Merry Christmas!

Almost Christmas and I realized I haven't posted anything in some time. Hunting season has slowed down considerably but I don't think that's a big surprise. It usually does for us during the month of December but almost always picks up a little bit toward the end of the month and toward the end of the season (January 3rd this year). We've been hunting every weekend and making man drives like we always do but it's just been slow. I think our group has killed two deer on drives this year and that's kind of pititful but what are you going to do. I haven't seen a deer to shoot at since my last post.

Today Mike and I were the only two hunting because Sammy's mother passed away Thursday and her funeral is tomorrow so none of the Gee group were hunting. I didn't know Sammy's mom very well, only met her once or twice in my life but I'm sad for Sammy and his kids because they lost their mother and grandmother. I consider Sammy a good friend and he's a great person so I'm sorry about their loss. His mother has been ill for some time and has been in a nursing home but still, it's never easy to lose someone. I'm reminded of Uncle John, who's also in a nursisng home and can't communicate much; a condition which I'm sure is devastating to him if he knows what's going on because he was always such an active person throughout his life; hunting, fishing, doing a garden, messing around with fire wood, the list goes on and on. It's heartbreaking. Mike is going to be a pall bearer for the funeral tomorrow.

The hunting today wasn't very good with only two of us but we did make three drives with zero results. We didn't still hunt this morning but did this afternoon. Mike sat on the squeaker stand and saw one deer across the creek on Ft. Pickett a little after 4 PM. That's a long ways and not worth the shot mostly but I think he said he didn't see it until it was all the way across the light line and probably couldn't have shot if he wanted to.

I went to my climbing stand behind the mailbox drive and was up the tree ready to shoot at 2:50. About 4:40 or so two gray foxes came into the picture scooting about here and there. The one stopped behind some brush/trees but I had him in the scope so I took the shot. I know for certain I hit him because he was thrashing around on the ground and "screaming" for lack of a better word. I watched him do that for a good two minutes and I thought I saw the other fox come back into my view from where he had run after I shot. To shorten this story, I climbed down the tree and went over there but there was no fox to be found - pretty sure he's on Santa's death list since he was hit by a 30-06 bullet. After that I figured I might as well walk back to the tobacco barn (I have a picture of the tobacco barn that I'll post here) and wait for Mike. Just before I got to the stargazer stand on my way, two deer started hopping down the light line. They ran across the creek toward the original fort stand and stopped and I could have made a free hand shot at about 100 yards but I kept walking toward the stargazer stand so I'd have a rest and by the time I got there they had hopped into the bushes.

That's all there is to post for now. I did talk to Shaun today, he's coming down (as well as Mom) for New Year's to hunt Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Hopefully we'll have some luck.