Me!!

I guess I should start with who I am, where I am from, where I am now and why I wanted to start a blog. I am a 32 year old male Industrial Engineering major that did not grow up in a hunting family. I grew up with my dad shooting guns and reloading. We would often sit in the kitchen with his portable work bench. I would clean and resize the shells and he would let me press the primers into the shells. He would then measure out the powder. Then he would allow me to put the shells in the die and press in the lead. My favorite cartridge to reload was the 30-30. It was also my favorite to shoot at the range. This was the gun I used to harvest my first whitetail. My favorite hand gun was his Ruger .359.  Oh yes at the age of six he let me shoot it and I was hooked. We went to the local range a few times a year to discharge those shells we had worked so hard to reload. Then it was collect the brass and continue the process. As I grew older the reloading sessions became fewer and farther apart. So did the trips to the range. By the time I was sixteen I had a new interest. Yes I was a normal red blooded American boy and the elusive female was on my mind.

Dad and myself have talked about going to the range and he has reloaded a few shells here and there since. The only shooting I have done up until last August of 2010 was a little shooting at some cans with my .380 and a six month stent of shooting clays every weekend.

I have always loved the outdoors but, growing up in the city I was limited on my woods time. I grew up in a neighborhood where there were very little woods and I did not know anyone growing up that hunted. I did however discover bass fishing in a few local ponds when I was around nineteen. My long time best friend Kevin bought a little bass tracker ten foot pond boat and I had the Ford Ranger to haul it in. We fished like we were training for a pro tournament every day after work, every Saturday morning and any holidays we had off from work. It was great. We fished so much the boat started falling apart. It was great. We did this for a good three springs that I remember. These are memories I will never forget and will be able to tell my sons about them one day. Even if we never caught a fish or can't remember any of the fish we caught the time we spent together was well worth it.

As we grew older we both stopped fishing. Only fishing in ponds I found here and there but, it was never the same. I soon found my way to the asphalt. Taking on the open roads on sportbikes and triple digit speeds. this lasted about eight years. Then my son was born and I stopped riding so I would be around to raise him. After four wrecks and numerous close calls with death, it seamed no so important when he was born. I had a bike at the time he was born and due to his birth and other reasons I care not to discuss on here I sold it.

This brings me to last year. I met my now fiancée and moved out to her families property. Total it is a 200 acre track that is a combination of woods and cow pasture. Something I didn't mention is I have brothers that are twins that are six years younger than I am and started hunting when they were sixteen. They had asked me to hunt but, the opportunity never lined up just right to find myself in the woods with them. I had no interest in hunting anything except squirrel until last season.

I was out in the woods checking things out one day and came across signs of deer. I started seeing tracks on the ATV trails here and there. I soon found myself becoming more and more intrigued by the things I was finding. Then I saw one up close and personal. By that I mean about 50 yards out. I fell in love. It was such a beautiful creature and for some reason I had a strong desire to kill it. I have no idea where this primal desire came from but, I liked it. I soon found myself talking to my brothers about hunting. What to do, where to be, and when the season started.

By this time it was a few weeks from deer season. Late August. We started putting out corn, salt blocks and peanut butter. It didn't take long for the deer to start consuming all of it. I soon found out from family that this property had not been hunted in twenty five years. I picked up one of my brothers bows and was hitting center consistently out to twenty five yards within a half hour. I practice more before season started and borrowed a bow to start out with. I am now a pretty decent shot with a bow and plan on only hunting with a bow this coming season. I will only use a rifle if I go 3/4 of the season and harvest nothing.

As I learned to shoot a bow, Archery became another passion of mine. I enjoy it so much Jess and I opened an outdoor field archery range Named Stick N String Archery Range. I am now fortunate enough to be able to nock and release between 200-500 shots a week. If you would like to check out pics of our range we can be found on Facebook. here is the link for the business page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stick-N-String-Archery-Range/128804750523861

Opening day. Both of my brothers were here. I was hunting a ground blind. One brother in a ladder stand and the other in a climber stand. My fiancée and I were in the blind together. Let me describe my blind. It was homemade and probably not ideal or great at all even. I went out and bought some rope and camo burlap from the good old Wally world. I found a group of three trees that were in kind of in a triangle shape wrapped the rope around it and zip tied the burlap to it. I know, not the most ideal way to make a deer blind but, I did not want to spend the money on a stand if I ended up hating hunting.  I put out corn a few weeks before. The alarm went off at 5:00am. Jess and I got a scent free shower, put on scent free deodorant, pulled out scent free washed camo, sprayed down with scent killer, put on our headlamps and headed out to our chosen places of wooded paradise. As we sat fighting off harpooning mosquitoes for a little over an hour the sun started to rise. I felt sure we would see nothing. It was around 7:30am and out of nowhere we heard this snorting blowing sound!!!! turned our heads and there were three whitetails waiving as they took off!!! WOW!! Adrenalin rush!!! We had no shot but it was awesome.

That day I became a deer hunter. By definition I believe a hunter is a person who enjoys continually learning about their quarry. Never knowing enough and never being satisfied with the knowledge they have gained and only wanting to understand more. I had what I believed to be a decent first season with a doe and a buck under my belt.

I will do another post later to tell about both deer I harvested and the hunts in detail. I also plan to fill everyone in on detailed blogs about last season and catch everyone up on activities I do to prepare for the upcoming season.

I wanted to start this blog more for me to share my maturing hunting experiences with others who may find it interesting to follow a new hunter in his adventures. I am not a professional writer nor do I ever think I will become one. Hopefully I will have the writing skills to translate my blog and make it interesting enough with stories and things I am doing to keep your interest. I love to hunt now and I think it will be interesting for others to enjoy my stories.