Live Hunts - 2004 North Dakota Whitetail Deer Live Bowhunt

Saturday, September 18, 2004
North Dakota Whitetail Deer Live Bowhunt

Saturday A.M.

This morning I went in and hunted blind in a stand that another fellow on the hunt set up. He killed a buck on the first morning of the hunt and has been helping out setting stands and such. He described it to me as being in a wooded travel corridor between a sunflower field and a corn field, which it was. Unfortunately, like most of my other morning sits so far this trip, it was pretty slow on deer activity and no bucks were sighted. I saw one doe and a fawn. It rained a bit this morning so I didn't venture to take any pictures.

Saturday P.M.

This evening I hunted again the stand where I saw the good 10-point last evening and came so close to getting a shot. Unfortunately, he did not show this evening, although several smaller bucks did, none of which gave me great pause to think about shooting. They were all young bucks. I also saw several does and fawns. I have one more day to hunt.

I did some scouting during the middle of the day today for a spot to hunt tomorrow morning, and I found a good one. There is a huge sunflower field (over head high) that butts right up against a line of thick brush/trees that is several hundred yards in length, and is bordered on one side by an fresh, green alfalfa field. There were numerous trails going into and coming out of the spot, the only real trick is in deciding where to set up. There are no trees there suitable for a tree stand, so I am seriously considering just taking a small stool and tucking myself back into the edge of the sunflowers about 20 yards downwind of the heaviest trail, and hoping for the best.

This forky and spike came by about an hour before dark

The spike hung around beneath me for about 45 minutes
He was extremely curious about my scent

Check back for tomorrow's Hunt!
- Go to Day 5 of the Hunt -

Trip Notes
This whitetail deer bowhunt takes place on a large acreage of public land in central North Dakota. A friend of mine had hunted here 2 years ago and had a good hunt, and invited me to go with him on a hunt there this year, so I couldn't turn it down. The area we'll be hunting is very open country, with very few trees big enough for a tree stand. There's a river bottom that runs through the area, but even that doesn't have many trees along it. There are a number of planted fields of corn and sunflowers, and there are a number of alfalfa fields as well. According to my friend, the deer will likely be really concentrating to feed in the planted sunflower fields, even more than the corn or alfalfa. We decided to come this early in the season because the bucks should still be in bachelor groups and in their late summer feeding patterns, hopefully making them a little more predictable.

Equipment
I'm shooting a Diamond Machete one cam bow set at 67 lbs., GoldTip XT Hunter 55/75 arrows, and Wasp SST Hammer 100 3-blade broadheads. I'm wearing Predator Spring Green camo on this hunt.

Joshua Flournoy owns and manages the Livehunts.com web site. Joshua resides in east Texas with his wife and four children.

e-mail Joshua Flournoy

This site is designed by Hunting Information Systems for use with Netscape or Internet Explorer

Click here for technical help or to send us feedback.