Last Day of Hunting in Madison County

The last day of hunting season in Madison County was January 5th. I took a coworker out with me (Joe) who wanted to learn about hunting and processing deer. It was a beautiful day for hunting. The wind was calm and the morning temperature was in the 20's after hitting lows in the teens. Perfect weather for hunting deer. I set Joe up behind my house near the wood pile where I had been successful earlier in the season while I hunted off the edge of the front yard on a rock ledge overlooking a hollow and two fields.

At around 7am or so I saw a black object in the far second field, maybe 250 yards away. At first glance it looked like an old burned out log from the field clearing done a couple of years ago. At this time it was just light enough to begin hunting. At second glance, the object was gone as it moved only slightly north into thick brush. I did not see anything in the rifle scope. It's impossible to tell exactly what it was, a later check at the sight did not reveal any clues. I suspect it was either a bear or a dog and there was no further site of the animal.

Around 7:45am I spotted a lone doe walking slowly through the woods between the two fields and took sight waiting about 5 minutes for a clean shot and for it to emerge from behind a tree that was blocking my view. The shot was approximately 125 yards with little obstruction. The picture below shows me on the ledge taking aim at the position where I shot the deer. Though I don't have a scale, I estimated the dressed weight of the deer to be about 80-90 lbs. Joe did not see anything up near the wood pile other than squirrels and a pair of mating woodpeckers. He helped me drag the deer up the hill to the house and get it hung up to cool down.

We went back out to hunt the rest of the morning but did not see anything. The temperature was now in the 40's. Joe commented that it sounded like a shooting gallery out there. There was quite a bit of hunting going on this day.

After lunch we went back out to hunt the last half of the day. This time Joe hunted on the rock ledge and I took to back of the house near the wood pile. Honestly we believed he had the best opportunity to shoot a deer from there due to the view of the fields and hollow.

Around 2:00pm I heard a deer running towards me from the east through some heavy brush. It was actually two deer, a buck and a doe. They made a sharp turn away from me and the house and headed east. The buck (maybe a spike to 4 point) did not stop and ran off over the hill and out of sight. The doe stopped just for a moment to look over her shoulder and between two trees I could only see the head an neck. I took sight on the neck and fired. The doe dropped instantly. This shot was estimated at about 150 yards. My dear friend Joe was "cursing" as he had just been hunting there earlier in the morning. Well the planets were not in alignment for him this day. However, he did go home with as much venison as he wanted. This second doe was quite large, dressed I estimated it weighed about 120 lbs. It took two of us to get hung up in the garage. With it's tail nearly touching the floor the nose was above my head and I am over 6 feet tall.

The remainder of the day was spent skinning and processing the deer into zip lock bags. We did not have a choice but to process them immediately as the temperatures for the next few days were expected to reach almost 70 degrees.

The hunting this year was great. I attribute this to an exploding deer population and a dwindling number of hunters in the state. Though Virginia State lets us hunt on our own property without a license, I felt obligated to purchase one anyway as the Dept of Game and Inland Fisheries is having some financial difficulties keeping the hunting programs running. I encourage any hunter to do the same even if they hunt on their own property or don't know if they will be hunting next year or not. The funds are desperately needed. We will be enjoying venison for the next year and hopefully we will have another opportunity next year in 2008.