posted by Jim on Dec 31

 My brother Randy, a good friend Mark, and my dad Raddie had all drawn bear tag’s for the Red Oak hunting zone in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.   The first day they could legally start baiting they headed north.  And every weekend thereafter, they would repeat the long and tiresome task of hauling up untold amounts of fresh bait.  They scouted miles and miles of back roads and timber, making bait stations and preparing stand sites.  By the third weekend, they had nine bait stations in all, scattered over several miles of cedar swamp, river bottom, and a couple of promising sites on some hardwood ridges.
     As time pasted and the hunt date got closer, the guy’s started concentrating on the baits showing the most sign.  There were five baits out of the nine that had really good activity.  At each of those five sites is where they hung stands.
           I planned on joining the group on the first weekend of the hunt, to run the camera for my dad at first.  Then if he filled his tag, I would pair up with Randy or Mark, filming their hunts and so on.
    Randy and I were driving separate vehicles and going up on Thursday, September the 18th after work.  Mark would be joining us on Saturday evening.  And, my dad, Raddie, being retired had been up there a few days already keeping the bait sites full and getting the camp set up.
      Arriving too late on Friday night to do anything, Saturday morning we were up early and heading out to check the bait’s.    I set up my camera equipment in the tree that my dad was to hunt that night, and we went back to camp to await the evening hunt.
Darkness had fallen fast and the first night on stand had come and gone.  When we all reunited back at camp, Mark was the only one that had seen a bear.  The bear was small, and he passed up the opportunity.  But, he was very excited about his first heart pounding bear encounter in the woods.  I think he said that his heart beat increased to such a rate that he had an instant headache, blurred vision, and was shaking so bad he would not have been able to draw his bow even if he had wanted to.   There were a lot of laughs all around, and we couldn’t wait until tomorrow’s hunt. Read the rest … »

posted by Jim on Dec 14

On December 5, 2008 my grandfather, Tony Cetrone, harvested the biggest deer of his hunting career at 81 years young!  I have spent the better part of 35 years hunting, fishing and enjoying the outdoors with him and was hunting by his side when this all happened. 

It was opening morning of muzzleloader season in Shiawasee County and the conditions were absolutely perfect.  I have 500 acres leased near my home and with the help of my hunting partners; we spend 12 months a year managing the deer herd.  I have a well placed blind on the corner of a cut cornfield and a hay field that sees action all day when the days grow short and the temperatures plunge into single digits.  Shortly after 7:00 A.M. a deer stepped from the timber to feed in the cut cornfield. It was a mature deer, with an impressive sent of antlers, but in low light it, was hard to tell how big the antlers actually were.  I knew he was wide and had long beams, but was not the deer that I was looking for.  I have several trophy bucks to my credit and had already harvested an eight point in early October and a very nice nine point in Nebraska, so I was being a little particular. As the deer disappeared into the timber, I began to second-guess my decision, but couldn’t wait to get my grandfather in this blind and give him a chance to harvest a great buck!

I talked to my hunting partner when I got back to the truck and told him about the deer.  We agreed to call my grandfather and try to get him into town that evening to hunt.  I explained to him that I saw a nice buck this morning and I had the deer patterned coming to a food source, he promptly agreed and made the 1 hour trip south to my house.

Grandpa met us at the house about 2:00; we quickly gathered our things and headed for the farm.  There was definitely some excitement in the truck as we made the twenty- minute drive; we listened closely, as grandpa told some old deer hunting stories from his 40 plus years of a deer hunting tradition.  When we arrived at the farm I quickly gave him a breakdown of the farm layout, past deer sightings, and how I hoped the evening would turn out.  Grandpa had never deer hunted farm country before and had never shot a muzzleloader but non-the-less displayed total confidence, as we made the quarter mile walk through the snow.

As we approached the blind I methodically glassed the timber looking for any deer that may be heading early to feed.  There were several deer lying in the timber; I turned to grandpa and reminded him to be quite because there were deer very close to our stand location waiting to come to the cut cornfield.  He had told me hundreds of time to be quite, so it felt good to be in charge for once and let him know the importance of being as quite as possible.  We settled into the blind and patiently waited for the deer. Read the rest … »