RFRG Lonestar Chapter Update

It's been quite a while since my last update, so let me think about where to begin...

I was up to the Eagle River area in mid-October and booked a trip with Pete Stoltman to chase some of those giant fall Muskies. Pete and I really tried hard, but Mother Nature had other plans; it appears that temperatures in the mid-60's to low 70's will turn off a fall Muskie bite faster than you can say "fall Muskie bite". Nonetheless, it was some enjoyable time with my old buddy Pete and we did get to see a couple of Bald Eagles put on a fish catching show.

I returned to Wisconsin for the annual gun deer season and this time, the weather did not disappoint; lows around zero and highs most days in the low twenties. I do think I remember a heat wave came through on Monday morning and we may have made it all the way up to the freezing mark by Monday afternoon.
The property I hunt is about 16 miles north and west of St. Croix Falls, I think I can see Minnesota from my stand. This was the first year of our big "Management Plan", we had food plots put in during July and they were looking pretty good. Part of our management plan is to reduce the number of does on the property and to pass on all bucks that were smaller than 8-points. That didn't prove to be a problem, as I never saw a buck. I did shoot a doe, so I've got some meat for the freezer.

Right now, I know you're thinking to yourself "Lonestar Chapter Update, all he talks about is his trips to Wisconsin..."

The Saturday after I got back from the deer hunt, a buddy and I headed out to the lake for a little duck hunting. I'm not sure, but I think the duck hunting may be for the birds (pun definitely intended), getting up at 2am and heading out by 3am just ain't normal. We set out our decoy spread and by first light, the ducks were really flying. When I'm talking about really flying, I mean really flying: flocks of 4 dozen birds (like something you'd see in a duck hunting video) circling around and settling down just out of shotgun range. It seems that a couple of amateur callers, with just a dozen decoys out, can't compete with a couple hundred real birds just over a hundred yards away. Needless to say, we didn't connect on anything. I do, however, think that we may be moving our gear about 100 yards south. Texas has a split duck season, and the season will resume next Saturday, so I'll report back if we do any better.

This past Saturday, me and the same buddy headed out to do some feral hog hunting on the Army Corps of Engineer land around the lake where we do most of our catfishing. We found some promising signs of hogs, but no hogs on Saturday morning. Again, this wasn't a total loss, as we saw several deer that were absolutely the biggest deer I've ever seen in person. I've attached a few pictures (I hate that I can't attach the full-size images, as the smaller size does not do these deer justice) that we were able to take and you can see for yourself, these were some quality bucks! And now imagine this: These deer can be found within 10 miles of one-million plus people! I never would have believed we even had a deer in this county, much less several of them, if I wouldn't have seen them with my own eyes. These were not even the biggest we saw, two bigger ones were spotted, but we weren't able to capture them on film. Oh yeah, since this county doesn't have a hunting season for deer, I'm never going to get a shot at them...

I'm looking forward to the duck hunting season resuming and I've been keeping up with the catfishing forum daily, and it looks like the big ones are starting to show up (2 - 40+ pound fish this weekend), so I'll be plenty busy for the next several weekends. I'll keep everyone posted on the results.