Thursday, October 6th

Up at 3:00 am, out the door by 3:30 am, hour and half drive, parked by 5:00 am, in the tree by 5:45 am settled by 6:00 am, this is a typical round trip for hunting New York.  There was a doe and fawn hanging around the road and abandoned house where we park, gave me some hope they'd head up the mountain this morning.  It seemed all worth it for the near perfect early season conditions, 43 degrees, thermals in full effect on the mountain side carrying my wind off the hillside out of the NE.  I watched a familiar 3 point show up on my bench and head right for the trail that scales the steep mountain side 40 yards away, all within a minutes time and he was gone.  It felt like a boring morning overall, but with the squirrels constantly gathering acorns and worse, knocking acorns out of trees, along with the dry leaves, I was on high alert all morning so the time passed quickly.  The good news is the deer are moving in the mornings pretty consistently in NY where I've seen deer 4 out of 4 sits, the leaves are getting crunchy too so there's a good chance of hearing them before seeing them.  In the afternoon I grabbed my climber and headed above the field, closer to the parking area where they've historically come down during shooting light.  75 degree high, yeah I didn't see any deer this evening, onto the next hunt...