So close, but I was spotted.

Hi;

I was bow hunting last Friday from a tree stand.  The area behind the stand is pretty thick, so I concentrated my hunting to the 180 degrees in front of me. I was keeping an eye on the area behind me thinking that if I spotted a deer in that thick stuff at least I would know to be prepared should it come into my shoot area.

I did not see any deer until the last 45 minutes of light.  Not surprising due to the heat.  The first two deer were walking in front of me from right to left down the property line, which is about 85 yards away.  No shot there.  They were moving fast towards the open field. About 10 minutes later a deer came running through the woods at my back, from left to right.  Through the thick branches and leaves I could see the tail bouncing through the woods.  I saw it stop in the pathway off to my right, but in thick bramble.  I hoped it would settle down and walk my way down the path.  No, that did not happen.  I saw the tail bounce off going the other way up the path.

I've settled down in the tree stand again.  Another 10 minutes pass. I hear the leave rustle behind me off to the left.  It was a different sound from the squirrels that have been playing around me all afternoon.  I slowly turn to my left.  There is a spike buck walking oh, about 25 yards behind me.  He looks like he will walk very close to my stand as he goes from my back left to my front left.  I am looking for a clear spot to possibly take a shot.  I found three areas that he might walk into.  As he goes behind a small tree I turn, he looks up. I freeze.  He goes back to grazing. I move a bit more and raise the bow.  He looks up.  He is starring but not nervous. I stay still.  He goes back to grazing.  As he moves just about even with my left side, still in brush that could deflect my arrow he looks up again.  I have not moved, but he was down wind of me.  I hoped that he would not wind me, due to the fact that the wind was hardly blowing at all today.  I guess it was enough though!  He looked and looked, just not sure what was going on.  At that point he bounced/ran about 30 yards and stopped, partially behind a tree.  Then a few steps, then a slow trot.  I grunted twice.  He stopped on the second grunt in an area that I could have shot.  Unfortunately, he only stopped for a second, then it was off to the races and out of sight.  That was it for the hunting day.

I had planned on bow hunting again one more time before muzzle loading season, but with Hurricane Sandy running up the coast, it looks like I should stay out of the woods.  If the storm passes and the winds die down by Wednesday afternoon (Halloween), then I may grab the bow and go out.  Other wise I am going to be hunting all day on the opening day of black powder season.

Take care, good hunting and good shooting.
M.

Week Eight Trap League, last of the season

Hi,

I did average on my last shoot of the league.  I shot a 14 and a 16, which is in between my good scores and my worst score.  On both rounds I did very badly on station 4 and 5. Not good at all !  At each station you shoot five rounds, then you move to the next station.  From left to right there are five stations.  On station 4 and 5 I only hit 2 targets at each station. I was behind on all of the shots. I talked with other shooters about the difficulty in acquiring the target at night, even under the lights.  We seem to agree that it is difficult to pick up the target when it flies from the house, across the grassy hill, and then flies across the dark tree line.  This is something you cannot practice during the day.  I will have to make plans to do some night shooting, where I can work on shots from station 4 & 5.

Next April will begin the spring Trap league.  Both my husband and I are planning on doing this again.

Our awards get together after last nights shoot was fun.  The highest men's, women's and junior's award were 5 boxes of shotgun shells.  My husband missed high man by 4 targets.  I was second high women.  Because the lady that won high score is on a college shooting team, she could not accept the prize (scholarship issues), the prize was given to me.  So, she got the title and I got the shot shells.  Not really the way I wanted to win anything, but she knew before hand that she could not accept any prizes.  Our team came in 7th for the year.  Best news for my husband; he wanted to shoot a perfect 25 on at least one round sometime this season.  He accomplished that on he last round, yeah :) I was really happy for him.

As I do practice during the winter, I'll post my scores and adventures here.  Then next April I'll again let you in on how I and my husband do in the spring league.

Take care, good shooting and good hunting.
M.

Another day of deer hunting with the bow

Hi,

My husband and I were out yesterday afternoon/evening bow hunting for deer.  It was a nice day, partly cloudy, a bit of a breeze from time to time but nothing to worry about.  Yet, there was no deer activity to speak of.  I jumped up one doe as I was walking to my stand.  She held tight before jumping.  I was about 15 yards away when she bolted out of some really thick brush.  She actually let me walk by her!

My husband went to a stand that needed some work done to it before it would be ready for the rifle season. He made his fixes then came back to an area about 200 yards from where I was.  We were hoping that when he made his moves to his hunting location that any deer he might spook would come my way.  Well that sort of worked.  I had one deer, don't know if it was a buck or doe, galloping through the woods, from my right to left on the property line. Which in this case was about 180 yards away from me. No bow shot there. Oh well.  I can take solis in the fact that I could not have made that shot with a rifle either.  To much brush and leaves on the trees, and a very fast moving deer.

I had plenty of squirrels all around me.  Eating nuts, running up and down the trees, chasing one another, just all around having fun.  But, for those of you who have had all this nonsense going on around you while deer hunting, you know just how irritating all of this was for me.

Needless to say, today was not a successful hunting day, but it was a good day to be outdoors.

Take care, good hunting and good shooting.
M.

Week Seven of Trap, only one more to go.

Hi!!

I really am surprised at the weather we've had over the past seven weeks.  I knew that we were going into fall with this league and shooting at night.  I just assumed that by now I'd be shooting with my coat on, long sleeved shirt and heavy pants and possibly my long johns. But Nooo.  It's been in the upper sixties all nights except one, where it was in the mid fifties.  I'm a very glad, because I'm not a fan of cold weather.

I did okay, shooting a 17 and a 16.  My husband shot 22 birds both rounds.  Unfortunately one of our team mates did really bad hitting only 9 targets in his first round.  And on the other hand, another team mate shot a perfect 25 out of 25 in his second round. We (my team and others in the league) can joke about our shooting, we can ponder what went wrong and how to try and fix it.   Overall, I think no matter what our scores are we are all having a good time.

I am feeling more assured, even though I know I need to practice more.  I am less awkward in my stance (that's how I stand and lean into the shotgun before yelling 'Pull'.  I also am not concerned any more about people watching me shoot.  That was one scary thought knowing that there is a crowd watching, that can and does put pressure on anyone.  I also think that shooting in the bowling pin matches has helped me overcome that pressure of knowing that many people are watching and critiquing how I did.

For this weeks team scores, we shot a better total score that the first place team did, Yeah!  But, they are so far ahead of the rest of us, I guess they can afford one bad night.  Oh well.  It still made us feel better for awhile.  Our standing unfortunately slipped to eighth place.  Only one week to go.  I'll let you know how that goes and the awards party after the last round is shot.

Take care, good shooting and good hunting.
M.

Sixth Week of League Trap Shooting -- WINDY

Hi,

Well,  I did poorly on the first round.  Only 14 out of 25! I have thought about it but I have not come up with the reason for the poor performance.

Then the high winds came in just as my team was beginning to shoot the second round.  This time I was concentrating on the bird and the updraft from the wind.  I think that helped me immensely because I shot a 20 :)   My team mates did not fare as well.  Nor, did many of the other 60 shooters that night.  But, that is all a part of the game.  Weather conditions can make or break you.  I had been concerned that we would at one point during the eight weeks have to shoot in the rain.  I never considered we would have to shoot in gale force winds.

Now the good news.  My team when up one place in the rankings.  We are now at the number seven spot.  Since the league began my team has gone from sixth place to ninth place to seventh, with two weeks to go, maybe we can end the game in sixth. I can dream that we might make it a fifth place ending.  I'll let you know.  As far as the standing with the ladies.  There are three of us in the group of 60.  The first place lady has a total of 267 points, I am in second place with 216 points and the third place lady has 179 points.  I will be a long shot to over take first place, but I'll dream about that too.  First off I have to start being more consistent with my hits.

Tomorrow is a deer hunt.
Take care.  Good shooting and good hunting.
M.

Hi,

I was in a bowling pin shoot last Saturday.  See the photos.  What fun that was.  The day was beautiful day so a lot of shooter showed up for the morning.  In bowling pin shoots, at least this one, you have 10 rounds in either your rim fire or your center fire gun for each of the two sets of six bowling pin targets.  The first set of targets are real bowling pins, set on a table about 10 yards from the bench.  The second set of targets are steel plates shaped like bowling pins. They are on a metal rail at 15 yards.  These will fall back when hit.  There are six pins on each set, so you shoot at a total of 12 pins.  You shoot at the real bowling pins first.  When you've shot all of them off the table, or you run out of bullets, time is called.  You then reload and shoot at the steel plates, again knock all plates down or run out of bullets. So, with 10 rounds for each run you can miss yet still have enough bullets to take down all the targets.  If a real bowling pin falls over but not off the table you must shoot it off the table or incur a 3 second penalty. The object of the game is to shoot fast, and knock down all the pins.

Last Saturday, I had a good score of 4.1 sec plus 4.08 sec with my Ruger 22 semi-auto pistol for a total of 8.18 seconds hitting all the targets!! On my second round I used my Ruger 9mm semi-auto.  I shot a 8.2 seconds and a 8.4 seconds for a total score or 16.6 seconds. The official scores will not come out until later this week, but I kept an eye on the other ladies scores at the match to see how we all were doing. I am almost positive my 22 and 9mm where the quickest and best scores.

In the photos, the first two show the actual bowling pins, the the rest you can just barely make out the steel plate bowling pins at the 15 yard range.  You will have to scroll to the right to see all the pictures.

If you get a chance, contact your local gun shop, or shooting range to see if they do or know of an organization that does bowling pin shoots.  You may also try a "Google" , and watch "YouTube" for shoots.

They really are fun, and good for the whole family.  At this shoot there are normally 4 to 5 youngsters, both boys and girls.  Several ladies from the club, and the Shooting Divas in Northern Virginia also join in.  The men have a great time, shooting over and over and over trying to get the best score.

Take care.  Good shooting and good hunting.
M.

Fifth Week of Trap League, wish I had not shown up :(

Hi all : )

Unfortunately I did not do well last night at the Trap League shoot. My team had to shoot at the 17 yard marker instead of the 16 yard marker as we had done over the past four weeks.  I could not believe that 3 feet could make such a difference.  I was off on my sighting.  I could not get on track. My team mates were also having trouble hitting targets.  I shot two 16's.  One of the other guys on my team shot two 16's, the other three shooters did a bit better thank goodness.

Maybe I will have to go out sometime this week and practice from the 17 yard marker, because that is where we will be shooting from next week

I am curious to see how we and the other 11 teams fared in the rankings.  We only have three more shoots and the league is over for the fall.

Take care.  Good shooting and good hunting.
M.