Deer Season 2005 Summary Letter
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"Tough but Good"
Well it was another great year at Paradise, not a lot of monsters shot like I wanted, but overall, not a bad year. The weather wasn’t very cooperative though, but what can a man do about that. Nothing, but grit his teeth and “git ’er done”. Eighty-degree temps and 30 to 40 mile an hour winds and what do we get, the biggest deer of the year, that’s what! Don Larson of MN. Takes this dandy of a buck home with him to put on his wall. Way to go Don, a 150-inch, 9 point. His buddy, Scott, also took home some dandy memories of some nice bucks that he saw, but just didn’t get ’em in quite close enough. Next year Scottie’s going to beam one up, I’ll bet’cha. Claudio also got a terrific buck, that baby scored nearly 140-inches. Claudio is one happy dude, and he’s already working on 3 more guys for next year. So you better not hesitate or you might be too late. The Chief here (that’s me) is not going to listen to talk anymore. Talk is cheap. Money is what is going to get your name on the list from now on.
P.A. is also trying to have more bow hunters and less gun hunters and we made a good shift in that direction this year. From 2005 on, we are taking no more than 10 to 12 gun hunters. So, all you bow hunters have got to help make this possible by bringing your friends out and joining in on the FUN. We will have to take a few more bow hunters to help even this out. Get to talkin’, or better yet, some of you gun hunters put away those fire sticks and bring out the Hoyt or Matthews or PSE or whatever the heck your shootin’ and bring-it-on. Get your buddies to put their money where their mouth is and let them see for themselves what they’ve been missing. Hey, some years are tougher than others, but that’s why we call it huntin’. We had 24 bow hunters in the month of Nov. and out of those, 12 had an opportunity to fling an arrow. That is 50% folks; just think if we had some normal weather for a change, what we could do. Out of those 12, only seven arrows were true to their mark. We are pretty sure that 2 of the 5 that we did not find, will undoubtedly live to see another season, I hope. Twelve opportunities out of 24, I can live with that. Hey, it’s not as easy as it looks on TV. I had a good friend tell me that he thinks Kansas gets a bad rap. People see on TV these guys coming to Kansas and “just like that,” they kill a monster buck. But wait a minute, you’re not seeing the whole picture, if you could only see all of the footage from all of the other cameras that were running out here at the same time, it wouldn’t be quite so exciting. How many awesome kill scenes would there be compared to boring ones? Not many. That’s how, “he said,” we get the bad rap, so to speak. People think it’s easy, and it isn’t. I know homeboys that have hunted for 20 years at least, and might have two or three and maybe a real lucky one might have four trophies on the wall. That’s it! It amazes me when I think back of all the people I have had hunting with us and told them that I was jealous of them. They had only been out here maybe 1 or 2 years (that’s 6 or 12 days) and some maybe only one or two days and yet a couple, less than an hour and they are taking back a buck bigger than I have ever killed and mine ain’t no slouch either. All I know is we just keep making dreams come true year after year. Some may just be memories of monsters they encountered. Some years more trophies are taken than others and that is to be expected, it’s fair chase, but our percentage stays high year after year and that is what it takes. Several friends go home each year with one of their goals met, a large Kansas Whitetail. I do know one thing for sure, because I’ve heard it dozens of times, they always let out this huge sigh of relief when it’s all over and done. There they are, kneeling down, staring at those antlers. You can see their mind working, flashing by memories, like a slide show gone wild. Their facial expressions change as they go from the antlers back and forth to the visions that are already getting blurred. That folks, is what it’s all about.
I sure wish more of you guys would get together and come out and help annihilate some more of these coyotes. I have two groups coming, but that’s not enough. Well we did have two guys come out for our late bow season, (last week of the year). But it went a lot like the rest of the year, mid 60’s, breezy and dry and not a whole lot of movement in the daylight hours. One of our hunters might have gotten one if our property would have gone a little further East, he didn’t realize that wasn’t our property across this old fence. So, he told Mike right where they were traveling back and forth; he had the tree all picked out to use and everything. He had been observing all of this activity about 150 yards down this valley from his stand. Boy was he bummed when Mike told him the news. He did see one real nice buck with two other smaller bucks though and they were heading right up the valley towards him, but the biggest one decided to take a different route and split off. Of course the smaller two came right by him. I saw a little hint that some therapy may be needed here, but so far he is doing well. We also had a little sick-fest going on that last week. All three of us were sick at one time or another. That sure didn’t help matters any. Mathew McDougall stayed healthy though, and he went out all week, hunted from the same stand, I might add, and he saw a monster buck two days in a row. First time it was 300 hundred yards away and the next day about 150 yards away. So sad for him, but that was the last day of the season. Anyway, we at least know the approximate vicinity where someone will be setting next year. (Thanks to late season scouting, by Matthew). Those are the signs you want to remember come next season. Cause he’ll probably be back, will you?
Watch for us on TV after July 1, 06. “Game and Gear”, on the Men’s Channel, with host Heath Painter and camera man, Ben Steiger, as they switch roles and both take a buck from the same tree stand with a bow and arrow. We will also be on the show, “The Fever” with host Mark Scroggens. On this show Pro Staff teammate, Jason Michael takes a 134-inch whitetail with a bow and arrow.
River Valley is also putting out its second video, Head Hunters II, and P.A. should have several turkey hunts on it. All three deer and the turkeys were taken in the year of “2005”. Also take a look River Valley’s new product line. www.rivervalleygamecalls.com
