The Beginning of Deer Season

Opening day, I worked through lunch so that I could leave early and get in stand for my first sit of the season. I chose an acorn flat between two ridges on a dry creek bed at the small tract of private land we just gained access to. Apparently we are going to have a great squirrel season as they were all over the flat. The high was 85 and the sit was uneventful, until I started to get down. It was 10 minutes beyond shooting light and pitch black. I lowered my bow, released my safety harness from the tree, and got both feet on the ladder. Then, I hear footsteps and freeze. To my left, I see shadows moving at 30 yards. 3 deer jump the creek heading my way. Although they were only 20 yards away at this time, I could only make out the white hair of their bellies. After 5 minutes, my right calf is cramped and I'm shifting my weight around trying to not blow my cover. Another 5 minutes pass by, and it seemed as though the deer had fed off. I finally reached the ground, picked up my bow, and took 3 steps before I had a deer blow at me from 20 feet away. It caught me off guard and the deer took off. At least it was dark enough that they were unable to see what I was.

The first weekend of deer season was uneventful for Matt and I. Neither one of us saw a deer, however, his dad, Mark, shot two does Sunday Morning with his crossbow. I had two other hunters walk in on my stand by 8:00am Sunday, so I got down and we headed over to help Mark, trail, drag, and gut the does.

This last Sunday, Matt and I sat in our favorite stands which happen to be only 200 yards apart. We rarely see the same deer even with sitting this close. Around 9:00am, two does came crashing through at 30 yards and didn't stop until they were out of site. I wondered if another hunter was about to walk in on my hunt. I wait 15 minutes and hear something coming from the same hillside the previous does left. I spot a doe moving through the brush. Another doe and a spotted fawn follow not far behind. The does were trying to hurry, but the fawn was unable to move at their pace, thus causing the does to be on high-alert. I locate an opening in the direction they are heading and get ready. The first doe bounds through the shooting lane, and as the second attempts the same, I stop her with a bleat. I settle my 30 yard pin on her lungs (she was at 32 yards) and release. The second my bowstring left my release, she double back on her trail and I missed. All 3 deer disappeared into the brush. I felt good about the shot, but knew I missed. After I got out of the stand, I walked my arrow path. I could see where she planted her hooves to spin and found my arrow in line with where her vitals had been. A clean miss, but something that will happen as you bow hunt.

Sunday night we headed to our small section of private land. Matt headed to a ladder stand, Charles sat in his pop-up blind, and I went to the acorn flat. I was still setting up the camera arm on the tree when my phone starts vibrating. Matt is texting me to say a small buck is on his way. As I’m reading the text, the 4-point comes running in, obviously spooked by something. He stops behind my tree at 23 yards, broadside. I’m being picky this year with bucks as you only get two buck tags a season. As he stood there, with my bow still on the ground, I grabbed my gear string and hoisted my bow into the tree, knocked an arrow, put on my release, and drew on him. I held the pins on his vitals, envisioning the shot. He walked through the dry creek bed and left me with a quartering away shot. I continued to hold my pins on him, strictly for mental practice. In doing this on a deer I have no intentions of shooting, it allows my mind to process my shot form, bow is level, breathing, visualizing the vitals and the path of the arrow. In holding this position for about a minute or so, it assists with forming good habits and making them second nature. He eventually walked up the hill and jumped the fence. The buck had come from the west of Matt, and with the wind being northwest, we don’t know for sure what spooked him.

Around 5:30 I hear leaves crunching and notice a skunk making a B-line for my stand. I unintentionally held my breath as he wondered by at 10 feet, then stopped at 20 yards to clean himself. I just let him continue on his merry way. As shooting light fades, I was packed up and about to let my bow down when I heard leaves crunching behind me. It was quite a racket and I expected it to be the does I’d seen opening day around the same time. In the darkness, I spot 4 small bodies heading through the creek. It’s a family of raccoons, with the largest probably being around 20+ pounds. Just like the skunk, they walk to within 10 feet of my stand and start milling around. These critters can be nasty to deal with and one starts eyeballing me. I see the white ring of his face looking in my direction and let an arrow fly. He growls and takes off. It looked like I skewered him. The other 3 coons immediately climb up 3 trees nearby with the closest being 10 feet away. He gets to eye-level and starts staring me down. Bad move. I nock another arrow and send it through his ball of fur. He falls half way down the tree, catches himself, and takes off. Knowing I connected on both of them, I get down and look for the critters. Matt and Charles showed up and we scanned the woods for a minute, but not wanting to leave our scent all over the area, we backed out without finding either coon.

The beginning of the year has been a bit slow thus far. Once the October-lull gives way to the pre-rut in the coming weeks, I'm sure things will pick up.

Bowfishing With Underwater Camera Angles

We went bowfishing again last week but we took the bronco this time and utilized the 4 wheel drive to go about 6 miles downstream. We were able to find a whole pool of drum and carp thanks to the guidance of some local guys on 4-wheelers. The pool seemed really clean when looking down into it with polarized glasses, but once the camera was put in it, you could not see nearly as well as we thought. The difference between looking down into the water with the sun and looking across the water is pretty big, but we got some usable footage. Last weeks fish total: 23.

Releasing a Great Blue Heron While Bowfishing

Last week found us returning to the same spots on the river for bowfishing. The fish were a bit scarce and the headcam wasn't aimed correctly, so we didn't end up with a lot of footage.

During the trip, we notice something struggling along the bank of the river. A great-blue heron was tangled in some twine left behind on a tree branch. Matt carefully freed the bird as we recorded the incident.

We also managed to locate a carp that was hit a week prior, but not retrieved.

First Try at Bowfishing

With the high temperature during the day soaring past 100 degrees for 2 weeks now, we've put away the fishing tackle in favor of trying something new, bowfishing. I picked up 3 Game Winner bowfishing arrows with broadheads from Academy and opted out of purchasing a reel as the water we were going to be in was between 6 inches and 3 feet deep. The following video is the result of our first attempt at bowfishing.

Early Morning Fishing Catches a Hog

On Sunday, you may have seen that we got out early to do some fishing. We headed out at 5:45 to grab some minnows and were on our way to some abandoned farm ponds deep in the woods where a new development is being built. It didn't take long for the fish to realize that food was falling from the sky. We had strike after strike on minnows and rooster tails.

Matt tossed in a minnow on a bobber and leaned his pole against a tree. He just bought a new baitcasting reel and had yet to tweak the settings, much less figure out where the drag was. A moment later, his bobber is sucked underwater, his line starts reaching for the middle of the pone, and his pole starts toward the water line. He grabs it and sets the hook, but the drag continues to sing. He's unable to reel due to the lack of drag and uses his thumb as a stop on the spool. It was about this time that I started filming with my phone. The bass breaches the surface and shows it's size. We both are shocked. With Matt being unable to reel, he reverts back to his 4 year old ways and starts backing away from the water. As the fish gets closer to the bank, it heads for some tree branches in the water. I quickly grab the line and guide it back to the open water and the bank. I lip the bass and am struck by the shear size of this old pond bass. Matt and I don't ever strictly bass fish, so this thing is a monster to us. We set it on  a stringer for about 3 hours as we continued to fish, then it took us 45 minutes to find a fish scale. By this time, the big bass had lost considerable weight and started to dry up. The "dry" weight was over 5 pounds with a length of 21 inches. I can only imagine how much weight was lost prior to our weighing it.

The Rate of Growth of Flathead Catfish

 I found a great resource online recently that has a lot of material from Oklahoma state biologists dating back to 1921. Over the next few blogs, we'll be posting up some information from those resources. All rights reserved and credit goes to those Biologists who did the work.


The Rate of Growth of Flathead Catfish
in Twenty-one Oklahoma Lakes
H. A. McCOY, Oklahoma Game and FIsh Department, Norman, 1953



In the computation of average lengths in individual waters, fish were grouped into year-classes and a weighted average was obtained. The simple average of the weighted means for each lake was computed 'to establish the average length at the end of each year of life for the entire sample. On the basis of this sample, flathead catfish average about 4.6 inches at the end of the first year of life, and during the succeeding 13 years attain average lengths of 9.7, 15.2, 20.0, 23.4, 25.9, 28.9, 32.4 35.1, 38.3, 39.0, 41.5, 42.8, and 43.3 inches. Corresponding average weights at these lengths (calculated from length-weight formula in later section are approximately 0.03, 0.31, 1.34, 3.28, 5.47, 7.61, 10.88, 15.77,20.48, 27.20, 28.87, 36.32, 39.06, and 40.67 pounds, respectively. The average annual increment of growth in length is approximately flve inches tor the tirst four years of Ufe, three inches during the following six. years, and decreases to about one inch per year by the fourteenth year (Table II, Figure 1). The average annual increment of growth in weight ae~leratea sharply to about five pounds per year by the ninth year of life (Figure 1). On the basis of three-year moving averages the rate of weight increase declines slighUy after the tenth year of Ufe. However, this phenomenon is not typical of large reservoir populations




AGE-GROUP     NUMBER OF FISH     AVERAGE LENGTH    LENGTH RANGE
III                                   4                                      18.4                       16.9-20.0
IV                                   3                                      22.9                       21.7-23.5
V                                    17                                    27.45                     25.6-28.7
VI                                   4                                      32.2                       30.6-34.3
VII                                  4                                      36.2                       31.6-38.5
VIII                                 -                                       -                            -
IX                                   2                                      40.5                       39.8-41.1
X                                    3                                      38.0                       33.5-39.0
XI                                   6                                      39.5                       36.0-46.0
XII                                  4                                      45.7                       43.0-48.0
XIII                                 9                                      44.2                       41.2-54.5
XIV                                 6                                      44.6                       43.1-46.7
XV                                  5                                      46.3                       41.2-55.5
XVI                                 4                                      43.7                       37.2-50.5
XVII                                1                                      43.1
XVIII                               2                                      43.2                       42.0-44.5
XIX                                 1                                       42.0


A 42.0-inch, 19-year-old flathead catfish taken from Boomer Lake was
the oldest individual in the entire sample, and is the oldest individual of
any Oklahoma species on record at the Fisheries Research Laboratory.

The largest flathead catfish represented in the entire sample was 55.5 inches
long and weighed 95 pounds. This 15-year-old individual, taken from
Boomer Lake, has a calculated weight of 91 pounds.

The Length-Weight Relationship of Flathead Catfish in Oklahoma Water.
SIZE INTERVAL     No. of      AVERAGE TOTAL     AVERAGE WEIGHT     CALCULATED
(INCHE8)                FISH       LENGTH (INCHES)         (POUNDS)             WEIGHT (POUND8)
------
3.0- 4.9                    12                    4.2                                 0.03                             0.02
5.0- 6.9                    20                    5.9                                 0.08                             0.06
7.0- 8.9                    37                    7.9                                 0.18                             0.16
9.0-10.9                   33                    10.0                               0.36                             0.34
1l.0-12.9                  27                    11.9                               0.69                              0.60
13.0-14.9                 36                    13.8                               0.91                             0.98
16.0-16.9                 20                    15.8                               1.37                             1.51
17.0-18.9                 26                    17.9                               2.15                             2.29
19.0-20.9                 17                    19.9                               3.14                             3.23
21.0-22.9                 12                    22.0                               4.25                             4.47
23.0-24.9                 22                    23.8                               5.93                             5.82
26.0-26.9                 26                    26.1                               7.80                             7.77
27.0-28.9                 32                    27.8                               10.16                           9.58
29.0-30.9                 19                    29.9                               12.21                           12.12
31.0-32.9                 14                    31.9                               15.67                           15.05
33.0-34.9                 13                    33.6                               18.26                           17.76
35.0-36.9                 14                    36.1                               23.50                           22.44
37.0-38.9                 14                    37.6                               25.94                           25.60
39.0-40.9                 8                      39.6                               30.07                           30.46
41.0-42.9                 7                      41.7                               35.24                           35.87
43.0-44.9                 11                    43.6                               40.35                           41.43
45.0-46.9                 1                      45.7                               50.00                           48.35
Total Number of Fish - 421

It May Be Hot, But Fish Are Still Biting

With it warming up so quickly this year, the spawning was off. Fishing at dawn and dusk has become necessary to catch much of anything, even when fishing the bottom.