Productive Week

Well, it's mid-January and the Alabama whitetail rut is in full swing. Now is when you need to spend every spare moment in the woods, so it made the 3 days spent at the ATA show in Columbus, Ohio seem like 3 weeks. Regardless, the ATA was a great show and gave me an opportunity to spend time with the UNJ crew and great people in the outdoor business; Chuck Adams (bow hunting legend), Tim Wells (Relentless Pursuit), Wayne Burns (Outdoor Allstars) and Hank Parker Jr. to name a few...

By lunchtime Friday, I had the wagon packed

and was headed south. Three days of snow and Ohio temps was enough for a Bama boy.

Saturday at lunch, I met up with Glenn, my camera man and set up on the north end of a standing corn field to make the evening hunt. It had rained most of the morning, so I had hopes of catching the buck re-working his scrapes that were scattered around the perimeter of the corn field. We chose to use a ground blind setup because we didn't want to take a chance of getting caught in a rain shower with video equipment. While Glenn got the camera setup ready, I put out cotton balls saturated in doe estrous and buck urine in an area about 75 yards in front of the blind. Once the setup was ready, I did a little excited buck grunting and a couple of snort wheezes. About 45 minutes later, I caught movement to my left coming through the standing corn. A 1 1/2 year old 6 point was making his way through the cornfield, nose in the air. Normally, this buck would have been safe but the only thing in my wild game freezer at the time was a bobcat that hasn't made it to the taxidermist yet. The thought of grilled backstrap got him an all expense paid trip to the processor. Well, I've got 2 buck tags left and 2 weeks to fill them. Game on!