A day outdoors - Sunday 12/11/11

Just some pictures and notes from nearly a full day spent outdoors with family and friends.

We hunted for geese in the morning, but with bright, sunny, bluebird skies it was difficult to find any birds that wanted to come and play. We saw a few ducks, and a fair amount of Canada geese that waited until a few hours after sunrise to get up and spread their wings, but nothing fell from the skies.

The rest of the local wildlife was on the move however, with several deer being watched from our layout blinds tucked in amongst the cut corn stubble...

After the deer moved through, a curious coyote kept coming out of the standing corn, cutting across a bean stubble field, and hunted along the fence row. The coyote did this about 3 times before Troy decided that the lack of birds in the sky meant that now was the opportune time for him to make his first coyote kill. With the wind in our favor, he stalked down the edge of the corn, and laid prone in the weeds for a good 20 minutes, laying in wait for the coyote to make one more last approach through the open field.

Well, after waiting it out on the frost covered floor, he had enough and returned to the layout blinds. As we stood around watching empty skies and sipping on steaming coffee filled thermos lids, guess who popped out into the field again? Not 30 yards from Troy's ambush spot. Yep, the coyote... Figures.

Later in the afternoon, my son was in tow as I wanted to head out to the M2 Farm and get a ground blind set up along one of the heavily used trails that cuts through the center of the property. We got to the farm, gathered our gear and headed out for the afternoon. It would be his first deer hunt.

The action was slow. Actually non-existent would probably be the best way to describe things, but we had a good time despite not seeing any deer. Well, I never saw any deer. My son on the other hand claims that he saw a few deer, but they were way off in the woods and out of sight every time I leaned forward in my chair to look. Oh well, deer or no deer, we had a good afternoon together.

Dad, there's deer right back there, way in the woods! I'm serious. I saw 'em!