Target these long-billed birds on the state’s public lands, and you’re certain to have a great time.
My Bible study lesson Sunday morning was about waiting. A generation of Americans has developed that does not like to wait for things – people want it right now, and they want it their way.
I told my class that Saturday morning I drove up to Morganza to visit a hunting club and check the deer that the hunters had killed. I wanted to look at the basic health of the deer; Scott Durham with LDWF had told me that there had been a lot of reports this year about EHD (bluetongue). It was a nice drive and appeared that it would be a good morning for hunting. The sun was out and was melting the snow and ice from the trees after our annual December winter blast. In the past, it always seemed that deer would move once the ice was melting from the trees.
I got to the club at 9 a.m. and had to wait about an hour before the hunters started coming out. It had been a cold morning, and the hunters stayed out waiting for the deer to move – which never happened. No doubt the deer were waiting for the hunters to get on their ATVs and leave so they could start moving around.
The hunter reports were slim, with o0nly a couple of brief sightings. I collected no data that morning. At my grandson’s birthday party that afternoon the hunter reports from the men at the party were the same. Deer did not move and had not been moving at all during the week.
All of this hunting activity was in Area 6. The best reason for the lack of movement was the full moon.
Earlier last week I went to Clinton after the rain days of Monday and Tuesday. The weather reports said that it would clear up for Wednesday afternoon and the sun would come out. The sun never made an appearance. A spike came out at 3:30 p.m. and fed briefly in the patch and then left. It was probably a 1 ½-year-old buck, and had nice 6- inch spikes and a decent body weight (no need to harvest this young buck). Finally, the deer that I had been waiting for – a nice, tender 6-month-old doe – came out at dark, and the .444 dropped it in its tracks.
Again, the weather report for Thursday was a nice, clear day before the front pushed in that would bring our December snow. I got up Wednesday night and the full moon was directly over Camp David, shining ever so brightly. It should be a good morning when the sun got up and started warming up the woods.
However, at daylight it was overcast and never cleared. I did some rattling and grunting but had no response to it. The spike showed up again at 7 a.m., and walked through the patch without feeding. I finally gave it up around 10 and did some chores, picked a mess of greens and headed to Baton Rouge.
I had grown tired of waiting for the deer. There were a few more new rubs in the woods, but the scrapes had not been worked. It did not appear to me that the peak of scrape activity was taking place.
The reports I received from St. Helena Parish over Thanksgiving weekend was that the rut looked to be starting. A friend rattled up a nice adult 7-point and the scrapes were being worked. Some of that parish was stocked with the Area 2 deer genetics, so that rut may be a little earlier than the Clinton rut.
This week looks to be another wet one, so be sure you stay dry if you decide to go out and wait for the deer!
