Bowhunting Success at Camp Chicken!

Congratulations to Dan, Arlene's son-in-law, who bagged his first deer with a bow on Saturday afternoon. He made a really great shot from about 40 yards away while just sitting on a milk crate on the ground. He was really excited and so were we.

We had an extremely busy weekend. We stayed home for Halloween and had a housefull of guests and had a great time. Saturday morning we left early for camp and while on the way up there saw 3 wolves right out in the open field about 100 yards from the road. They weren't very afraid of us and finally ran away. They were only about a mile from my parent's house. I won't tell you my opinion of the planting of wolves in our area by the DNR as I don't swear on my blog!

We got to camp and got unloaded and get the furnace going as it was 27 degrees. We went back to town and picked up corn and sugar beets and went back to camp. As we were unloading the stuff into our old red trailer, a very large spikehorn came walking right into camp. He could see us and knew we were there! He was only about 30 yards away. He walked down our cart path to the Taj Mahal feeding spot, looked around and walked back to the start of the path and then walked back to the feeding spot again. Finally, he walked back to the start of the path and looking right at us took a few steps toward us, stopped and switched his tail and walked away toward the road. We were just amazed at him.

We loaded up the 4-wheelers and went out to check out Arlene's spot. When we got back to camp, one of my student workers from work, Theresa and her boyfriend Chris, were at camp. I invited them out to hunt racoons later that night and they were getting the "lay of the land" at the spot they would be hunting.

Arlene's brother came out again and we helped him load a trailer load of downed and dead maple for his wood burner. After that we set up our target and sighted in our deer rifles. We then loaded my trailer full of wood for Mom and Dad's fireplace and took it down to their house. While I unloaded the wood and stacked it in the woodshed, Arlene and Dan climbed up on the garage roof to fix the leak around Dad's new stovepipe. They managed to dink around until I had most of the wood in the woodshed.

We rushed back to camp as we still had to pull a big tarp over Dan's motorhome and get ready for the afternoon hunt. Arlene had ordered her electronic deer call and wanted to try it out. It has the sounds of rattling horns, a doe bleat, a doe-in-heat bleat, a buck grunt, and a buck snort/wheeze. She drove me nuts with that thing until Dan called her to tell her he had a doe down with his bow and we called it a day to go help him load her up and bring her out.

Theresa and Chris came about 9:30 and went out to wait for the midnight racoon raiders and we played Phase 10 until about 11 and hit the hay.

It was a very full day.

Sunday, I slept in and didn't hunt as I went to church with my family. It was remembrance Sunday and we had lost my Aunt Flora, my Dad's sister-in-law this year. My aunt Mary Hessel(my Dad's only sister) was coming and my cousin Judy and her husband Bob. After church we all went to brunch.

While I was away, Dan and Arlene made their first attempt at butchering. Dan had ordered this DVD on the internet and they had watched it and decided that they could butcher Dan's doe themselves. I advised them to let her "season" for a few days but they figured they would go ahead and do it that day. Much to my amazement, they were all done with her by the time I got back at 1:00 PM.



The new shed is perfect for butchering and with the salamander Arlene's sister lent us, we can work out there in comfort. Hopefully, we will have another nice deer to butcher next weekend.