We landed a lease in Ohio this year at the end of October, last minute like usual. We were searching all summer for a lease near Pro Staffers Mitch and Curt Coleman. I had looked on Base Camp Leasing's website several times and found a lot of good looking leases, but couldn't get everyone on board quick enough before someone else had snatched them up. Well one popped up just before the season and it looked perfect. It was within 10 miles of Curt and Mitch. They knew the area was good and told us to get it. We contacted Base Camp and landed the lease the next week. The following week Tommy and I went to check it out, hang some sets and put a few Moultrie trail cameras out. We planned on hunting a little while we were there, but it pretty much rained on us the whole time, so we just hung back and glassed a couple of days, we did get to hunt one day.
We left on Monday, but before we pulled out we hung one more set and pulled cards. The first pull we had a couple of decent bucks, but they didn't appear to be shooters, they looked young. I had already scheduled the next week off from work so I was looking foward to spending that time in Ohio hunting and filming the Colemans. Who wouldn't want to spend the November 3rd through November 11th in some great bigbuck territory? Figuring I was going to be back in Ohio at the right time I was probablly a little to pumped up.
I was a little deflated down when I got back and was in stand. It was SLOW and after last years SLOW rut I was worried it was never going to kick off. We hunted for 5 days and never saw a decent buck, we hardly saw any rut activity. We had a couple good bucks on our Moultries, but we weren't seeing them on stand. That changed on day 6 for me. Curt and Mitch decided to hook up and hunt thier farm so I was off to our lease to do some self filming. I hate self filming, but I figured that the set I was going to I should be able to handle it.
Right after first light I saw what appeared to be a decent buck cruising, but I never did get a good look at him. I did an opening interview a few minutes after that brief encounter and not a few minutes after that I saw a fawn bust over the hill followed by the best buck we had on trail camera. After what seemed like forever (actually a little over 30 minutes) he followed a doe down the hill and right into my lap. The buck turned broadside and was walking along the hill perfectly 30 yards away. When I drew my bow the doe not 20 yards away, busted me and threw me off. I missed my oppurtunity to stop the buck and he got in behind some limbs. After a 10 minute standoff he moved down the hill closer and started to walk off giving me a PERFECT slightly quartering away shot that I did not miss. He went 80 yards and piled up on camera. Man I like Ohizo!
