Commitment to the Outdoors

Tuskegee, Alabama

Every outdoorsman that takes on the adventure of college enjoys the challenge of finding time to stay outdoors. For me, this was a very hard challenge. There were limited ways to fish and even less public property to hunt. Towards the end of my college years, I found the time to check out the local public hunting property at the Tuskegee National Forest. Here are a few of my stories from the Tuskegee National Forest. I was not able to take a deer or turkey on the property but I had several encounters with both.

November 6, 2011

After an unsuccessful start to my bow season back home I decided to begin hunting at the Tuskegee National Forest. The conception of any hunting strategy for an unfamiliar property begins with scouting and studying. While I was scouting the new property I was able to find a couple of fresh deer scrapes.

November 10, 2011

I decided to go back to the creek bottom where I found the fresh scrape a few days earlier. I got in the woods around 3:15 PM and the deer trail that I was hunting was so heavily used that it smelled of deer. The leaves were still wet from a rainstorm the night before and provided ideal conditions for a ground stalk. I moved east, up the creek bottom and spotted three doe. One of the deer spotted me and quickly ran through the leaf litter making no noise. I stood there motionless watching the remaining deer quickly work into the thick underbrush and out of sight. 

November 11, 2011

I went back to the creek bottom at the national forest this afternoon after school. I backtracked the doe that I saw yesterday which led me to an area of the national forest that I had not yet explored. I found an area where there was high grass creating a boundary between a swamp and a strip of hardwoods. This swamp was heavily traveled and I thought I could easily spot deer moving out of the swamp and into the strip of hardwoods at this location. I found a nice 60 yard shooting lane and began my hunt. At 5:00 PM it was too dark for a shot but I had a deer working in on me through the high grass. My ScentLok clothing allowed the deer to get within 30 yards when I had to leave. I stood up and the deer ran then stopped and looked back. I took one more step, the deer blew once and bounced out of hearing distance.

November 17, 2011

I went down to what became my favorite creek bottom this afternoon. We had a pretty bad storm yesterday afternoon and it brought colder weather with it. I thought with the falling temperature that the deer would move. I was wrong. The large temperature change brought high winds with it. The wind was swirling in the bottom all afternoon. I was fortunate to have it blowing in my face most of the time. Unfortunately, the high winds had the deer in the their beds all afternoon. I was able to spot a flock of turkeys on my hike out.

Hunting public land can be challenging and requires a commitment to the outdoors in order to become successful.