Thirteen Birds Down  In

2010!!

Youth Hunt Success!!

It’s been extremely hectic around here the last 10 days, so I’m going to try and catch you up with the 2010 turkey season. As of Tuesday night, April 27, we have filmed 10 birds hit the ground. We still have four more tags to fill, so we are going to be out there every chance we get until we run out of tags, people to film or time!! Stay tuned and I’ll update the other pictures in the coming days.

Selling some dvds

Well it’s getting to be the end of March and we have been busy making new food plots, shed hunting and gearing up for this years turkey season. The youth turkey hunt drawing is less than a week away and we have been blown away by the amount of participants that we have had. Also, we have been making a new food plot and will upload some pics of it here in the coming days. We had a great time in Indy and appreciated everyone stopping by the booth, we cant wait to get out in the turkey woods, so we can lay down some awesome longbeard action to wrap up Ridge Runners II.

Here are some pics from the Indy deer classic, check back in a couple days and we’ll have new foodplot pics up.

Meeting and Greeting

One of the many monsters to come by our booth

L-R Casey, Kevin, Jason and Corey

We tagged out this morning in a little over an hour! After doing some scouting tonight, we are heading back out in the morning to get the limit again and maybe some more BLING!!

Hello everyone. The Indiana deer season is coming to a close, but we are still at it. We still have Kentucky and Illinois buck tags and we have until Jan 17th to punch em…So stay with us and have a safe and happy new years.

Redemption meaning the act of redeeming or having been redeemed.

If you have followed our blog throughout the 2009 deer season or watched the weekly broadcast on Midwest Whitetail you would already know, that prostaffer Casey Jones’ quest for a mature buck has been quite an adventure.

As of the morning of December 17^th, Casey has hunted or filmed 49 total days starting way back on September 12th in Kentucky. During those 49 days and mixing in all the emotions that go with the fact that he’s had encounters with two 150 inch deer at 50 yards or less with two shots taken and no buck to show for it. Most hunters would have hung everything up and said, “maybe next year.” Most guys, don’t have deer season on the brain though for 365 days a year either. Whether it be scouting, checking trail cams, studying aerial photos or just trying to get one step ahead of that next mature buck. There is no “maybe next year” in Casey’s vocabulary, because his season ends when his buck tag is filled and on December 17^th, thats exactly what happened.

 When the morning broke, there was a cold south wind, blowing in Casey’s face 25 feet up in one of his best Muddy stands. The first doe came by at 15 yards following close behind, were two 1.5 year old buck. Then around 9:30, the main show was just about to start. The woods lite up with bucks.” The first thing I saw,  was antlers walking straight toward me. After a quick look through the Nikon X’s I knew the first buck was a definite shooter.”. Their was not one buck, but three all walking straight towards his stand the second and third buck are both really nice deer but not near as big as the leader. The deer walk to about 20 yards from the stand, then take a hard right, quartering away from the tree. When the leader gets out to about 60 yards, Casey stops him then makes sure the buck is still in the viewfinder of the camera, takes perfect aim and pulls the trigger. When all the smoke clears, Casey is looking at something he hadn’t saw all year; a monster buck laying on the forest floor after the perfect shot.

 The deer being a giant 8 pt with a very wide spread of 21 inches and g2’s measuring 12 and 11 inches, g3’s are both 7 inches, the deer was green-scored at 143 inches with nearly no deductions. Getting back to redemption, I think Casey’s hunt is the meaning and he definitely came back in a strong way and totally redeemed himself.

 The footage is excellent and will be featured on Midwest Whitetail-Indiana Thursday, December 31st. Acorn Ridge’s next video release Ridge Runners 2, will also feature this hunt.

Well everyone, it’s been almost a month since I’ve been back on here to do a blog and it has been a crazy month. I’m going to do my best to catch you up on what has been happening here at AROA.

First off, “Thriller” our number 1 hitlist buck was taken by prostaff member Brook Dahlin on November 22. It wasn’t your classic rut hunt scenario, but more along the lines of tracking a doe that his friend shot the previous night and BOOM! Brook jumps Thriller up out of his bed and does some sort of Rambo sneak attack move on him and makes a perfect 50 yard shot on him. Everything happened so fast, that the actual kill is not on video.  The buck, however is a brute and scored an impressive 179 5/8. 

Kevin Fuhrman had an encounter with “BIG MAC” on December 6. He was hunting out of a “ Shooting Shack” and was overlooking  a picked bean field hoping to harvest a doe, however out steps Big Mac with four does and the closest he got was 175 yards. Kevin held his Omega’s crosshairs on the buck’s shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The shot was low and a clean miss. We got a cuddeback  pic of Big Mac last Thursday so he is still roaming the woods, hopefully someone can get another chance at him before the season is over.

Next, I’ll catch you up on a very sore subject in the AROA circle and that is what happened to me last Saturday morning. Cameraman Dave Brown and myself were hunting one of our lease properties here in Martin County. We had deer all over us the entire morning, including 2 shooter bucks. The first shooter buck was chasing does around us for over an hour, but never chased them into range, until one the mature does got down wind of us…Game Over! However, it wasn’t long until a good looking 3.5 year old 10pt chased a doe within range and I let the T/C Encore bark!! Finally, we got a mature buck down on camera!!! Wrong!! Somewhere in the commotion of swinging the camera arm around the tree and relocating the buck through the viewfinder, Dave gave me the “I’m on him” phrase and it was too late after that! It’s not a complete loss though; it’s a great deer and was a great hunt. I still have my Illinois bow tag in my pocket, so DB and myself will be finding ourselves in the Land of Lincoln pretty soon trying to get some redemption.

My buck scored 135 1/4.

Finally, Casey Jones did it again!! YES….I’m being serious!! Back on Nov 16th Casey had a 30 yard shot at a 145-150 class 10pt and grazed his belly!?! Now, last Saturday, December 12th Casey was face to face with a monster, at least  5 1/2  year old, main frame 8 with massive split brows at 50-60 yards!!! Yeah it happened again, except this time it was on a bigger buck and he was using his T/C Omega! He almost missed this buck, but just grazed him right behind the front leg. There were only a few spots of blood, mainly just white hair.  The buck is definitely still alive and should be fine. We are running extra trail cams, so hopefully we can get a trail cam pic of him, so we can get a better game plan together on “Nightmare.”

All of this madness will be on next week’s Midwest Whitetail- Indiana show. We are still out there every chance we get, so stay tuned and keep checking back!!

This last week was rather depressing,  prostaff members Casey Jones and Gil Garrett each got their chance at taking mature whitetails for this ‘09 deer season, but both were unsuccessful. Casey had a very nice 10pt that will push upper 140’s, but hit the deer low and was unable to recover the deer. The shot on video looks great, maybe just a little low. However, hardly any blood was found and after searching the area we were unable to find the deer.  Gil Garrett was hunting in Illinois, trying to fill his Out- of -State archery tag, even though the Indiana shotgun season was underway.  Everything was going as planned as a 140 class 8pt made his way across a field towards his decoy and it continued to go well, up until he released the arrow. His arrow glanced off a small limb, causing the shot to be back and high. The deer bleed a ton and even crashed in a finger within sight of the treestand. However, once arriving to the area where the deer was last seen the deer was nowhere to be found, so Gil backed out and waited till the following morning to recover the deer. The buck’s bed was found and there was a lot of blood in it, however the trail was really spotty and eventually ended. We looked all over, circling back and griding the area, but the buck was never recovered. This is a very depressing blog to write, but this type of stuff does happen occasionally and all you can do is get back out there and if the opportunity presents itself again, capitalize on it. 

Here are some trailcam pics of the two bucks that got away from us.

casey 10pt

 

Gil 8pt

 

Jason Bauer's 9pt miss

Hello everyone, over the past week we’ve tried to be in the woods as much as possible. We’ve passed up a handful 125-135 inch 3 year olds and we’ve also had a miss thrown into the mix as well. It’s been really warm the last 4-5 days and we haven’t been seeing much movement in the deer woods except for right after daybreak and a little before dark. Hopefully it will cool down here soon.

Shotgun season starts saturday so stay safe and good luck.