days 20 and 21

My apologies to the one dedicated reader of "Confessions" . . . yesterday's confession didn't get written. I admit it's because I'm getting ready to go out of town for the weekend and don't want to shoot a doe to just sit in the frig all weekend. I'm into butchering deer fresh now.

I'll be heading out of town tomorrow morning and won't be back until Monday evening July 31, so there won't be any confessions until at least Monday. I'm headed for Maryland where I'll be giving a couple of talks about hunting ethics to hunter ed instructors. I'm pretty sure that my recent deer sniping activity is going to make it into the talks, too. So maybe I can chalk all of this up to a business expense. Yeah right.

We'll get back to deer sniping as soon as we can next week. That's confessions of a deer sniper.

day 19

The only confession for today is that I didn't get out to deer snipe today. We had some major thunderstorms roll through this evening around 6 or 7 pm, and I also had a errand to run for Mrs. Zaitsev downtown. So, we gave the deer a break today.

Photos seem to working well through Flickr, I'll post one or two here for laughs and giggles.

This first one shows the entry wound, which, in contrast to what I thought the other night, was pretty much where I was aiming, although maybe a tad low. I also think she must have turned her head at the moment I shot, because the slug appears to have gone in at a slight angle. The exit wound is clear in the second photo below.

What's interesting to me is that I absolutely could not find the entry wound the other night. Of course, I didn't spend oodles of time looking for it--but the exit wound is the only one I found at the time. Funny how the mind plays tricks on you.

Anyway, that's confessions of a deer sniper.

day 18

Once again we were back in the field taking advantage of the relatively cool weather. A big cold front came through Saturday, flooding everything in sight, and yesterday and today were beautiful. It was 80 deg. F down in the vineyard at 7pm this evening.

But saw nothing. Nada. A big fat zippo.

But not to worry. Photos have been developed, which should make this a much sexier blog (if blogger's photo uploading function ever works again, which today doesn't seem likely). But here goes nothing.

Truck in Position "A"

Here is where I set up for an evening of deer sniping. Vineyard grapes can be seen to the left, the woods the deer come out of are beyond the truck.

The View from Position "A"

Here is a view looking over the truck bed to the spot where Bambi's mom died. I was standing a bit closer to the cab, she was left of the picnic table and beyond, past the pond.

That's confessions of a deer sniper.

day 17

Well, got back on the horse again tonight and deer sniped for a couple of hours. I saw one uphill and far away in a neighboring vineyard just as I was driving in; other than that, nada. I spent the evening believe it or not reading a book called Survival Poaching that I've had on my shelf for a while (I think my sister-in-law gave it to me).

Earlier in the day I disposed of the carcass from last week in a secluded corner of our property, with luck the dogs won't find it. I also mixed up a batch of venison pepperoni jerky last night, um good.

With weekend travel plans, I may have to cease fire on the deer sniping after Tuesday or so. Not sure I want to keep a deer in the fridge drying out as long as the last one, but who knows. Some of it is weather dependent--last night was unbelievably gorgeous, 72 degrees at 6:30 pm and not an ounce of breeze.

That's confessions of a deer sniper.

day 16

Got a late start today at the meat packing business. Managed to get the hamburger ground up and packaged, but it took a while. Gonna ask Mrs. Z for a new grinder for Christmas--my 1970s era hand me down doesn't sound all that strong or confident, and it lacks power. I also cut up and wrapped the steaks. Only thing left tomorrow is to slice up and butterfly the back straps (or maybe I'll leave them whole, who knows) and figure out what to do with the damn flank meat. My guess is that flank meat is the reason they invented sausage.

That's about it. Haven't discarded the carcass yet, which is bagged and in a garbage can in the mudroom. Thursday is trash day, which seems pretty far off given the heat. Could be a trip to the swamp is in order--I just don't want the dogs to get at it. That will happen tomorrow as well. Then it's back to deer sniping.

And that's confessions of a deer sniper.

day 15

Well, I'll go ahead and confess right up front: I'm pretty tired.

Spent the day in the mudroom butcher shop, got started skinning the beast around 11:00, and that took longer than it should have (about an hour). Trying too hard not to do anything wrong, I still took a lot of flank meat and brisket off with the hide--which I was not saving at any rate. Next time I'll do better.

Then dismembering the beast and pulling out the back straps, tenderloin, etc. All of that took two or so hours, maybe two and half. I took some pictures along the way, and if I get them developed tomorrow I'll try to post some here.

I learned a couple of things. First, when I killed the deer I didn't need to skin nearly at all when I field dressed it the other night. Where I did skin it (the hams) the meat dried out something fierce, wrecking a portion of the roasts in the hind legs. I had also left the tenderloins in, which was a mistake, as they dried out also. I see now why it's best to pull those out the same night or possibly the next morning after shooting. I'll do that next time.

After a break for lunch, I moved on to cutting up the legs. This took quite a while as I kept referring back to my butchering book as well as an online source I've found helpful. Towards the end I kind of lost my patience with the shank meat on the front leg, and so some of that got tossed. Perhaps on another doe I'll have the time and/or inclination to save the shanks and make some soup stock.

Learned an awful lot here too. I understand now why folks who do their own butchering at home end up grinding much of it for hamburger. I could have prepared some nice roasts, I suppose, but in the interest of time I through much of the roast meat into the pre-burger heap. Because we're nearly out of burger from last fall's two deer. and because burger meat in our house is the most often utilized form of meat (mostly for chili, meat sauce, and jerky), I feel pretty good about grinding up most of the roasts for burger. Most years I have the roasts cut into stew meat, anyway, which we still have plenty of right now. So burger it is.

By about 6 pm I was beginning to lose steam, so I got everything bagged in ziplocs and in tupperware until tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll cut and wrap the steaks, tenderloin, and backstraps; and then I'll move on to grinding the burger. Unfortunately I can't get any beef fat at our local store until next week, so I'll be freezing the burger without fat and will have to add it later.

I think that's about it. The sirloin off the hind legs was most impressive looking, given this doe's size. The back straps are smallish, but that's okay because that's mostly what my kids eat. I'll salvage the good stuff off the tenderloins tomorrow, also.

I'm also left with a bucket of very slimy flank and brisket meat. Unsure what to do with it . . . doesn't look clean enough for grinding into the burger, but there's an awful lot of it. It would be hellish to clean the slime and silverskin off of all of it. I'm open for suggestions. Maybe dog treat meat.

Anyway. That's confessions of a deer sniper for tonight. Sure hope this deer tastes good!

day 14

I spent day 14 mostly getting the butchering space ready--cleaning up clutter, sweeping and mopping the floor, getting organized. I did go to the hardware store to get a nice solid screw hook from which to hang the hoist. So we're basically ready to go. Kids are out of town, and I can spread out if necessary.

And that's confessions of a deer sniper--which sounds stupid when there's so little to say. But the readers demand it.

day 13

Despite being accused of resting on my laurels by a faithful reader of that "other" blog, I spent the day preparing for opening up the butcher shop in my mudroom.

First we took the kids to the Auburn Mall to do a bit of shopping at Bass Pro (again). This time for the burger bags and tape thingamajig, and also for a hoist/gambrel. The working plan is to hang the deer from one of the loft beams in the mudroom for skinning, etc. I was disappointed that they only had the world's cheapest hoist in stock, so I bet I'll be having to get another one of those sooner or later. I was also disappointed (only a little) to learn that the grinder plates for my hand-me-down Sunbeam Oster grinder are non-standard, and so I can't use any of the LEM grinder parts that are available at Bass or Cabelas. No worry, if we end up doing all of our own processing from here on in, maybe I'll trade up on the grinder.

From there we proceeded on to Sears where I bought a window air-conditioner for the mudroom. We had the mudroom done rebuilt and remodeled last year (maybe I'll take some pics and post here for show and tell), and now that it's superinsulated it holds the summer heat in like nobody's business--and our poor dogs have been out there all summer . . . lucky for them it's been cool so far for the most part, and I've cooled it off at night by opening the door and blasting cool outside air in to drop the room temp. But I figured if the mudroom is where all the deer carving's going to happen, I'll be damned if I'll be carving in 110 degree heat. So Sears had a nice 8000 BTU unit on sale for $169. Later when I'm not deer carving, I may demote it to a bedroom, or keep it where it is and get another one for the house.

So got home and after dropping the kids off at the lake again with the missus, I came back home and installed the AC in the mudroom. Works like a charm.

Finally, tonight I made a Wegman's run for the missus to return some videos, and while I was there I stocked up on Saran wrap and freezer paper. Had a tough time finding the freezer tape--guess where they keep it . . . that's right, with the school supplies! and with the post-its, pencils, pads, etc. Guess that's simply where they keep all the tape. But it took a while to find it, finally the night manager found it for me.

So that's that. Tomorrow we skin the critter--the kids want to see that before they leave for the weekend. With a nice cool space and room to get the job done, I should be back in the field in no time.

day 12

Well, what successful deer snipers do on their day off is to let their deer age. So that's what I'm doing. Aging my deer. In the cooler. While I wait. It's hard work.

Anyway. The plan is to butcher the doe on Friday after Mrs. Z and the Zlets are out of here for the weekend to visit friends in Saratoga. Because I've got three full days to myself and cool weather in the forecast, I'll probably get out to do some more deer sniping even if there's still some carcass left in the fridge.

Tomorrow's plan if all goes well is to take the kids up to Auburn and visit Bass Pro for some last minute butchering tools: burger bagger, fine grinding plate for making summer sausage, maybe one or two other items.

That's about it. Gotta get back to aging my deer . . . .

day 11

The wait is over, number one is in the cooler.

After predictions of record high heat today (predicted 96 deg F), I didn't have much thought about going deer sniping tonight. But late afternoon clouds and a fairly stiff breeze kept the temperature down to the low 80s, so at 6 pm I bade goodbye to Mrs. Zaitsev and the little Zs swimming at the lake and headed for the vineyard.

Got settled in by 7 pm or so. The truck thermometer read 86, so I decided basically to park where I had last night in the parking lot and wait it out. I monkeyed around a bit with the "parking configuration," giving myself a bit more of an angle to lurk behind should the opportunity present itself to shift and shoot.

Nothing for the first hour. I sometimes catch myself getting antsy and wondering if I should go take a walk. Then I remind myself, it's 86 degrees, and you're in the best spot so far for evening sniping. So I decided to stay cool and sit tight.

Good thing I did. Right about 8:30 Bambi's mom and the two little fawns from the other morning showed up behind the truck, coming out of the woods behind the small drainage pond and walking the berm around it toward the grapes. Mom took her time and waited for the bambinos to move up.

I basically and bloodthirstily decided that if she stayed out in the open and I could get out of the truck and ready to shoot, that I would finally take advantage of the opportunity and "manage the resource." She was basically about ten yards from the spot where last night's deer came out of the woods.

I opened the door (leaving the engine running!) and she briefly looked at me through the glass, then kept going. I wheeled behind the cab to reach for the gun in the truck bed, and could see through the cab that she was still there. I got the gun ready to mount before sticking my head out, got it focused on her, moved a bit more away from the cab for good measure, and pulled the trigger.

The image of what happened next is vivid. The doe did what seemed like a backward flip with all four legs in the air and landed on her back. The two fawns split up, one into the grapes and one past mom around the woods corner and presumably back into the woods. I felt a little bad about orphaning those deer, but at this point I've seen enough deer around Richard's place to realize he really does need these deer removed. I had convinced myself ahead of time that if I again saw that mom with the fawns that I would shoot and chalk it up to management. Who knows, with luck they may just make it anyway, although clearly the mother was full of milk and still nursing.

I walked over to the doe, who by this time had slid down the berm in her death throes into the weeds in the shallow water of the pond. She only kicked for another half minute or so, and that was it. One shot kill at thirty yards, and she fell over--just like I wanted.

Checked my watch, it was 8:30. I was able to pull the truck right to the deer, and I was out of there by 9:00. The weird thing when I pulled her back up onto the berm was that I didn't see where the slug hit. Turning her over, she bled profusely from her neck. Best I can figure is that right when I shot she turned toward the fawns, because the entry hole was in her neck on the "away" side (her right side). When I hang her to butcher I'll look more closely to figure out what exactly happened; but because of the heat I was in a hurry to get her field dressed and get her home as quickly as possible.

Because I gutted the doe so close to the building and the parking lot, I scooped up the guts into a manure tub and dumped them later in one of his fields away from the building. I washed up at the hose bib outside the building, and headed home. There I hosed out the body cavity, skinned the hindquarters back some more to cool, removed the legs, and sawed the pelvis. She was in the mudroom refrigerator by 10 pm, not a bad turnaround time-wise. Next time it will be quicker because I'll have my routine down. A quick mop of the mudroom floor and hosing out of the truck, and I was inside cooling off by 10:15.

Fortunately she's not the largest doe in the world, so horsing her around and into the frig was fairly easy. She'll also be easy to handle for butchering, which is a good thing because she'll be my first home butchered deer (confessions, confessions). Gotta learn sometime.

Anyway, that's about it. We're "on the board" as they say.

And that's confessions of a deer sniper.

day 10

Aargghh. Muffing these chances is getting old. Tonight I had my best opportunity yet and flubbed it.

One of the interesting things about deer sniping so far is learning the tricks of the "non-sporting" trade. So for example, when tonight it was 90 degrees until the sun went down, I elected to sit in the (air-conditioned) truck in a good spot, with a game plan of getting out and sniping if the opportunity presented itself, which it did.

I had parked the truck in the shade at the corner of the winery's parking lot, near a corner of the woods that jut out by a small drainage pond right next to the grapes. I had gotten there fairly early, about 6pm, and for the first hour or so nothing happened.

At about 7:15 a doe poked her head out of the woods right at the corner by the pond--thirty yards away. I'm in business! Here was my mistake: I turned the engine of the truck off, which the other night had no effect on the deer that I saw that night. Here, it turned out to be a big mistake.

She instantly froze and looked at the truck. She didn't run, but she sure didn't stick around. I eased out of the truck to get my gun which I had rested on a bucket in the truck bed. From there I tried to see if I'd have a shot over the truck bed, which I didn't; and by the time I got to the front of the truck, she had moved up the treeline parallel to the grapes and was obscured by grass.

At this point, I made mistake number 2 which was when I elected not to follow her, which I could easily have done while screened by the corner of the woods. Stupidly I had some idea that she might be followed by more deer, or that it was still early and that another chance would present itself later. In hindsight I should have followed her, because she was unthreatened and lingered eating in the tall grass for some time.

The big mistake was turning off the engine. Later I tested getting out of the truck cab and resting the gun on the hood with the engine running. Guess what--the vibration of the truck and the engine is so minimal that at thirty yards (hell, at eighty yards!) I could get a nice steady sight picture.

So you can be sure I won't be making that mistake again. Again, this is not something you ordinarily have to be concerned with during the course of the regular hunting season. I've never had to hunt from the cab of a truck when it is 90+ degrees out--but this was the best opportunity yet. Oh well. Still a long season.

That's confessions of a deer sniper.

day 9

It's going to get boring reading these accounts if I don't kill one of these deer one of these days.

Went out last night again for two hours; got there at 7 pm, left around 9. Nothing. The highlight, however, was putting up a brood of very young grouse as I drove into the driveway near the winery building. There were six or seven of them feeding in a bunch of summer grape right next to the driveway, and I got excellent looks at them. No tails on those buggers yet.

Mrs. Z. went biking this morning, so that was out. It was a ninety degree day in the shade, though, and after a long day of heat what better way to cool off than to go deer sniping. Yeah right.

As I pulled into the parking lot tonight (about 6:40 or so), of course I see a deer in the tall grass about 80 yards off (I paced it later), and the deer saw me. Turning the engine off, I looked around near him and saw another larger deer feeding under an overhanging tree right on the woods edge. The first one turned and went back into the woods, taking the second one with it. I stayed in the truck for quite some time, and maybe twenty minutes later a third deer about 100 yards away moved out of the grapes into the woods. So that was that.

I got tired of sitting and waiting in the truck, so I got out and did a bit of hiking--downhill first, then north across the creek, then back uphill to the east through the woods where the grouse had flown into last night. Saw lots of deer trails, an old deer stand out in the woods with a rusty (and sturdy) metal folding chair, and more deer trails.

I came out of the woods fairly well steaming (it was about 85 degrees and fairly humid), but I decided to make a loop around the vineyard to see if I could stumble across any deer in the grapes. I didn't see anything, but when I got to the last row next to the driveway I was able to see the main deer trail out of the woods that the deer are traveling. From there I further figured out what they're seeing in terms of where I park the truck, and I got some ideas of how to hide the truck a bit more but still see down the grape rows to try and spot them before they disappear into the grapes. I'll try that setup one of these evenings.

Anyway, all in all it was a fairly sweaty night. I did see three deer, but they were pretty far off and obscured by vegetation. Probably not much chance of getting out there again for another couple of days, although tomorrow night may happen, who knows. At any rate, those are the confessions of a deer sniper.

day 8

Finally went out this morning and saw some deer!

Hit the vineyard by 4:45 am, civil twilight this morning was approximatly 5:10 am. Nothing for the first hour or so, and I started getting antsy sitting on my spackle bucket. I'm sitting up by the winery building looking west downhill into the newly planted grapes.

As I'm contemplating making a move, I see motion down by the edge of the grass in the corner of the plot. Sure enough, two itty bitty fawns come out, followed by mom. I creep back down and sit on my bucket, thinking "this deer assassination stuff is going to be harder than I thought if these deer are dragging their babies around with them." But I reminded myself that the vineyard owner really wants some of these deer (ahem) eliminated, so I steeled myself to make a good killing shot if she came a bit closer and presented herself broadside to me.

It was not to be. I don't know if she saw motion from me, but she went about ten or fifteen yards, then turned around and led the babies across the grapes into the woods. I could have taken a shot any number of times during the time she was in the open, but my vision was partly blocked by the grass in front of me, and there was still that nagging "killing Bambi's mother" guilt trip going on in my head.

So I wimped out; it would have been about a 75 or 80 yard shot. Had she come down the grape rows to a point right in front of me, it would have been more like a 60 yard shot. But again, it's a long season, and it's fun right now just to see what the deer are doing. They disappeared, and looking at my watch I noted it was 6:15.

So I hunkered down in the same spot to see if anything else would come by. Around 7ish my butt is getting tired of the spackle bucket again, so I stand up and lean behind some deck posts to break up my outline to anything below. At some point I start watching a cottontail rabbit take a dirt bath out between the grape rows, and I'm really enjoying watching him.

I turn my head, and there is a doe standing 15 feet away from me, only five feet from the corner of the building.

She had no idea what I was. I'm completely busted at this point, but I'm totally still. She could smell me, she had her nose in the air, she went down to feed, and then the nose went back up. This went on for two minutes or so. I figure I will shoot her if I can get my gun up and in position.

Slowly I pick the gun up from where I'd been holding it propped up against the deck post. She was still sniffing the air. I dialed the scope down to "1" because of how close she was. She moved a bit to a point where she was hidden from my sight (and I presumably from hers?) by the double posts in the corner of the building.

I started bringing the gun up slowly, and I think that's when she saw the movement of the gun barrel. She was off!

I brought the gun up quickly and got a sight on her as she was bounding away, but I'm not much on running shots--and that shot would have been a "Texas Heart Shot" anyway, as Jack O'Connor used to say.

My heart was beating pretty well. She was beautiful, reddish coat, kind of skinny, which makes me think she was a yearling female. Anyway, she'll be there tomorrow.

And that's confessions of a deer sniper.

day 7

Doe fever.

It can happen. It happened to me tonight. I showed up at the vineyard at about 7 pm, changed my shirt, put on my rubber boots (more to avoid poison ivy than anything--the place is loaded with it), and walked around to the back of the winery building to have a seat. It was 80 degrees and humid, and I was in the direct light of the western sun setting.

So of course as soon as I sit down I see movement below me. I stand up, and there are two big does below the newly planted vines, past the tall grass strip beyond, and in the clover that Richard planted after having cleared the five acres or so of timber last year.

Ouch. I sat down again quickly and wondered what to do. Should I wait for them to come uphill, stalk them where they are, or attempt a shot from where I sat?

Like an idiot I stood up again. One of them pretty much saw me, and started moving. Quickly I sat down, where I could still see the other doe calmly grazing in the clover. I didn't see much of her body, but if I'd been ambitious (or reckless) I could have tried a head shot.

Like an idiot I stood up yet again to see if I could see her body. At this point she's figured out there's some doofus up by the winery building bobbing up and down in the sun like an idiot. (Deer are smart that way.) So she moved off.

At that point I decide to try to go to them on the outside chance they stopped at the edge of the woods to wait and see. So I tried a mini-stalk through the new vines, behind the tall grass, and through the tall grass. By the time I got there, nada. And in 80 degree heat, I'm pretty steamed up.

I decided to recon the woods below, and I'm pretty sure I caught the fresh tracks of at least one of them (it rained ALL day yesterday, and these tracks were fresh). I'm still trying to figure out what these buggers are doing in the summer time, but damn if Richard wasn't right about them being in the clover. Go figure.

So I head back up to the truck for some AC to cool off and to finish a soda I'd left in the truck. I get there, turn on the AC, and about two minutes later I'm starting to cool down when I see a fawn in the grapes not forty yards away.

Yee hah, I'm in business. I turn the engine off, open the door when the fawn is behind some vines, and get the gun from the truck bed. I'm hoping to get momma, and I catch a glimpse of her uphill of the fawn, coming downhill into an open area of the vines that the deer have kept browsed. Just where Richard the vineyard owner said they'd be.

Doe fever. Of course like an idiot I'm not content to just sit on the ground and wait for the doe to emerge and take a shot. Nope, I have the grand idea to go around to the OTHER side of the truck where I'm hoping for a better angle and also to use the truck to screen me. Bad idea.

I get to the other side of the truck and there is momma staring right at me. BUSTED. She was only forty yards away, standing broadside to me, but I am clearly in the open next to the front fender of the truck, and she sees me. I've got the gun up but when I look through the scope the kill zone is exactly behind a post in the vines. damn.

And then she runs. She heads away from me up the vine row, and about eighty yards away crosses over a hump partially obscured by tall grass, and heads into the woods below. The fawn follows. I make a feeble effort to go to the back side of those woods to see if I can cut her off, but don't see her, and the neighbor's house is too close anyway. In hindsight I think she and the fawn crossed the neighbor's driveway and headed off the property.

So I screwed up two wonderful opportunities . . . well, one wonderful opportunity anyway. The two does in the beginning were a long shot for me and the slug gun--probably 125 yards, pretty much out of my comfort zone and my ideal of knocking them over. Had I had my planned-on rifle, on the other hand, I would have gladly taken a shot at the second doe beyond the tall grass.

Oh well. It's a long season, the deer aren't going anywhere, and I'm starting to see some patterns to their behavior. So that's good.

But doe fever happens--that's the lesson for today.

day 6

Well, call me a wimp, but I woke up dutifully at 3:15 am this morning, ignoring the pitter patter of raindrops on our tin roof, and paddled on downstairs where I made my coffee and then checked the weather report.

In a word . . . it was raining all the way back to Michigan.

I wrestled with the inner debate that always accompanies such momentous decisions. Do I drop the atom bomb or not? Do we invade France in Normandy or at Calais?

So I decided against sniping today, figuring there's a long season ahead. Of course, the coffee damage was done, so I stayed up and continued reading the current tome, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (hence the WWII allusions).

In the "staying close to deer and being the deer" department, I did make a very nice venison lasagna today that we had for lunch and supper. So my heart is in the right place.

Tomorrow evening? You never know. It rained absolutely all day today, and I'm glad I stayed home. Call me a wimp.

day 5

Didn't do a whole lot today that had to do with deer sniping, other than eat some venison pepperoni jerky and a roast venison sandwich for supper. If I can wake up early enough, I'm going to try and sneak in on some deer tomorrow at 5:00 am. Wish me luck.

day 4

Tonight I was able to get down to the vineyard pretty early, around 6:30 pm or so. Walked around a bit, parked in a couple of different spots, and waited. Muggy weather, and swirling ozony southerly winds as numerous thunderstorms worked their way through the area, but it never did rain where I was. Had a book in the truck so I read that for quite a while.

No sign of any deer while I was there. That's not to say they're not there, of course, only they didn't manifest themselves while I was around.

Around 8:45 or so I got out of the truck to stretch my legs, went around the backside of the winery building, and sat overlooking an acre of newly planted vines downhill from the building. Nothing at all, and at 9:05 or so took a walk up the vineyard to the barn and then back again. Bu 9:15 it was pretty damn dark, so I called it a night.

Found a site on the web the other night that gives sunrise and sunset times for any location, but also twilight times: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html

Here's the data for today:

U.S. Naval Observatory
Astronomical Applications Department

Sun and Moon Data for One Day

The following information is provided for Lodi, Seneca County, New York (longitude W77.4, latitude N42.6):

        Monday 
      10 July 2006          Eastern Daylight Time        

                       SUN
      Begin civil twilight       5:07 a.m.               
      Sunrise                    5:41 a.m.               
      Sun transit                1:15 p.m.               
      Sunset                     8:48 p.m.               
      End civil twilight         9:22 p.m.               

                       MOON
      Moonrise                   8:11 p.m. on preceding day
      Moon transit              12:21 a.m.               
      Moonset                    4:33 a.m.               
      Moonrise                   9:06 p.m.               
      Moonset                    5:47 a.m. on following day

Full Moon on 10 July 2006 at 11:01 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

Pretty cool stuff. The twilight times roughly correspond to "half hour before sunrise" and at least give an idea of the approximate time it should be light enough to shoot.

I think we're going to try our hand at sniping on Wednesday morning, and see if mornings are any better than these evenings have been.

day 3

No sniping today, the vineyard owner busy with the tasting room during the day and an awful lot of weekend traffic on the driveway down to the lake cottages below the vineyard. So I figured it would be best to wait for a weekday to try a morning hunt.

Not that we wasted time today. I made three pounds of venison pepperoni jerky from ground meat from last season's deer (that is, I started with three pounds, it probably dries down to about a pound or so). That and during the afternoon smoked a two pound venison roast in the smoker, seasoned with garlic salt and covered with bacon. It smoked for about 2 hours with hickory smoke until it reached an internal temperature of 145 deg. F, at which time I pulled the roast, wrapped it tight in foil and let it sit. Several hours later warmed it back up, cut into it, and umm umm good, roast venison rare! man, that's good.

Tomorrow morning's hunt is likely postponed due to predicted rain, plus Mrs. Z wants to go swimming early in the morning before work, so I'm likely not doing a morning hunt until Wednesday or Friday. But could be an evening hunt tomorrow, who knows.

Right now a beautiful orange moon, nearly full I'd say, and a clear sky.

day 2

Today we took our lab back up into the forest for a walk and some swimming/retrieving, and on the way we drove the road where I saw the ghost chicken last night. Sure enough, at the same spot in the road there was ghost chicken, but with three of his friends! Another white leghorn (?) and two more exotic roosters. My guess is that somebody had a bunch of roosters he didn't want and dumped them. They should do alright as ferals until it snows in January.

No deer sniping today, but I did manage to get out of the house for some gun shopping. First a little gun shop that recently (February) opened up in the town just north of here. Nice guy, very talkative. He tried to interest me in a used Remington 742 that he had on consignment. I said I'd think about it.

Then off to Bass Pro (or Bastard Pro, as some of the local goose hunters like to put it). Got to talk to a real gun guy for over an hour. He walked me through the entry level bolt action guns. I'd been thinking that a Remington 700 special purpose synthetic would do the trick, but he disabused me of that idea after saying he'd been a factory certified Remington repair smith for over 25 years. Nope, he liked the Weatherby Vanguard in synthetic and also the Beretta Tikka T3 lite. So that's where that decision is likely headed.

My thinking is that it would be nice to have a rifle for some of these potentially longer shots down the vineyard rows, plus enhance the probability of a one shot instant kill at those slightly longer ranges. With my slug gun, instant kills using sabots are generally within 50 yards or so, or at least that's been my experience.

Anyway. That's confessions of a deer sniper.

Day one of 2006 nuisance deer slaying season

Tonight I began my efforts as a deer sharpshooter on a New York state nuisance deer permit. I saw one doe driving into the vineyard that my neighbor owns; by the time I had parked and walked back uphill to where she had been, she was gone. I spent the rest of the hour or two walking through the vineyard and trying to piece together a summer strategy for hunting these deer. Although I previously had thought of these nuisance permits as "not hunting," it occurred to me tonight that, well, you still have to hunt them even if it is July and on a nuisance permit.

It was dark by 9:20 or so, and on the way home I drove through the public forest near my home. An odd thing happened: at one point in the middle of the dirt road there was a white chicken just lying there. Mind you this is 10:15 or so at night. When I got out of the truck to see if it was hurt, sick, or dead, it took off in the liveliest of manners . . . so I'm pretty sure it wasn't dead.

Anyway. First light is at 5:00 am, legal shooting time on the permit (half hour before sunrise). I'm in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and my neighbor the vineyard owner has three tags to fill between now and October. This is my log of the attempt to fill those tags.