Willowpine November/December Newswire

November and December are always the craziest time of the year for all of us here at Willowpine Outdoors. Weather changes, firearm season, orange hats, hot weather, pushed ducks, breaking ice, and the whitetail rut. Some of our Prostaffers including myself have put venison in the freezer. I decided to harvest a young buck, so now I can focus on duck season. For y'all that haven't harvested a deer, it's getting down to the wire, but it's not quite over yet. This season was a season of firsts for me, and my recent harvest was the first deer I've ever shot by myself. It was the first deer I've shot from the ground, first deer I've shot at my new Avon property, and first deer I've harvested with my new 44mag H&R HandiRifle. With a pintail or any banded duck on the mind, hopefully this season will continue to be a season of firsts.

November / December Newswire Contents
1. Proposed Rule Changes to Indiana Hunting
2. Duck Season Review
3. Illinois Has Been Good to Me -By Mark Fink
4. Late Season Whitetails
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IDNR OFFICIAL PROPOSED RULE CHANGES WEBPAGE (CLICK HERE)

VOICE YOUR OPINION (CLICK HERE)

WHAT OTHER IN HUNTERS ARE SAYING (CLICK HERE)

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In hopes that my regular season duck hunts would yield the same results as a successful teal season, I had high hopes for the 2012 duck season.  Unfortunately, I've only got 2 more weeks + a week in January to have another good duck hunt.  This season is shaping up to be an almost exact repeat of the 2011 season. With temps reaching 70 degrees in December, there is no reason for ducks to be pushed here to Indiana. That has left my colleagues and I hunting stale ducks all month long. These educated birds are not as easy to trick into the decoys, and we've been hunting for the chance at pulling the trigger just once.  In years past, we hunted with the chance of limiting out. We've still got a couple weeks left, and like mentioned that week in January.  The season can quick change with a steady push of new ducks, but that's all left in the hands of Mother Nature.

Opening Day - November 3 & 4, 2012

Opening weekend, we had a reserve draw at IN's Goose Pond FWA.  We were guaranteed the 6th pick for the Saturday morning draw. That pick would also get us the same spot for Sunday. At 2:30am on Saturday my alarm sounded, and I was up and ready to for the 2 hour drive south.  We were excited for this weekend, even though it was all I could do to pull away from the whitetail rut. We were met with a packed house of easily over 100 hunters trying to get a spot that morning.  The group with the 3rd reserve picked the same pool that we acquired.  Since they had picked before us, we knew that they'd be headed right where we wanted to be. No biggie since it's a good size pool anyways.

The morning was cold with heavy rain, hail, thunder, and lightning. Nonetheless we made it across the waves and into a set of cattails. We were set up in plenty of time.  We knew we were hunting mainly teals, gadwalls, woodies, mallards, pintails, and wigeons; and not a whole lot of them. With this in mind we put out only about twenty decoys.  We had a mixed spread of Final Approach mallards, Green Head Gear greenwing teals, and GHG wigeons. Also since it was early season and a daybreak hunt, we set a mojo decoy. With the wind pretty decent, we didn't really need any motorized decoys, but since we had it we put out a paddling wonder duck and quiver butt feeder.

The sky had changed from black to dark blue, and on the horizon we could see the mix of greys and whites as the overcast day began to show itself. At a half hour before sunrise we began hearing shots on the main pools. It was officially duck season. It wasn't soon after that we had a speedy pair of wood ducks buzz our decoys. My buddy pulled up and dropped the hen as she was the one to provide a shot. We waited for a half hour working ducks, and none coming in. As ducks were landing near the far bank, we realized that the wind had changed directions. Our friends that hunted the same pool were at the far end and exact opposite of us, and they had been shooting since dawn. We had to move otherwise we'd be shooting ducks in the back, which is quite the feat. Not to get too close to the other group we moved about a hundred yards away from where we started, and set up in the smart weeds. There we had more shots, and harvested a couple gadwalls. It turned real slow around 9am, and we were hoping the other group would limit soon so we could move to their end of the pool. We looked down towards the other group and could see a huge pile of ducks on the water. Since daybreak we'd seen ducks on that end of the pool. It wasn't 45 minutes later that we saw them picking up gear. We moved to that end of the pool, but set up on the opposite side of where they were. We didn't want to spoil their hunt for Sunday. That's when it turned on. After the move we started with no mojo, and didn't quite get the response we wanted. Putting it back out was the trick, and birds were decoying after that. We ended up with mallards, more gadwalls, couple shovelers, and the wood duck from early. Satisfied and soaked from the AM rains we decided to head for the hotel in Linton. We harvested a total of 12 ducks on Saturday.

Sunday was a much different hunt. We had clear skies, little winds, and we knew where to set up at daybreak. We didn't get into the far end of the pool because we knew the other guys would be back. We set up about half way between them and where we started on Saturday.  The morning daybreak was beautiful and shooting started immediately. Again we put out the mojo and a few less decoys than the day before. At shooting time my partner dropped a drake greenwing teal, and not long after a hen GW teal. The other guy with us connected with a hen shoveler, and shortly after a gorgeous drake gadwall.  "There's your mountable gadwall" I told him as I picked up his duck for him.  I found a hen mallard, and hoped to find her drake. Similar to the day before it shut off around 9am, and we waited for more ducks. We had some high fliers, but nothing that really wanted to work.  By 11am we decided to pick up and head home.  We had a total of 6 ducks on Sunday, which made our grand total of 18 for the weekend.  Not a bad way to start the 2012 season.

Here are some pics from Willowpine Friends and Staffers from their 2012 duck season!

Share your duck and goose hunting pictures with us by posting them on our Facebook page at Willowpine Facebook Page (Click Here)

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Its been a long couple of seasons learning the lay of the land, and hunting a new farm in Illinois. But this year all the hard work seems to be paying off! As some will recall, I filled my archery tag in IL on my very first sit, Saturday October 13th, two hours after climbing in the stand. After the excitement of that kill settled, I was left with the reality that I was tagged out until firearms season. I could’ve taken it easy and just waited for the IL firearm opener but I decided that I would continue to put my time in over there every chance I got, running cams and trying to stay on top of where the big boys were hanging out so that maybe I could connect on a good one come gun season.

On the weekend of October 20th, I placed 3 cams out and hunted. It was nice to just watch the critters and have no concern about shot opportunities. The following Saturday I returned to the farm but due to work commitments, I could not get there till mid-morning. When I arrived I went to my cam I had placed very near my stand I call the Pipeline, pulled the card and checked it. Among all the various deer pics were two somewhat blurry photos of what appeared to be a very nice buck. He had passed through a half-hour after daylight at 20 yards from my Pipeline stand. “I hope he makes it through till gun season,” I thought to myself. That night I sat in the Pipeline stand till legal light ran out and climbed down. While rolling up my pull-up rope I heard a deer approaching. I quickly stashed the rope and readied my binos. The deer stopped at about 12 yards from me giving me a few seconds to locate him in the darkness with my binos and OH MY, this was a good one. I couldn’t tell how many points but I could see lots of bone and good mass. I suspected it was the same buck that had come through that AM.

Fast forward to Wednesday November 14th, two days before the gun opener. Dad had gone over the previous day to archery hunt and this morning he was sitting in a stand we dubbed The Island. I had a trail cam located about 200 yards SW of this stand viewing the edge of a large CRP field, where a couple of well used trails connected the CRP and adjacent block of timber. I was on my way over that day at mid–morning when I got a call from Dad and he proceeded to tell me about how he misjudged the distance on a very large buck and sent his crossbow bolt sailing cleanly over his back. He said the buck didn’t spook but after a couple of minutes it casually walked off. He also said this buck had a slight limp in one of his hind legs.

The next day I went in 60 yards north of the CRP cam and 200 yards west of the Island stand and placed my last hang-on stand. I named it Old No. 25 due to it being located next to a 1960’s era oil rig that had been painted with No.25 to identify it. On the way out I pulled the CRP cam card so I could view it later at camp with everyone. That night as we were going through the photos, this photo popped up and everyone at the same time went WOW!

If you look closely you can see a dark spot on his right rear hindquarter, what I believe to be an injury. This combined with the date/time stamp convinced me without a doubt that this was the buck Dad had missed the day before.

Opening morning found me in the Old No. 25 stand. Just after daylight I had a 130 class ten pointer come cruising by not once but twice within 30 yards, just tempting me to shoot him but I kept telling myself not to, that there are bigger bucks running around here.

Two hours into the morning I hear some deer coming from my left, I grab my muzzleloader and get ready only to see four does making their way to the CRP field. The front Nanny was on high alert, cautiously picking her way through and looking off to the East towards the Island stand, obviously she had busted someone there in the recent past, luckily I was in a new stand location. Just as I was starting to relax I noticed a large set of antlers floating up from the bottoms, a big buck following his girls to the CRP field. I normally get pretty excited when I see a good deer and have to calm myself but for some reason this time I was as cool as a cucumber and autopilot. My biggest concern was the lead Nanny, I just knew at any second she was going to bust me and blow the whole deal! I managed to get into shooting position and at 60 yards I touched off the ML and sent a Barnes TEZ cruising thru his boiler room. He ran about 40 yards and piled up.  
-Written by Mark Fink

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The 2012 deer season is well past the halfway point, and is now headed towards being over.  The rut has settled down, and now the deer are focusing on building fat for the harshest part of the cold Indiana winter. If you haven't harvested the deer you want, then no reason to worry, the late season can be a fun one.

Buck I Harvested on Last Day of Firearm Season

The last few years I haven't spent much time in the woods during muzzleloader or late archery season. The majority for my late December and early January hunting is spent in a duck blind. This year as the Indiana firearm season was headed towards being over, I began to check my muzzleloader supplies thinking I'd be hunting the late season. I didn't necessarily want to hunt the late season, but circumstances and meat supply displayed that I might have to. It didn't matter all too much since the odd and warm Indiana Autumn was proving to be a dud for duck hunting. Luckily on the very last day of Firearm season I decided to harvest a young buck.  This filled my freezer for the winter, but my deer season is far from over.  I'm still on the hunt for a doe, and I'd like to get my wife on a nice late season whitetail buck.  To me there are two major factors to pursuing these late season deer. The first being food, and the second being young does. Here is how I'll be setting up for the late Indiana whitetail season.

The weather is sure to get much colder as we head into Christmas. The deer know this, and they began feeding nearly most of the day. The bucks have run themselves ragged during the rut, and they too have to began feeding heavily to replace the calories they've worked off in the rut.  I once read that some bucks come very close to dying by the end of the rut. Some bucks even do die if conditions make it hard for them to get food. Focusing on feeding areas will produce the best results during the winter months.  Does will began to herd up, and it won’t be uncommon to see 10 or more deer feeding together. If you're still after a buck, then go ahead and let those does feed while you wait. A lot of times bucks will hang in the underbrush as the does work the feeding area over. They're basically letting the doe act as the point man of the herd. The buck will wait for awhile watching the does feed, and waiting to see if the feeding area is safe. When they move in with the doe, that's your time to harvest. Obviously you know the best places on your property for feeding areas.  In case you're unsure, I'd say the best bet is a cut cornfield. I put two stands up on my most active cornfield, and that allows me to play the wind no matter the direction it blows. Same as in archery and gun season, you MUST play the wind. The deer are even wearier of human scent since so many hunters have been in and out of the woods since Oct.1st.  This year with the warm autumn we've had, I've found that my cut bean fields are producing small sprouts of clover and other vegetation.  If it continues to be warm and produce this vegetation, then the bean fields can be killer too. Not often do we get fresh vegetation to hunt over in December. Oak trees are usually picked over by this time of year, but it won’t be uncommon to find a deer checking for lost or buried acorns. If you have an accessible food plot, this too will produce whitetail activity. Don't forget that with every meal we eat, we usually have a drink with us. Deer will do this too.  If ponds, creeks, lakes, etc are frozen over, then look for a place that has some open water. This could become a hot spot until it snows.  In review the 3 major factors to this part of late season hunting is food, water, and wind.

New Rub I Found on 12/02/2012

The second part of late season whitetail hunting is that the yearling does will be began to come into heat. This becomes what many call the 2nd rut. It's also said that the does that didn't get bred in the first rut, also often come back into heat for a second chance. To be completely honest I've not had a whole lot of 2nd rut activity on my properties, which makes my knowledge and experience limited. However after doing some research and from what other hunters have explained, they swear by that this rut is a great time to be in the woods.  When I asked them questions about the 2nd rut they said they hunt it exactly the same as the first rut, but they put more of an emphasis on feeding areas.  I have noticed (this year especially) an increase of pre-second-rut activity as far as buck sign goes.  I've found new rubs, updated scrapes, and even saw a buck chasing a doe. Therefore I'm a believer, and I hope that on my property we can find a buck with 2nd rut on the mind.  

If you are still out in the woods chasing whitetails, then hopefully you'll find the one you're looking for.  In 2003 I harvested 5 deer total. 4 of those 5 deer were with a muzzleloader in the late season.  It can be a great season if you stick to feeding areas, and keep an eye out for rutting young does. The pressure from other hunters is WAY down, and some say it takes a fool to be in a tree stand when it is 10 degrees.  I've found that the only fools are the ones who think deer season is over when the rut is over.  Food, food, and more food will be the key to filling your tags before the season is out. Happy Hunting and Good luck!

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We appreciate your taking the time to read Willowpine Outdoors' November/December Newswire. We also very much appreciate your support in WPO. As mentioned above, we're always looking for people interested in contributing their writing, taking pictures, adding videos, etc. If you think you might like to do this, then please shoot us an email at willowpineoutdoors@gmail.com.  If you haven't already, please take a moment to add us as a friend on Facebook. If you like what we're doing, and want to support us, the best way is to tell a friend! Always remember that Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we can control our appetite. Merry Christmas & Happy New Years!  - Joey W. Buttram, Willowpine Outdoors

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