Opening Week Starts Off Slow

Opening week of deer season has now come and gone, and unbelievably, none of our guests killed a deer. We started off slow last year too, but finished up strong with a couple of real monsters being taken by the end of the first week. Unfortunately it just didn’t happen this year, and once again proves why you can’t predict how the animals are going to move. Fortunately, all of our guests had a really great time with us and rebooked before leaving, so that says a lot about them for understanding that “there is NO guarantee in real free-range, fair-chase hunting “…

From talking to lots of fellow hunters around our area, the deer just shut down in much of the lowcountry this past week, so we weren’t the only ones to feel the pain of slow deer movement. And we knew from the moon phase and hunting charts that opening week wasn’t going to start during a good time, but we figured that it would still be OK. But then the low from the tropical storm moved in and sat on us for the entire week bringing rain and funky weather which lead to even worse deer movement than we had expected.

We kept thinking it would get better, but it didn’t. And that is just unbelievable since we have been seeing tons of good deer all summer, and we even had our bow hunters see quite a few great bucks just two weeks ago at the bow camp. However opening week’s bow camp hunters didn’t see any big bucks. They did fortunately see quite a few big hogs during daylight, and Patrick down from NC finally got some within 30 yards and stuck a nice sow.

The other hunters we had at our main lodge did see some good bucks, but most were on the way in to the stand in the dark or on the way out after dark. And the couple of good bucks that were seen during shooting hours didn’t stop long enough for clean shots! AGHHH… But again, that is REAL hunting.

We have a few hunters coming in this weekend, so I will keep everyone updated on how they do. But with opening week now over, we will get back to working on the properties so they are ready for the pre rut to start up around mid October when the majority of our guests will be down. We will also work on getting our cameras back out and running to capture some of our bucks on film for everyone to see. Until then, enjoy two neat pictures of big hogs feeding during shooting hours from the bow camp…

Jeff