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While New York State’s archery hunting season began this past Saturday, I was watching my brother for the weekend and not able to hit the woods. Fortunately, I was given Monday & Tuesday off from work & the weather cooperated enough to allow me to head out Monday.

I’ve been hunting for around five years, but hadn’t gotten a deer until just last year (when I shot a button buck on Veteran’s Day of archery season).

This year I’d been telling folks I only have two things on my mind for this fall: marathon training & hunting season. I expected the pursuit of both to take up most of my fall, but I took the deer below at ~15 yards Monday with a Matthews Switchback bow:

Additional pictures can be found in my photo gallery.

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This past Friday I took off and awoke early to head out to the new hunting grounds to do some scouting. I didn’t see a thing. As this was the first scouting done at the new place, I was pretty let down. I did take the opportunity to move a stand accidentally placed on the neighboring property back onto the new property and headed back Saturday morning to sit in it - and was it ever worth it.

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I ended up heading down to Zoar Valley this past Saturday to do some hiking. Unfortunately, my eTrex Legend GPS didn’t want to stay powered on, but to give you an idea of where I was at, I do have a map and

gpx file from a previous hike near the same location. Photos from the day can be found in my photo gallery.

I’d been to this area of Zoar before, but never down Knife Edge Ridge the whole way. Going all the way down it was tough enough, but coming back up was really challenging - especially since I’d done a 5 mile run earlier that morning. On the way down, I saw a set of two families with young children at a beach near the bottom of the ridge. I can’t imagine taking young kids down the ridge, especially with beach chairs and the other gear they had with them. (A couple people die each year at Zoar from accidents involving the cliffs.)

After heading downstream and then back up Knife Edge Ridge for a while, I hiked the top of the ridge, heading upstream for a little for the first time. It was beautiful, but the weather was starting to look a little threatening and I decided to head back towards the truck.

Just as I came out of the woods into the field you would first enter, I thought I saw a pheasant up ahead shoot across the path and then back a couple times. I pulled my camera out and very quietly crept up toward the spot I thought I’d seen it. Much to my surprise, when I got there, a turkey jumped out of the opposite side of the path and took to the air. I was able to capture this picture of it in flight. As it was only about 10 feet away when it took off, I didn’t think I’d get any closer to one. But then another hen popped out onto the path and was even closer - she must have been within 5 feet of me!

I was pretty happy to be able to just get one picture of the 2nd bird, but she didn’t run from me, so I switched the camera to capture some video and was able to follow her for almost two minutes. Check an edited version of it here.

If only it had been fall turkey season…