Chassahowitzka Archery Hunt: High Waters and Deep Frustrations

My final set-up

"This is just ridiculous!" I thought to myself after letting an arrow fly at a doe at Chassahowitzka WMA. It felt like if I was in a tree with a bow in my hand I could do no wrong this archery season. I started the season with a Georgia hunt and successfully harvested a doe and a buck. Now in Florida it seemed I was off to the same kind of start.

From the beginning the hunt seemed destined for failure. I have hunted Chassahowitzka many times and am well familiar with the amount of hunting pressure and the low success rates. Me and my brother Jonny planned on scouting Citrus for it's November archery season, then do an evening hunt at  Chassahowitzka  just to get in a tree. With the ridiculously high water levels I knew that my old spots would require a boat to get to so my only scouting involved Google maps.

We arrived at the area late afternoon and I climbed a pine tree at the edge of a Cyprus swamp that formed a horseshoe around me. Jonny set up about 100 yards further down the edge. After sitting 20 minutes I just wasn't feeling it. I got down, walked pass Jonny, and after wandering around like an idiot for a half hour without finding a place that interested me, I climbed a Cyprus tree overlooking a main road. A half an hour later I could take the lameness of that set-up no more and I once again set out to move my climber stand.

Finally, I found a Cyprus swamp that surrounded a beautiful oak hammock. It looked like a place I would actually enjoy sitting. Once again I climbed a pine tree with my back to the swamp and peered into the oak hammock. A pair of bald eagles flew by me shrieking like crazy, I don't see that everyday. About 6 p.m. Jonny text me saying that there was a doe feeding right where I had originally set up. That's what I get for moving so much.

About 6:30 p.m. I heard something splashing loudly in the swamp behind me. I stood up and readied my bow as the anticipation grew. Soon I could see the visitors, two does coming toward the edge of the swamp. The first one stopped broadside quartering away at about 35 yards and there was a hole in the foliage giving me a clear shot. I released the arrow and the shot looked and felt good. She ran off about 30 yards along the edge and began splashing around in the water, then she stopped and all was silent. I assumed she was down for the count. The other doe ran deep into the swamp from where they came. After waiting a few minutes I called Jonny and told him I shot a doe. As I was talking she got up and ran off along the edge and out of sight.

After waiting a little longer I got down to look for my arrow and blood. When I got to where I shot her I was wading in water up to the top of my boots. If it was a pass through shot my arrow was somewhere in the mud under the dark brown water. I walked the edge of the swamp looking for blood till after dark with no success. Finally I had to call it quits. I am freshly reminded how frustrating bowhunting can be at times. After playing the whole situation over in my mind a hundred times I have to conclude that the high water levels were to blame. I had a clear shot, I practice shooting a lot and am confident at that range, I just can't blood trail a deer through knee deep water in the dark.

While the high water didn't seem to change the deer's travel patterns, it should be considered when bow hunting this season. Blood trailing a deer can be tough enough, add water and you've got a very frustrating experience.

Opening Week Buck 2012

A warm and muggy opening weekend of archery season in South Georgia gave way to a crisp, cool Monday morning. This was my last morning of the hunt and I was already more than satisfied as I had smoked a nice doe on opening morning. When my alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. I flirted with the idea of staying in bed; but that thought wouldn't last for long. After walking outside and feeling the cool air that had come in during the night I quickly gathered my gear and jumped into the truck.

Jacob and Noah were going to hunt the big club so I headed solo to the small lease we affectionately refer to as "Wayne's Property". The day before I had carved a trail with hedge trimmers to an area we call "the watering hole" and hung a lock-on stand in an oak tree. We used to access this area from the opposite side until Wayne's sister died and the family sold off the west side of our lease. So for the past year and a half we were cut off from this area by a 200 yard thick wall of brambles and underbrush. Carving a trail was not the easiest task and I'm sure I dropped a couple gallons of sweat in the process. I had sat the same stand in a thick creek bottom all weekend and I was ready for a change in scenery; but my expectations of seeing a deer near the watering hole that morning were not very high.

I was glad I brought my jacket as I enjoyed a beautiful sunrise in the stand on this cool morning. About an hour after sunlight I heard something crashing around in a thick hedge row in front of me. Picking up my bow I waited and continued to listen. After nothing showed itself I wrote it off for a bird or something. I did catch a little movement of branches but didn't want to raise my hopes too high.

Then, to my amazement, out popped a deer's head complete with dark chocolate colored antlers! I could see three nice tines coming off both sides and I assumed that with brow tines he was a nice eight pointer. Carefully grabbing my bow and standing up I kept my eyes on him as he emerged from the hedge row. Behind him was a smaller buck that I didn't look at twice. I had tunnel vision on the first buck. He began quickly walking right towards me. I drew my bow and followed him with my top pin. By the time he stopped he was nearly under my stand quartering sharply towards me.

Aiming between the buck's shoulder blades I released the arrow. To my amazement he simply dropped! I had clipped his spine leaving him paralyzed beneath me. After two more carefully placed shots (I don't like watching anything suffer) he was expired. For the second time on opening week I was blessed with a clean bow kill with no blood trailing required. When I climbed down and examined him I found that he was a beautiful six point, being that he lacked brow tines. While no monster, I was proud to take him with a bow.

I still have one buck left in Georgia that must have at least 4 points on one side and I am going to hold out for a true monster buck. I was hoping to catch up with a couple giants we had on camera last year but when I checked my camera I discovered it had a bad SD card. So I'll have to wait for next time to see who else is on the property this year.

I arrived back at camp before Jacob and Noah and I quickly hid my buck behind the cleaning station. When they returned I waited a bit to tell them. Finally I said, "My hunt sucked; look, I ruined another new broad-head." I Showed Jacob an arrow with a busted broad-head covered in flesh and blood. The look on his face was great! Then the showing off began. As I cleaned my buck Jacob and Noah cleaned up camp and before Noon we were on the road and heading home. Hunting season has barely started and it is looking to be an epic season for me. I hope my good fortune continues, but even if it doesn't I can't complain. I'm a blessed man!

Opening Morning Doe

I've been trekking up to South Georgia for the opening weekend of archery season for the past seven years or so, and until this year, I've never even seen a deer from the stand on the opening weekend. My wife would wonder out loud why I keep going just to sit in a tree with my bow and get bit by mosquitoes. My answer was simple, "If I keep at it, sooner or later things will turn my way."

Well, this past weekend it payed off. This year I dropped my membership to the big lease and kept a small 60 acre lease with my brother Jacob. I decided to take a less is more mentality to the property and pretty much just left it alone all off-season. Opening morning I slipped into a stand I hung in a thick creek bottom last Spring. After sitting for an hour and a half, it seemed to be shaping up to be a pretty uneventful morning. To pass time I began studying the topo map on my iPhone when I caught movement to my left. I looked over to see a doe at 20 yards standing broadside. As I slowly reached over to grab my bow, another doe that I hadn't seen caught my movement and ran off into the thicket, this put the first doe on high alert. She began to stomp the ground as I slowly drew my bow. Just when I reached full draw and began to settle my pin behind her shoulder, she busted off. I was bummed!

I was sitting there thinking how I had blown a perfect opportunity. Ten minutes later I again caught movement to my left. This time I was ready. A big fat doe began to walk across the creek at 24 yards. As her head went behind a branch I drew my bow. She took one more step and stopped. I placed my top pin right behind her shoulder and let it fly. "Thwack!" She jumped up, kicked out her back legs and crashed into the thicket from whence she came.

After waiting 40 minutes I decided to get down and look for blood. When I got to where I shot her at all it took was one look into the thicket to see her white belly. She didn't run more than 25 yards! It was a perfect slightly quartering away shot that went in right behind her shoulder and broke her other shoulder on exit. I am very please with my new T3 mechanical broad-heads by G5.

Jacob and his son Noah were hunting the big lease so I had a long drag back to the truck with a fat 130 pound Georgia doe. After a really tough season last year it felt great to open this season with a successful bow hunt and get some good eatin' in the cooler.    

Ready For Archery Season!

I can almost feel the cool breeze against my face and smell the clean crisp air as I think about sitting in a tree stand overlooking an overgrown clear-cut, crisscrossed with deer trails on my Georgia hunting lease. But before I experience cool breezes over big clear-cuts I will first have to earn the right of passage with sweaty-butt sits in the mosquito infested creek bottoms. Yeah, I'm talking about archery season.

It's almost here and I couldn't be more ready! True it's hot, the mosquitoes are terrible and the deer don't really move during daylight hours; but it's hunting season! It's the start of something great! Sure, I usually come home empty handed but I will never succeed if I don't keep trying. This time next week, Lord willing, I'll be sitting in a lock-on with my Therma-cell purring, hoping a deer comes wandering through a thick creek bottom on my little 60 acre lease in South Georgia.

Since the deer don't move much at all during daylight hours in September where I hunt, I'm planning on sticking to a really thick area along a creek bottom. I've never hunted this area of the lease, actually never even explored it in the six years I've had the property. It wasn't till turkey season that I hacked a path into the creek bottom and hung a lock on. As I was screwing in steps, a big bodied buck came walking right to my tree at 1 p.m. in the afternoon. It's one of those spots that is so hard to get to that people just haven't set foot there in years. I'm hoping to catch a deer unawares and have an opportunity to try out my new T3 broad-heads.

Last year's trail cam pics on small lease

I did get a chance to visit the property last week by way of a detour on my family vacation to North Georgia. While my wife and kids waited in the mini-van, I quickly filled my two feeders located in areas I will be gun hunting later in the season and set up a couple trail cams. I'm very interested to see what shows up. Last year we had about five bucks frequenting the feeders and two of them were monsters. The biggest was a heavy ten point that broke off his right main beam in front of his G2 early in the season. The second was a tall main frame eight with split G2's. I know the big ten survived the season because one of the farm workers found his shed antler in the Spring. Besides the two big boys, there were two young seven pointers, one of which was very wide and also a fork buck. I'm hoping to catch these guys on camera and see how they have progressed.

I have been shooting my Matthews Switchback XT a lot the past few days and I think I've scraped off all the rust! I picked up some new arrows and broad-heads at the archery shop and a jumbo size Therma-cell refill pack and cleared out the light tags in my local Wal-Mart. Just one more week of work before I meet up with my brother Jacob and head up to Georgia to start the season off! Stay tuned as I have a feeling it's going to be a killer year!