Pro Staff Member, Clayton Campbell’s Season Update
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It has been a rough year for me. After filming my buddy and fellow pro-staffer John Imhoff shooting a 150 gross 10 pointer in early October I have yet to have a shooter within 70 yards of any tree I have sat in. Trail cameras say there are several shooters in each spot I am hunting, but it has been tough. The weekends in November have been warm and windy when Kirk and I have been out. Matter of fact, up until November 17th, I had yet to see a 130 inch deer from the tree stand. I decided to change things up and utilize a warm day and take my five year old daughter Addyson to a six acre patch that some friends that we go to church with gave us permission on. This was the first time I had ever hunted this place, but Wes and Michelle swore there were lot of deer. I got the two man stand put up about two weeks prior and the south wind would keep us down wind. We got to the tree late (4:00) and got our safety belts on. We had deer coming in on us right at dark and I got drawn on one of 10 does coming through. Just as I am ready to stop the deer Addyson grunts with her mouth. I thought that was so funny, as she was emulating people on the videos we watch when deer get close, but the deer I was aiming at was mostly behind an oak tree when it stopped. After telling Addy to wait for me to shoot until she made any more noise, I got on another doe and made a quartering away shot. It appeared to be a little back but was angling towards the offside lung. We crawled down and got the arrow, which looked good and there was good blood. I decided to wait till the morning to look for her which did not take long. She was 90 yards from the tree. My daughter was just headed out the door to go to school when I got home so we took a few quick pics. I would have loved to get some good field pictures, but with this being our first successful deer hunt any picture would have done. She did so good and I can not wait to get some more fair weather to see if we can get another one together. I am so proud of her, and she truely enjoyed spending time outdoors with her dad.
After having the trail camera up on this 6 acre patch there are several shooters on the property. I hope I can catch up to one soon. Attached is a picture of a solid 140 inch three and a half year old, which is roughly 13 inches wide.
Stay tuned!
After eating four Thanksgiving diners in four days I was sick of turkey, so John and I headed out to get some backstraps. With an north easterly wind we headed to the six acre wood stand, where there have been a pile of does. We were hoping that one of these does would be dragging one of the shooters in this patch. The does started showing up at 4:30 and were in force. We had about 15 scurry by us, most of them in range, but there were no bucks in tow. After everything settled down we saw one of the shooters 140 inch 9) in the CRP heading away from us taking the same path as he did a week earlier. With camera light fading we had a mature lone doe feeding right at us. I got drawn and she closed the distance to 5 yards. I am in a 12ft two man ladder stand and she almost figures us out, but turn broadside for a chip shot. She only makes it 50 yards and became a life member of the QDM plan for this property.