Episode 1 - Early season whitetail hunting in Missouri

We're in the Dallas airport and it's Monday evening September the 20th. We're on our way to Missouri for some whitetail hunting because we have a kind of unusual cool front for this time of the year. Normally, a cool front means 50’s and it's going to get down in the 40’s with this front passing through. And everything that we've dealt with between COVID, and then hurricane Ida and Louisiana where we're out of, we had kind of given up on this series getting started with a true early-season hunt somewhere where we have September season openers. We were going to go to Nebraska for a Labor Day hunt. The one opener between the COVID that my family went through in August and then the hurricane that hit us, we didn't make that. We didn't make the September 15th opener in Kansas or in Missouri. And so we were going to try to do some preseason content and wait on our seasons to open in October in the south. And then the hurricane put all that into chaos and did a lot of damage. So we really weren't sure how we're going to get this season started off, but here we are last. On Friday I just broke down and bought plane tickets and called Tyson and said we're on our way. We got standing beans, we got really cold temperatures for this time of the year coming in, so we'll be there in the morning. We're going to go into a block of timber that the deer come into bed. So we're going to hope we can get in there early before they come out of the beans. And then in the afternoons, we're going to be obviously hunting the deer going to the beans. We got the temperature, so this is going to be our early season start to the ‘21-’22 whitetail season. So we'll see you in the morning.

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Good morning. It’s September 21st. This is our first sit of the 2021 whitetail hunting season. We got into camp here in Missouri about 12:30 last night, so I'm running on fumes a little bit. We had to come in here and hang our stand this morning. Just typical early season. It's really green, so we don't have a lot of shooting lanes. But we’re in a block of timber, we have beans-- standing beans on two sides of us and the deer filter into here to bed in the mornings. We're right off the side of a main ridge that runs through this block of timber and they bed all off the sides of his ridge. We've got a perfect wind for what we expect to happen. This cold front started pushing through, so we decided to run up here and make a couple of days. We're going to sit over the beans in the afternoons. Try to get in the bedding areas in the morning. We’re going to sit a couple hours this morning. Just see if we can catch something coming back in here to bed. This is definitely a known bedding area, so we should see something filter in here. Whether it's something we want to shoot, or whether we can get a shot in here with all this foliage - we'll see. It's about 55 degrees. North wind. It is awesome to be back in a tree stand. So, see if we can start it off right. Eight o’clock. And we just had a real pretty three-year-old eight point just come feeding through here. Just exactly what we came here for. Just not quite big enough, not what we're looking for. It's in the 50s, but it's a high pressure. So it's a really, really nice day. It doesn’t feel like September at all. Honestly, I’ve been whitetail hunting a lot of days in November that felt like this. I'm kind of hopeful that with this weather. I mean it was 80 something degrees yesterday and the front pushed in last night. And I'm kind of hopeful that with the weather pattern, the deer might kind of stay on their feet. Come out of the beans and get in this timber, but stay on their feet and just kind of mill around and feed before they go to bed. If that's the case... I mean really deer could be all in here around us and if they don't get within 50 or 60 yards, we can't see them. And if a doe slips through here, late in the morning, she might earn herself a trip back to the lodge. We’ll see. It's opening day. I might have to let one go. So we ended up seeing three bucks. And, but they all crossed about 50 or 60 yards from us up there. The one deer came right down here to us and the other two crossed straight across. And we're going to move our set over about 15 or 20 yards to another tree that we think will kind of put us in the middle. There’s agriculture all around us and the deer coming in here to bed in the morning, so we want to have this set for tomorrow morning. Just kind of feel like that's going to give us a better opportunity for what we saw. Of course they kind of filter all through here, but it's going to be 42 in the morning with the same wind. I feel like this is a better set. So we're gonna go over here, get this set, and then slip out of here. Like he was trying to find us, like he kind of dogged us. The next day, they can’t see you? That’s how he acted. I think he hasn't lived adequately through a rifle season yet. Probably won't make it through this one. It’s about five o'clock on our first afternoon-sit this whitetail hunt and we're sitting over the beans. This is kind of why we came on this little short trip. Because the idea is with this cold front and temperatures getting a lot cooler than they've been being, maybe one or more of these deer will get on their feet a little bit earlier in the daylight. That's kind of the plan. So this is a perfect spot, in that we're on the backside of the bean field and it goes up the hill. We're in the bottom and in the corner, and there’s CRP behind this big draw behind us and there’s CRP to the east of us and a wooded draw behind us. With these beans, it’s like a little tucked-in pocket in the back and it's very secluded. So it fills up with deer pretty much every evening and every night. So we're just hoping that something that we're looking for will come out earlier with this cooler temperatures. Cold front pushing through today. We got about three hours until dark. So we'll tuck-in, cross our fingers and hope something that we're looking for will hit the edge of these beans and give us a good opportunity right here. Stay tuned. We’ve had about, I’d guess maybe five does come to the beans. A couple of them came right like they're supposed to right in front of us and back up to the corner. But nothing with horns yet. We only got maybe 10 or 15 minutes of shooting light left. We need something to hit these beans quick if anything’s going to happen tonight. But they’re definitely on their feet. We’re back in the same block of timber for our second morning whitetail hunting. I've tried to talk to the camera twice and both times there was a deer. One time I just tried to turn around, the deer was right behind us and we didn’t know it. And the last time as I was talking, Colin saw deer coming - it was three does. We've had five does come through this. Yesterday all we saw was three. But who knows? It's 45 degrees this morning. Which is really, really cold for September, but we'll see what happens. Waiting on something big enough for us to shoot. I think we're in a really good spot. There's a lot of acorns falling. With this cooler weather, the deer might actually stay on their feet longer this morning just feeding. Just need the right one to do it. And if he went to the right, he could see him. If he went to left I could see him. And I'm like… I mean, it was what five minutes? Probably 10 minutes. I stood there and stood there and stood there. I finally leaned back and turned around where I can see him from the tree. We’re sitting there talking and I hear something. I looked and that SOB is standing 10 yards from me - 15 yards from me. I don't know how he got there.
Little one, though? Yeah, it was the little one that was standing there. I don't know where the bigger one went. And there was one that was like, this.... The other one was just… I think it was them. But I don't know. I mean I never really got a good look at it. And then we saw seven does. Then I had another doe blowing at us when we got down. It's our final sit on our little short two day whitetail hunt. We kind of made an aggressive move. We’re probably 200 yards or so, from where we sat yesterday and the deer were at. We're basically inside the timber, off of the beans about 75 or 80 yards. This is where all the deer come to this bean field. The problem is none of these bucks are hitting the beans in the daylight. We didn't see any of them in the daylight and the camera's not showing any. Now granted, we've seen a lot of deer. We saw seven or eight deer yesterday afternoon. We saw seven does and two bucks this morning. We saw three bucks on the first morning. We're right on top of five or six trails. It looks like cattle in here coming up out of this draw. We got in here really early so we could hang this set. We could got in here, giving ourselves plenty of time for things to settle down. And we haven't had any deer blowing at us. We haven't heard any deer running off. The wind’s good. There were no dear bedded on this side of the draw, right off the field. We didn't bump anything out of here that we know of. It's been fun. It's been really fun whitetail hunting in September with the temperatures in the 50s and 40s. And we've seen a lot of deer. We just didn't come all the way up here to shoot anything. So, hoping, for an older deer. Bigger deer. So, let's see what happens. So our afternoon sit didn't work out as planned. We blew a whole bunch of deer out of there trying to get out. So we think that they just they moved really late. We were hoping this cold weather would get them on their feet. We have to fly home tomorrow. So our little short early season hunt's come to an end, but we had a good time. We saw a lot of deer over two days and the good thing is, it's only a week away from pretty much all of our Seasons opening back home and down south. So we'll be back in a tree pretty soon. And hopefully will be back up here for the rut and see if we can't fill that tag. So we'll see you on the next trip.
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