Hunting was pretty scratchy...overall I was pretty disappointed at the bird numbers in my areas.

I shot my first one at 0540 on opening morning, so we literally started out with a bang...my second one filled my spring limit the next afternoon.

That was it for our little group of hunters, Ike and Nick can chime in to share their stories.

You can tell the winters have been rather mild the last couple of years...the amount of deer is amazing.

One story...on Friday afternoon, not long before filling my second tag, had a nice social hen cluck a bit to my left and off behind me...not the "looking for love" chirps, but the "I'm content with my company" cluck...which to me means she and a tom are about to enter my area.

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, she peeked out, saw my decoys, looked over her shoulder and gave the happy cluck again, and walked right into them. When I saw a little movement in the brush behind her I knew that tom #2 was about to meet his maker...and then a whitetail deer walked out behind her. And then another, and another, until 7 deer had walked out in a row behind her, all young does.

They all dawdled around my decoys for a few minutes, picking at the grass. Once she was done looking at the decoys she marched off, and when the deer didn't immediately follow her, she turned back around and gave them an earful...they dutifully got in line and followed her into the brush.

My old man was set up about 200 yards away, and 20 minutes later she and her pack of does repeated that same process at his decoys.

I guess she liked having 7 sets of eyes and ears around to take care of her, and while I have frequently seen deer and turkeys hanging out together, I've never seen one so clearly in charge of the other like that.

So that was fun.

We did complete the official cast and blast by going out and catching a walleye for lunch after shooting my first one on opening morning, so that was also fun!

Fish on...

Todd