cops, high water and deer. Oh my!

That sums up everything I encountered on my way up to the deer camp this morning. One of Cleveland's finest decided he wanted to welcome me to his fine city instead of chatting with one of his fellow city emplyees.. "I clocked you at 78 in a 65, where ya heading to in such a hurry?" he asked. I didn't think it was prudent to tell him I was ONLY doing 77 according to the GPS which I glanced at when I saw him. I handed him my id and stuff and waited patiently. A few minutes later he came back and asked for my autograph and then presented me with a nice yellow slip of paper and told me to contact the court before July 17th, correction January 17th. Guess he's anxious for the summer already.

Learned something about my Garmin Zumo 550 during this. If you turn if off it stops your trip timer altogether, both the overall time and the stopped time. Interesting. Have to remember that when travelling. Want to leave it on during fuel stops so I get more accurate times.

Next came the high water. Even with my early morning visit I still made it to Corrigan by 5:30. Cruising down HWY 352 (according to the GPS, actually it's FM352 though) I notice what looks like a puddle of water up ahead. The closer I get the bigger the puddle gets. I then realize there's a creek in the area of the puddle and I quickly begin stopping. I figured if I locked up the tires it would be better than hitting the high water at 60mph. The tires never lost traction and I managed to come to a stop about 20 feet into the puddle. Good thing too because when I started moving forward again the water got up to the axles. Once through the high water things were back to normal and I was on my way.

Driving down Purvis Rd while marvelling at my GPS's map detail I saw 3 does crossing the road just past the house on the right with the pond next to it. According to the GPS I had just passed Kyle's road. So much for the deer moving later in the morning. They were already moving and it was a good hour before daylight still.

I turned onto Palmerly Parrish road and gosh the GPS still knew where I was. Wow, technology is great. Guess what I found at the creek? If you guessed water you are correct. The bridge itself was high and dry but on the other side there was standind water. I down shifted to 1st and just eased in to it. The further I went the deeper it got so finally I opened the door to check. Water was just under my nerf bars. Thank goodness for the Spring Over Axle conversion I did a few years ago. So when I got to the gate there was still a good foot of water standing so I got out and stayed on the outside of the Jeep. Those nerf bars came in handy as they gave me something to stand on as I crawled onto the hood of the Jeep to get to the gate. I managed to get the gate unlocked and opened without getting into the water. Bravo! Closing the gate was trickier but I stayed dry. I'll go back down later and lock it.

Once on the propety the gps could do nothing except tell me what direction I was going. Maybe I'll drive the whole road around the property to see if I can create a crumb trail that I can convert into a road for the map.

Hunting later in the season is nice because it gets light later. I was on the stand by 6:15. About 5 minutes later moving around in my seat I made a farting sound with the seat cushion (honest it was the cushion). Well apaerently that was enough to spook a deer probably 30' south of my stand because I heard it snort and hussle through the bushes.

The feeder went off promptly @ 6:45 but it was still too dark to see. Just a little after 7 I saw a doe and fawn coming up my right shot lane. They got half way up before she decided she didn't like the situation and turned around. The fawn followed with it's tail up high. It was quite a site as it's tail looked like it was 2 sizes too big for the little fawn. A few minutes later I got a brief glimpse of a deer to the left of my feeder. Just a brief glimpse at best.

So it's now 8:15 and I haven't seen any more deer. There's been an amazing amount of shooting. Almost sounds like opening weekend, of course some of it is waterfowl hunting I reckon. Either that or you've got 10 hunters shooting at the same deer and missing.

More to come...