Long Overdue update...

Man, I thought I sucked before at updating. 2 months later, I'm finally getting around to posting again.

OK, about those pics on the last update.

The first picture is probably the nicest buck I've ever seen while sitting in a deer stand. I don't know how wide his spread is, but people that seem to "know" tell me 22-24 inches. The widest one I've ever killed is 18 inches, which is still quite nice by any standards. The big news is that I let him go. I estimated he was 3.5 years old and he was chasing a doe at the time (it was just at the beginning of the rut), so I elected to pass. Hopefully he bred lots of does and passed those big antler genes on. We'll see in the coming years. I do now have 2 deer at the processors, so it was a good year even if I didn't put my tag on the trophy buck.

The middle 2 pics are just pics of Matthew and I having a good time hanging around at the ranch. He loves that deer hunting.

The last picture is of the inside of my deer stand. It's called "Casa del Marko". It sits on the ground on the side of a hill, which gives a great view of the creek bottom below. Lots of deer come hang out in this area to eat corn from the feeder or oats from the food plot. Here's the rub. I hunt this stand more than any other stand, and have seen more deer here, but I've never killed any of them I see from this stand. Why? I don't know. It's almost like I prefer just watching these deer and taking their pictures.

In the deer stand, I have everything laid out that I need to keep comfortable for a few hours of deer watching. The shelf above the window is for things I don't really need once I get settled in. from the left, binoculars case, camera case, flashlight, range finder case, and wasp spray. Early in the season, we seem to have a bunch of wasps hanging out in the deer stands.

On the bottom shelf, on the left you can just see the blue edge of my snack cooler. I typically pack 2 diet cokes and a couple of Little Debbies. Snacks on the deer stand are a family tradition that goes way back. Next is the Diet Coke, walkman, binoculars, cell phone, and range finder. Cell phone you ask? Set to silent, we send text messages back and forth. The members of our family sometimes hunt a couple hundred miles apart, but we always give the play-by-play via text message (which might explain the low kill rate...)

I should say something about my rifle. It's a Winchester model 70 Super grade. It was a wedding gift from Shelly. Eat your heart out guys. Not only does she hunt, she also bought me a top notch rifle for the wedding gift. (I got to pick it out, but hey, give the girl credit for actually buying a gun).

Hold on, I have a couple more updates.