MHF US Northeast > Hunting Maryland

Yesterday's bow hunt

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Fat Boy:
Well I didn't see any deer, but at about 8:30 a.m. a fox strolled through and poked his nose in about every nook and crevice around my tree, ran along a deadfall and sat there a few minutes, then hopped down and decided to bed down 15 yards ahead of my tree stand.  He pawed some leaves away and did a few circles at the base of a tree making his bed, then layed down.  After grooming himself for about 15 minutes he tucked his nose under his tail and went to sleep.  None of the noises around alerted him (there is an apartment complex not too far away).  The only thing that woke him up was that I had to shift my butt in the stand to keep my legs from falling asleep and also once I sighed.  Needless to say, that I thought that having a fox near me the entire morning would at least be interesting it was a bit on the boring side watching him sleep.  Looking  back, it was fun, but what bothered me the most was that I didn't want to spook him for many reasons:

1)  I figured his scent would help my chances at a deer
2)  Any deer moving in from behind me would wake him (later proven to be not so true, more on that later in the post though).
3)  I wanted my brother to sneak in on it and maybe have a shot if he wanted.  I didn't take a shot because it was prime deer time when I had an opportunity and also when it bedded down I had too many branches in my way.  Plus, I was there to deer hunt not take a fox, so really he was entertainment for me.

So, the bad thing was I didn't want to spook this animal --- and --- I had to pee, real bad, so it was all I could do to keep still while my eyes turned yellow.  finally, at about 10:30 my brother calls me and I couldn't get to my phone (on vibrate) in time to answer and I obviously didn't want to talk and wake the fox up.  He calls me again and I try to answer, but apparently when the first call came in I accidentally turned on my ringer albeit not very loud, and this stupid ring tone goes off.  The funny thing is that the fox was oblivious to it all :o  So, I answer and quietly ask my brother to move toward me and I'll explain later. 

About 15 minutes of pee pain goes by and my brother appears.  I do hand signals to explain the situation, he gets it but I didn't think that he did, so I keep explaining via hand signals as he creeps closer and closer.  He moved within 20 yards and the fox woke up and snuck away.  My brother never saw him ??? he was that good at getting away.  This was the amazing thing though, that the fox was sound asleep until my brother cracked a twig.  Had he not done that, he probably could have gotten at least 10 yards closer because the entire time that fox had his nose under his tail.

All in all it was very cool but I nearly fell out of my tree stand climbing down because I had to pee so bad.

Didn't see no deer though!  Well, maybe tomorrow morning it'll be a deer hunt rather than a fox watch.  It's opening day of gun season in MD but my brother and I will be bow hunting again on bow only property.  It's the best time of year IMO other than the rut because you have things all to yourself.

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