Deer hunt 2007

Well no vacation is ever dull so the adventure started bright and early Friday morning, 3am to be exact we all get up for the trip. Its my nephew Todd, Cody and my self loading up and taking off to the airport. No problems parking at the extended stay parking lot and as we are leaving in the shuttle bus i ask Cody " Do ya have the camera" No i thought you had it... where is it? I left it on the back seat of the truck... Oh well off to the airport.. well we arrive at 3:45 am we are 3rd in line, great. 4am..no one there yet, not open yet and the flight leaves at 6:30 am. at 4:30 they open up and we check in the baggage and declare the weapons, we are ready to go but no camera so i have the boys sit and wait while i head back to the parking lot to retrieve the camera.. i board the shuttle bus and stop at every stop around the terminals until i am the last person on the bus.. the driver then says to me... Well what did you forget... the camera.. obviously i am not the first one to forget something.. He tells me ..it happens all the time and people forget all sorts of things.. i get the camera and back to the airport. Make it to the gate and board the plane.. it was half full which is fine, i cat napped all the way there.. landed just fine and brother Don was waiting to pick us up... we headed to beautiful Clinton Missouri.. Its a medium sized town and getting more and more traffic signals installed every year.. its slowly going away from the small town image.. once there we drop off our luggage and head to the sporting goods store to purchase our deer tags, we get any deer tags so we can harvest a buck or doe.. after that we scope out prospective hunting areas... all look good... Bernie flies in that nite, rents a mini van, soccer mom kind, and arrives about 2am.. we are all up at 5am to go hunt. It was not very cold this morning, i was hoping for a lot colder weekend, it was in the high 30's .. once at the area Cody and I head out to the north of the timber on the edge of a field. Everyone else spreads out to various spots, Bernie is close to the cars a very good spot. Well at day break there is shooting buts its the 2 guys who have the lease on the land and have the prime spots.. the guy by me who is hunting a small pond in the middle of the timber bags a nice 15 point non typical deer.. his father gets a 8 pointer also a nice buck.. after they shoot a nice 6 point walks out right in front of Cody and me, I am waiting for him to shoot but he did not see it so i swing my gun up and shoot. Boom and whack and the things runs off, what, no way.. we walk over to the spot and see white belly hair on the ground, i go into the woods and spot a large spot of blood and call Cody to help me track it.. we follow the trail for about 100 yards,,, and loose it in marsh and we search the area and find nothing only to find out that Todd had been walking the damn by the pond before we got there and saw a deer laying down , saw it get up and slowly walk away, he thought it was sick or something and did not shoot it... and watched it walk up the hill and jump over the fence and disappear... its gone... it turned out to be my only chance this trip.. well no one in our group got a deer that morning so we headed for breakfast and a nap... that nite it was different Todd was sitting on a tree stand not far from the access road and bagged a nice 6 point buck as it walked across the field toward him.. He was well into the field dressing of it when i arrived to take his picture of his first deer... not to mention it was getting dark fast... we get it home and hang it to cool and butcher it after dinner.. Sunday morning it is warm, like 70 deg. at 6am... too warm, the deer don't really move that well.. kind of, sort of.. I hunted the same area of the land and put Cody on the deer stand that Todd had taken his deer the nite before.. I had heard various shooting thru the morning but not quite sure where it all was coming from.. about 8 am i hear a bang and a lot of whooping and hollering coming from the south and it was not anyone i knew.. so i head back and meet up with Bernie and ask him who shot and was yelling. He did not know... we all of a sudden see Cody making his way through the timber with this ear to ear grin on his face... yep just like the one in the picture... He says to us hey you guys want to give me a hand dragging my deer back to the truck... He bagged a nice 3 point buck.. a good meat deer... another one to butch that day. Don drives his truck around to pick up the deer from where it was shot and bring it back to where we all were parked and we field dress it there.. Of course i get to do this job and oh its 7am pacific time and time for Don to call Mom.. so he got out of helping and did tell her that I was helping Cody clean his deer.. back to the house for another butcher job.. that nite we hunted Don's old house property with no luck, i did take a shot at a coyote. that nite Todd did a ride along with Lacy's boyfriend Doug who works the graveyard shift for the Clinton police. Todd said that they had one call, it was a domestic violence call, this lady had knocked in her teeth and said it was her husband who had done it, oh and he had a black eye that she gave him.. she was drunk and was arrested, as Todd put it, Just like ya see on " Cops " on TV. he is ready to do this again.. Monday we woke up to rain.. lightning and thunder. the whole nine yards... if this were at home it would be storm watch 2007 but for them it was just another rain.. this worked out just fine for me.. i was soo sore from walking, hiking and standing... i do not do this kind of stuff all the time... we left Monday around noon and caught our flight home.. this ended another fantastic trip.. well i had to put in a self picture of me hunting the timber behind Don's old house and of course the colors of the trees, something we really do not get at home... until the next trip...