lakes in the area and am extremely grateful for the daily rains we have been getting as it slowly added up and turned some spots that were inaccessible a few weeks ago into flooded lakes with tons of water in the swamp. One spot gained so much water that i threw on the waders this past weekend and went out to do some scouting/ training with Macy in the surrounding swamp. Almost felt like I was in an Arkansas timber spot with all the water.

We ran through a bunch of retrieves with our new D.T. Systems dummy launcher which uses a .22 blank to launch the dummy, and gives quite a bang which is a good intro to gunfire and holding after the shot goes off. When we get out into the open lake to do some long retrieves it is really a plus how far this thing can launch bumpers and after a few retrieves a break is needed, one of the best training tools I've found.

All in all, this season that started out dry as a bone has taken a turn for the better with all the rain we have been getting. One last note, while driving to the office I am used to seeing lots of game as it is off a golf course, last week however I passed a doe with 3 fawns that still had spots so had to be pretty young, and way late in the deer cycle. I suppose the deer are so happy there with all the food and low pressure that they can go on their own schedule and support triplet fawns...

Used to foxes being on the course, but never had a coyote, this one kept grabbing our golf balls as we'd play making for a interesting round. Thought it may be a fox at first but the long tail and rounded ears had me curious and asking around to learn that its a young coyote.