Nov. 18-24, 2024

Weather | 11/18, 0.29" rain, 54°, 64° | 11/19, 0.25" rain, sunny, 49°, 59° |11/20, sunny, 35°, 47° | 11/21, cloudy, 31°, 41° | 11/22, cloudy, 35°, 39° | 11/23, fog to sunny, 23°, 45° | 11/24, sunny to cloudy, 38°, 65° |

• Monday, 11/18: Rain, Minestrone Soup & Knife Sharpening
  
  • I woke at 5 a.m. to see if deer hunting was an option today. It was pouring rain outside, so I said the heck with it and went back to bed.
    
  • Rain fell for a good part of the day.
  • Mary made a big batch of minestrone soup. I picked eight kale leaves that she put into the soup. She uses a gallon bag of frozen homegrown tomatoes and can of tomato paste. It tastes much better than the three cans of store-bought tomato juice that we once bought to put in the soup.
    
  • Mary put together a shopping list that we'll use tomorrow.
    
  • We both vacuumed flies and Asian ladybugs. 'Tis the season.
    
  • Around 12:30 p.m., I sat for five minutes in the Boys' Fort blind just north of the machine shed and saw three deer run through the woods just north of me. I wasn't hunting. I was just looking at the compass and what would be a good wind direction for that hunting location. Since deer could approach from all directions in the north woods, there is no good or bad wind direction.
    
  • I sharpened knives for the rest of the day. I've had problems sharpening three curved Victorinox boning knives that Mary prefers using. The problem is that the three stones in the knife sharpener are concave on the surface, due to wear over time. So, I unscrewed the hold-down pieces and turned the stones over, giving me completely flat surfaces. From that point forward, knives sharpened very nicely. 
  • I did a bunch of cleanup while turning the stones over in this Norton Abrasives Multi-Oilstone. There was probably a quarter inch of fine metal particles in the bottom of the oil reservoir. Mary says the sharpener came with the grocery store in Lewistown that her grandfather bought and operated from the mid-1950s to the 1960s. Herman, Mary's uncle, had the sharpener when he ran that same store from 1964 to 1978. I found it out in the machine shed. So, we're the third owner of that knife sharpener. Mary looked it up online and it has a long history of use in America's meat industry. It does an excellent job.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of last year's cherry wine. It sure is good.
    

• Tuesday, 11/19: Shopping & Deer Hunting
  
  • There was an additional quarter inch of water in the rain gauge from rainfall overnight.
  • We went shopping in Quincy, IL, today. The entire town was packed with tottering old duffs, as if all of the senior homes let out for a grand day of shopping. Thanks to our son, Bill, who says we shop like we're on a mission to take out Osama bin Laden, we chuckled to ourselves as we marched through the stores. Mary was thrilled to find two more big frozen turkeys for 88 cents a pound at Walmart. We now have four in the freezer.
    
  • After getting home and emptying the pickup, I went hunting. I got to the Four Trunk Deer Stand at 2:45 p.m. A steady wind switched from the southwest to the west. I didn't dress warm enough and froze my ass off. Every year I initially seem to forget how cold the wind feels while sitting up in the air in a deer stand. I heard one shot in the valley on property west of our land around 3:30 and then I heard a goonball shooting an AK-15 style rifle in rapid-fire fashion to the distant west. A hunter like that isn't really hunting. I never saw a deer. I did hear something moving north to south a ways west of my location, but beyond my vision. It might have been a deer, or maybe a coyote.
    
  • Right before legal shooting ended, I heard an American woodcock. That's odd. Woodcocks aren't usually heard around here in November. I also watched a red-bellied woodpecker drink rainwater out of a hollowed out part of a hickory tree where a branch once broke off. That was a cool sight to witness.
    
  • While I went hunting, Mary vacuumed flies and Asian ladybugs. Flies by the hundreds were on the windows and the ceiling of our bedroom. They're all smashed into a shop vac, now. 
  • Mary also did the evening chores. She picked two large strawberries...amazing for late autumn.
    

• Wednesday, 11/20: Plenty of Deer, But None Harvested
  
  • Strong west northwest winds blew throughout the day.
  • Mary vacuumed bugs. There were fewer, because a strong wind and cooler temperatures kept them at bay.
    
  • Mary replaced the rain gauge cylinder. She threw the old one out, because it had a crack in it. We bought a new cylinder this summer.
    
  • I went deer hunting in the Boys' Fort Deer Blind in the morning and the Black Medic Deer Blind in the evening. 
  • When I first got to the Boy's Fort around 6 a.m., I heard a deer walking west of me. It wasn't snorting, but it was breathing loudly to try to catch my scent. Luckily it was upwind from me. But, it walked on and wasn't around by the time I could see when daylight arrived. Later, I saw a flash of a deer running by the other side of the cedar trees north of me.
  • I got to the Black Medic Deer Blind by 3 p.m. At 3:30, two young deer blasted by my blind just 10 feet away. They came and went so fast uphill from the blind, I barely was able to see them. About two minutes later, a deer stepped into view northwest of me, again uphill from the blind, and looked northeast, where the first two deer came from. I think it was a young buck. By the time I cocked my rifle, it was gone. A few minutes before I left, a deer southeast of me, again uphill from the blind, snorted at me. Maybe going there during an east wind would be best while I looked for deer uphill of the blind.
    

• Thursday, 11/21: Venison in the Freezer
  • A very strong west northwest wind was blowing when I got up at 5 a.m. It blew all day.
  • I hunted in the Boys' Fort Deer Blind. I arrived at 5:55 a.m. At about 7:40, a deer ran from the west field into the north woods west of me. It paused a couple times while walking north through the timber. It paused with most of its body behind a big oak tree trunk, but I focused my rifle on the neck and made a left-handed shot, hitting my target perfectly. It bucked up into the air and ran toward me, then fell down next to a gully. It was a spiked buck with three points.
  • I walked back home. Mary was feeding chickens. We went back to the deer and field dressed it, then hauled it up the hill to the north edge of the woods behind the machine shed. It was extremely heavy. I drove the tractor to that area. We loaded the deer and drove it to the hydrant and cleaned the body cavity out with a hose. Then, we took it to the machine shed and hung it from the middle rafter.
  • It was 10 a.m. when we got back inside the house, so instead of breakfast, we ate lunch, which was four bowls of minestrone soup, each.
  • We spent the rest of the day butchering the deer. It was a deer with a long body and massive muscles. I called it an Arnold Schwarzenegger deer. We're guessing it was a two-year old. We froze 51 meals of venison meat. It feels good to have a bunch of venison in the freezer, again.
  • Today the stupid idiot crop duster was flying in and out of the airport at the dairy that is west of us. We had 35-40 mph gusts, which is no condition for spraying herbicides from an airplane. Besides, what the heck is green that needs killing at this time of the year?
    
  • Mary spotted a bald eagle in a tree near Bluegill Pond while she was walking the dogs. It flew off. Later, we think we saw that same bald eagle, along with three big ducks or small geese that were flying just beyond it.
    

• Friday, 11/22: Another Deer
  
  • Since yesterday's butchering lasted until after dark, I didn't get up early for morning hunting. Instead, we enjoyed a breakfast of waffles.
    
  • I went to the new Wood Duck Deer Blind and was in place by 3 p.m. 
  • Around 4, I caught a glimpse of a deer walking through trees southwest of me. Shortly after, a flock of wild turkeys walked along the Wood Duck Pond shoreline north of me. I counted 14 turkeys. They came closer to about 20-25 feet away (see videos, below). Turn on the sound of the videos and you can hear them scratching in the leaves. They walked directly in front of the blind just 10 feet away. At that point, I didn't dare move for fear of spooking them. At one point I had birds to the north (my left), in front of me, and scattered to the south (my right), all at the same time. Eventually, every single turkey flew up into the trees above me to roost for the night. They were walking around me for 45 minutes before they roosted.
    
  • Once all of the turkeys were perched up in the trees, I heard louder footsteps. Then I saw deer walking from the woods, southwest of me, and onto the flat stretch near the dry creek bed. It was 5 p.m. One deer came into clear view. I raised up the short-barreled 30-30 and slid it through a slot in the hog fence and made an accidental crunching noise as the barrel settled on a couple willow sticks woven in the fence. The deer looked my way and snorted. I took a left-handed shot and it went down immediately. As I emerged from the blind, a buck bellowed from the hill in front of me, a young deer ran in front of me to the pond, several deer snorted from the woods behind me, and turkeys flew out of the trees above me. I walked to the deer. It was attempting to move its head to get up, so I dispatched it with a second shot. I texted Mary, walked home, and collected flashlights, field dressing knives and a field bone saw. Mary walked as I drove the tractor back to Wood Duck Pond.
    
  • I ran out of gas in the tractor and walked back home to retrieve a can of gas. While I was gone, Mary heard coyotes singing near the Bass Pond dam, which is close, so she walked down to the downed deer and waited for me. Besides the coyotes, she heard the turkeys in the trees above her quietly clucking.
  • It took extra time to field dress the deer, which was a mature doe, because she was a little bit tougher. The meat will still be good, since doe meat is always great. With Mary leading the way and holding the rear feet and me hauling the front feet of the deer, we transported her up the hill to the tractor, loaded her, and drove back home. We cleaned the body cavity with a garden hose and hung her in the machine shed overnight. Soon after, the predicted overnight low of 29° showed on the thermometer. It's a perfect temperature for chilling venison meat. We'll butcher first thing in the morning. There will be plenty of venison in the freezer when we're done with this deer, so my hunting season is now over. The two deer I harvested came from sitting in my two newest deer blinds.
    
  • We both heard flying squirrels in the pecan trees just outside of the machine shed tonight as we were hanging up the deer. Their squeaking noise is very identifiable, once you know that sound.
  Wild turkeys with Wood Duck Pond to the right in this video.
   
More turkey video...Happy Thanksgiving!!!.

• Saturday, 11/23: Butchering Second Deer
  
  • All day was spent butchering the doe I harvested yesterday. I first sharpened four knives. It took me two hours to skin the deer. After eating a midday meal, Mary and I deboned the hind quarters, packaged up the venison pieces, and froze them. After evening chores, we removed shoulder meat, along with inside and outside loins. Mary packaged them as I cleaned up in the machine shed. All told, we froze 36 meals of venison from this deer. With the 51 meals from this year's buck, we have 87 meals of venison added to the freezer from this deer hunting season. I. Am. Done!!!
    
  • While Mary and I were cutting off the last meat from the deer, a young opossum walked up the path to the front door of our house. Plato was barking, which drew my attention. It probably smelled the deer meat and was hiking up to see when it could find. It ran off once I showed up.
  • We also had a mixed bag of birds eating on venison bits outside the porch, before I collected it all up to get rid of it.
    
  • I took hair off both of the deer we harvested this year to use for tying flies in the future. Fly tying shops sell deer hair. It's nice to get it for free.
  • Using the tractor and wagon, I drove the carcasses, hides and buckets of fat residue to the north woods, near where the Four Trunk Deer Stand is located. Wild creatures clean this all up in just a few days.
  • While I was loading items in the trailer, I heard several shots to the south. When you hear more than one shot, it's usually from an hunter who is a poor marksman, who keeps trying to hit an animal, but never quite gets it done. I'm happy to be finished hunting deer, because with the saturate the woods with bullets approach, deer are going to become very scarce. They get low when the bullets keep flying.
  • They aren't scare, yet. While walking dogs in the late afternoon, Mary and I saw seven deer cross the lane in front of us.
    

• Sunday, 11/24: Bill Arrives
  
  • Bill arrived around midday. He's visiting us for a week.
    
  • I cleaned up and put the last of the butchering items in the machine shed away, including lights, extension cords, ladders, and buckets.
  • An opossum meandered around the yard this afternoon, digging here and there and eating grubs (see video, below). We named him Homer.
  • We heard a great deal of traffic on the gravel road through the day. It involved a lot of rattling trailers, which means the guy from St. Louis who owns property west of us, who always brings deer hunters onto his place, took all of his stuff out of the woods and went home.
    
  • We had a mid-afternoon wienie roast outside. Mary made a big salad, to go along with hotdogs, since temperatures are expected to drop into the teens by next weekend, which will probably kill off the greens. A flock of red-winged blackbirds serenaded us from the maple tree tops. Tufted tit mice were also peeping at us.
    
  • Bill picked out the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to watch. We viewed three episodes.
  Homer, the opossum, searching for grubs in our lawn.