WarCamEagle88

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as many times as i drive up there....every once in a while i will sit and watch fromthe overlook and still havent seen them. im impatient though.

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I’ve heard that you’re more likely to see the Brown Mountain Lights on a cool temperature night in the Fall after it’s been raining. Never seen them myself though, so can’t confirm.

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An orb of light passed slowly between us from my right to left across the road.

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Ever heard of the Brown Mountain Lights? Might have been a similar phenomenon, which is still unexplained but interesting nonetheless.

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The key to these hunts OP is go to bed early and be the first one in the woods. Seriously. You probably won’t out walk or bike someone, but you can get there early as hell and beat most people.

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Good tip, thank you. The only issue is that they do not allow you to enter any gates until 1 hour before sunrise, so I’m limited on how early I can get in. But being at the gate as early as allowed will be the plan.

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Also, something to keep in mind is stay in your stand all day. Or try your best to stay until 11 the first day. Lot of guys get down around 8:30-9:30. It’s not the worst idea to sit in the ‘middle’ of where everyone will be. Very good chance to have deer bumped to you mid day.

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Agreed. I’ll probably sit until 11:00, then scout until 2:00, and then sit the evening on the hottest sign I can find.

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Sounds like an incredible opportunity. Especially if a turkey happens along. Good luck!

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Thank you

TN offers a quota deer hunt at the Oak Ridge National Lab (LINK where they developed the Atomic bomb during WWII, and some friends and I were drawn for an archery hunt in November. Anybody ever hunt there before? It’ll be my first time.

Seems like it’s going to be a pretty interesting hunt. The whole area is under strict security, and you’ve got to go through several checkpoint gates as you go in to hunt, with many residential and laboratory areas blocked off from hunting.

They only allow hunts there 3 weekends a year, and they grow some big bucks, but you have to have every deer you harvest checked for radiation with a Geiger counter before you leave. If it’s got too much radiation, they make you forfeit the carcass.

Hoping the radioactive deer grow some freaky racks, their fur glows in the dark, and the blood trails look like somebody opened a couple glow sticks on the ground!

Aztec Hummingbird God of War

I learned a while ago that the Aztecs associated their god of war with a hummingbird and believed warriors that died in battle returned to earth as hummingbirds, and never really understood why until I watched a few fight like hell over sugar water.

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David Gabriel-Georges

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I’m far from an expert, but he is the best football player I’ve ever seen in person. Went to 2 of his games last year and was blown away by his speed and balance. Tackling him must be pure hell.

I believe they mentioned during the game last night that he squats 700 pounds, and dead lifts 950 (but I may be misremembering the exact numbers).

Maybe. There has been an effort to plant Asian varieties of chestnuts (and hybrids) that are immune to the blight that killed our native chestnuts.

I hunt the mountains of NC and can confirm that the deer and turkey populations are fairly low compared to the flatland areas I hunt (tons of bear though). Also, the western-most counties of NC have no doe season and only allow you to kill 1 buck per year, so keep that in mind during your search for land.

Many of the mountain counties also have very short rifle and muzzleloader seasons, typically 5 days long or so, depending on where you are, so archery is going to be your main option.

Western NC is wonderful in many ways, but the hunting is harder than anywhere else in the country I’ve been.

The bucks can get big, but not because of superior genetics or ideal food sources. It’s because they have so many places to hide from hunters, like rhododendron thickets, so they can get old. And they tend to bed on knobs, facing downhill, with the wind to their backs coming from uphill, so they can smell anything coming from behind them and see anything in front of them from a mile away. Very challenging to hunt these bucks.

Just caught my first smallie a few weeks ago and I’m hooked. They’re beautiful fish and fight like you’re playing tug-of-war with a bulldog. Great fun.

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Great story OP. What .410 do you have? Red dot and TSS?

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Thank you.

It’s a Savage, single-shot, designed for 3 inch TSS. Extra long barrel, long full choke, red-dot came mounted when we bought it.

Last year, my son had saved up some money and said he wanted to buy his first gun. All the turkey guns I owned at that time were 12 gauge and seemed a little too robust for a youngster, so I recommended he pick out something more manageable. My dad grew up hunting small game with a .410 and swears he killed more things with that than anything else he owns, so I think that convinced me to go with that size over a 20 gauge.