Deer stay away from hunting party

By Bill Bartusek

My friend, Jeff Rathman-ner, who owns a cabin near ours, had not shot a deer in two seasons. So I decided he could come and hunt the muzzleloader season with me.

I know a lot of landowners and felt I could get permission to hunt. My first surprise was that there were quite a few people hunting. So many of places I thought I could hunt were already spoken for.

So I decided we'd hunt the farm. We met early Friday and headed to the farm and sat through the first night without seeing anything. Then it started to snow.

Saturday broke bright and white. We drove around the farm looking for deer tracks and found none.

Once the deep snow comes deer bunch up and move to the best cover and food sources available. We didn't have either at the farm, a sign that they had moved out for the winter.

I called a friend and he reported the same. His deer had moved out. We did locate deer near where we hunt and noticed they started to move around Saturday afternoon.

We carefully picked stands in hopes of the deer coming by. We got close twice as the deer were just a block away.

Normally, you never see this, but with all the snow the deer feeding out in the field are easy to see. One deer fed near the road in broad day- light. We didn't have permission to hunt there and I'm almost positive the deer must have known that.

I would like to thank Lenny Adamek for helping us find the deer.

We also met Jeff Nerud who did some long range walking trying to drive deer to our stands.

By the way, Jeff Nerud harvested a nice doe on Sunday afternoon. Congrats, Jeff, you worked hard and deserved to be successful. For us, maybe next year.

Anglers are on the ice on many area lakes. There's lots of snow on the ice and I'm sure conditions on the lake are far from great. Cold is coming so that will help freeze things up. Be very careful when venturing out.

Good Luck!

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