Me and my two boys headed out last Thursday afternoon to Larke’s farm, to do a little hunting and story swapping. We stopped about ½ way there and met up with Len. We transferred all of our gear into his truck and we hit the road again. Len took several wrong turns, but we pulled into Larke’s around 9:30 Thursday night. After unloading and having a couple of night caps, we hit the bunks and got up bright and early at 4:30 Friday Morning. Temps weren’t all that bad…low 30’s. We all discussed stands and who was going where and headed out to the woods. There were 5 of us, and we were all spread out pretty well across the farm, if anything was moving, someone would see it. About 7:20 I saw a couple of does about 250 yards out, and they were headed to my youngest boys stand. I sent a group text telling him to BOLO. He texted back he couldn’t see anything… and Larke and I both responded to keep his eyes open, that they were headed right to him. Mind you – this was my youngest son’s first time in a stand all by himself. About 10 minutes later we hear a shot. He texts that he shot one and it ran. I was trying to determine if he thought he hit it, when he texted “there’s another one, should I shoot?”. I’m side texting him off the group chat still trying to determine what he thought about his 1st shot, when we hear another round fire off. Then he texted “shot the 2nd one and there is a 3rd one looking at me”. I AGAIN ask, “did you hit the 2nd one?”. He says thinks he did. Before I could text back, BOOM! 3rd shot. Once all the smoke settles I tell him to sit tight until I get to him.
I make it over to him and start asking where each one was at when he fired, and he was a little confused on exactly where… but we eventually determine approximate locations of each one. We start in the middle where he thinks they were. We see no blood, no hair. We then went to the edge of the field and walk that…twice. No blood, no hair. So we took 2 steps into the woods (thicket) and start working our way around the field. We finally see a rather large pool of blood. We crawl and scrape our way into the thicket about 15 yards, following that blood, and we see one deer piled up. He was super excited, as we were both beginning to think he missed all 3. We finally get to the deer and start taking a look at it. He looks over in the thicket and says “there’s another one!”. Both piled up within 10 yards of each other. We drag those out to the field. About that time Larke sends a text that he sees a doe with a wounded back right leg. The 3rd one got away, and I hope it makes it. Larke said he thought it should, unless Wiley Coyote finds her. The rest of the 1st morning was gutting 2 deer, feeding cows, having some lunch, and all the weak pansies took naps (not gonna call any names, Len).
That afternoon Larke took us to a new piece of land and got everyone set up in their stands, since no one was familiar w/the property (Larke is a hell of guide!). Nice place, very thick, a lot of deer and hog sign on that place. We heard a lot of movement that afternoon. Bout 5:15 Len’s oh-six barks out. He shoots a text “buck is down, I repeat buck is down”. We all meet him at the stand (dark by then) and we get his buck out of the woods. Another round of gutting when we got back, and then some DAMN good steaks cooked by Len. We had taters to go with it, and washed it down with some adult beverages.
Saturday Morning we went back to the new piece of property. It was COLD. I hunted with my youngest boy in a stand big enough to camp in. By 8:30 he had caught a case of the shivers, and couldn’t stop… we called it and headed back to the truck. Len and my oldest were also done. Larke stayed in the woods while we headed to the piggly wiggly for supplies! Back to the farm and we skinned and processed all 3 deer.
The evening hunt we stayed at the farm and DAMN the deer were moving! I think between the 5 of us, we saw 20 something deer. Around 5, my oldest texted he had 3 deer under him. He scoped them out and shot mamma. A FAT doe. Double lung shot at 50 yards with a 30.06 and she still ran 100 yards. More gutting to do that evening!
Saturday night’s menu was more Steak ala’ Len, and Roasted oysters. We ate till we were about to pop. Sunday morning only the real men hunted… Me, Larke, and my youngest. Very cold morning, we hunted til about 8:30. We cleaned up the cabin, loaded up, and left Larke to get some rest!
All in all what a fine trip. Lots of memories, lots of stories told (all of mine were true) and everyone headed home with meat for jerky and sausage!
Thanks Larke – you are quite the host!
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Originally Posted by Captain
) deer jerky. 
