"Scent, or the Lack Thereof"

By: Braden Arp

Part 1

One of my favorite commercials to date was a Scentblocker® commercial whose slogan was, “Forget the wind, just hunt”. I was so intrigued by this slogan that I simply knew I must have one. I think everyone has had a crisp morning’s hunt spoiled by the sounds of stomps and snorts of winding deer, only to see a glimpse of a monstrous backside that leaves you wondering with every spare minute of what could have been. I definitely had my share of those mornings and also had come to the realization that I had had my fill of missed chances due to scent. I was tired of being smelled and I was tired of worrying about the wind. I was ready to forget the wind and just hunt, just as the manufacturer suggested so I made my Scentblocker® purchase and was ready to get back in the game.

On the first morning, I reached my stand after a short walk and brief scuffle with the gnat clouds, which I think were victorious, to find my stand on the edge of a swampy mucky mess. Being a fan of what other hunters skip over, I headed up the tree. As I reached my post, I unpacked my jacket and put it on along with my pants. The sweat instantly came rushing from every pore of my body but soon calmed back to a steady stream. I mean it was downright hot. I pulled my bow from the ground and put my head net loosely around my head trying to avoid the reflecting warm breath that I was now channeling down my neck. I settled in and got ready. Daylight was fast approaching.

I remember thinking several times that if anything came within miles of me that I was sure to be busted. I was thinking of how to orchestrate the morning sounds of sniffs and snorts that would surely come. However, I did have an advantage which was the wind was carrying my scent, or lack thereof, directly away from where the deer would filter in from. It was hot, but I was set up right. I still wasn’t feeling too warm and fuzzy inside, but hey, forget the wind and just hunt right? It was around 8:00 AM when I took a long look down the creek as I heard some squirrels barking. To my surprise, I caught movement just on the edge of a cane break by the creek. It was a deer, and a large bodied deer at that. I zoned in and the deer weaved back out of the cane break and also to my surprise, it was a buck and a nice buck as well. The buck was a hundred or so yards away and coming straight at me, slowly but surely. Just when I thought I had defied the odds, you guessed it, the wind shifted. I had a nice buck to my left and a hard breeze from my right. It was horrific. The wind carried me straight to my trophy as if to serve my scent up on a silver platter saying “run, run for your life”. At that moment, the deer raised his head directly into the wind and gathered every particle of scent into his nostrils that he could.
“I’m had”, I said to myself and myself was agreeing with me. To my surprise, the buck never spooked. He made about three more steps and repeated the process of winding and smelling.

Every time that I thought he was surely pinning me down, the buck just kept coming. By now he was within eighty yards and not feeling it. One turn into the cane break and the buck was gone. I let out a few soft social grunts and hoped for the best. He popped right back out and stood for what seemed like an eternity.

Happy Mother's Day

To all my viewers who are mothers, I extend to you a Happy Mother's Day. You deserve it.

My wife is also the mother of my 12 and 10 year old sons. It is no easy task doing the daily 9 to 5 and then coming home to a house full of boys. So honey, if you stumble in on my blog, I hope you had a great day. I hope we were able to make it special for you.

Rain Rain Rain

The weekend is finally here, and for those of us who hunt only a mile from the house, and can afford the gas to get there, we're getting geared up to get out and talk turkey for a few days. I was greeted this morning to rain and thunderstorms. Don't get me wrong, I love to deer hunt in the rain, but something about turkey hunting in the rain just doesn't do it for me. To start with it's HOT, especially in the south. To add rain drenched clothes to the equation of heat and bugs is no fun at all. Reminds me of a line from a favorite movie, "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes......it rains!"

I don't think it's the animals that have the issue with the rain, I'm pretty sure it's just me. There is nothing better than throwing a buzz bait on some choppy water with a light drizzle. Also, it's a great day to be sitting in a duck swamp with the cold northerly wind hammering and spitting rain and snow. There is a time and place to hunt in the rain, but turkey hunting isn't it for me. If you have had some success in the rain turkey hunting, let me know and sooth my toubled mind over the situation.

We only have a couple of weeks left of turkey season, so we all feel obligated to give it that one last try. Lord knows, I need all the chances I can get this season with the birds acting how they have been acting. We just haven't been able to make friends quite yet. I suppose everyone is different, but it simply is no fun to me to call for hours and have a bird slip in silent. I like to hear the thunder roll with a good hard gobble cutting me off in mid call.

If the rain lets up, I will be back out gunning in the morning for that last chance tom. If not, I will be back here complaining probably yet again that I am in a severe slump with the turkeys. You know a slump always hits when you feel like you sound the best, set ups are perfect, and the weather is perfect. That's why they call it hunting. Gotta love it!

Viewer Photo

Ronald Dunn

Largemouth Bass

8.6lb.

Antioch Lake

Rocky Mountain Project

Rome, Georgia

Caught on a Bomber crankbait.

Viewer Photos

I haven't received any photos for the week. Send in your trophy picture and it will be posted for the current week. Email them to me directly at braden_arp@yahoo.com

"A Series of Unfortunate Events"

Part 2

The following day brought the same numbers and the same opportunities. With only one hunt left, our family guide decided to make a few phone calls and got us hooked up with another guide which had several flooded rice fields and no one to hunt them. We were in. We met at the edge of the fields where we would meet up with the president of the club that leased the rice fields. He unloaded his four-wheeler and began taking us in one by one. I decided to go first and help set up some of the decoys when we got there. I will never forget how my heart sank when I was told that I had to ride on the front rack. He was in an extremely big hurry. I found this out right away. I held on as tight as I could with the same grip used by a professional bull rider and with about the same expectations of falling off. That four-wheeler bucked and twisted, but I managed to stay on for my eight seconds.

It didn’t take us long to get the decoys placed, and then he was off to retrieve another poor soul that thought riding would be better than walking. In the mean time, I walked over to the blind, and on one end, was a small opening roughly two feet by two feet. Without hesitation, I crawled in and set up on the end as to be out of the way of the other hunters. As the next hunter arrived to the blind, I gave my instructions for entrance to the blind. He did just as I did. Now when the third hunter showed up, we took a turn for the worst. He told us of how he really didn’t think he could hold on to the front rack any longer and how the driver had to steady him so he wouldn’t fall off. As he approached the blind, we told him to crawl in just as we did. He let out a sigh of disgust, but bellied up to the opening and started in. Upon getting halfway in to the blind, his waders got stuck on one side. As he tried to free himself, the other side of his waders caught. Now he was stuck and I mean stuck. We unsnapped his waders and pulled him in while his waders slid off, but nevertheless, he was in.

The rest of the group showed up with the dog, and I noticed the dog making a direct path to the opening where we had entered the blind.

“No way,” I thought to myself. “I know we didn’t just…..”

I looked at the other two, and we silently agreed that there had to be more to this than we were aware of. Just then, the dog shot in through the opening, or dog entrance and the rest of the hunters walked over to the end of the blind and lifted a small piece of rope. The gate to the end of the blind opened and the hunters walked in. All three of us simply stared at the gate and then at one another.

“How did you get in,” the guide asked. “This gate looks like it hasn’t been opened.”

“Just like that,” we said, not wanting to reveal our secret ignorance.

The rest of the afternoon, I spent answering the silent looks of disgust and embarrassment from my fellow hunters. We never told anyone any different so don’t you go telling anyone either. That turned out to be the highlight of our hunt. The ducks were circling extremely high and there hadn’t been many of the “new” ducks, as the locals called them, coming in to the swamps. Just as it is called hunting, the experience was all we thought it would be, even though we didn’t take limits of ducks that we thought we would. It was true southern hospitality at its best and I am forever grateful for the stories that came from it. I don’t remember taking the shots that I took over the weekend, but I will never forget the look on their faces as we watched the end gate fling open. It was priceless to say the least.

"A Series of Unfortunate Events"

Part 1


After my first couple of seasons of getting my feet wet, literally, I set out go where the ducks are. I have a friend who has some family in Stuttgart and told us that we could come over to his place and hunt with him for free. I was all about some free so we planned to go the following winter. He had some great swamps to hunt and had access to even more flooded timber if we didn’t have any luck on his spots. We loaded up, four of us in all, and headed for Arkansas.
We arrived after about an eight hour drive on Friday evening. We walked in and introduced ourselves, the ones that wasn’t family, and were immediately invited in to the table where his wife had prepared gumbo. I was impressed already. I had gotten myself into a strange place and was at the table eating in less than twenty minutes. If that isn’t hospitality then I don’t know what is. After dinner, we unloaded our gear and headed up to our rooms to turn in. Now take into consideration that we don’t have a dime in this hunt yet. We had hit the gold mine of hunting.
Morning came and we drove down to meet our guide for the morning, which turned out to be a friend of the family. I was ready to be adopted at this point. We walked in to his camp where there was a hot fire and breakfast waiting. We waited around there for a half or so, and then we loaded up into a wagon type trailer that was pulled by a small tractor. As we were loading our gear, the teenager with our group made it known that he had to use the bathroom so he began untucking and unbuckling all that had been pulled up and stuffed in. He was gone for twenty minutes or so, but then was ready to leave. I noticed walking out of his camp building that the temperature was a balmy five degrees with a stiff wind to boot. In case you are from Arizona, that’s cold.
We made it to the flooded timber and had a short walk in after getting the details of the morning’s hunt from our guide. As we slowly made our way in, the youngster went down and went down hard. I had his jacket in my hand and was doing all I could do to keep him out of the water. It was of no use. One arm broke free of the jacket and then the other arm slipped out, and then the splash. One thing we all found out was when it is that cold outside the water will actually warm you up, provided you’re not submerged in it. We also found out that if you are submerged in the water, you get significantly colder very quickly. His father took him back to the camp to get dried off and get his clothes as dry as he could. I learned when we got back that day that if you place wet socks on a wood burning heater, they will still burn.
The morning’s hunt was really a disappointment as far as a numbers standpoint, but no one really cared because we were standing in a swamp in the duck capitol of the world. How bad could it be? About mid morning, a single ring neck flew in and cupped just in front of the blind. We never figured out who killed the duck but we did figure out who shot, all of us. That poor bird didn’t have a sporting chance. That would be the only duck in hand for the morning hunt.

When joining a new hunting club, I'm all for wanting to know that there have been some trophy bucks taken in the previous season......but not ALL of them! I understand the disloyalty that this group felt after loosing the rights to this piece of property due to a higher bidder, but sometimes the results are more detrimental than the disgust at the time.

From the way I see this one, there are roughly 25 breeder bucks that have been taken from this piece of property which would mean that it will take at a minimum of 5 years to make it back to a manageable state with mature deer, and that's without any hunting on the property. Odds are this property will never make it back to what it once was. These folks had the lease for a sum odd 20 years.If one buck breeds 10 does, that's a potential of 500 yearlings being spawned from a trophy bloodline. If half of those were yearling bucks, there would be 250 potential trophy class animals added each year. I would say that roughly 100 of those could reach maximum potential with a management program.

I realize the way it appears. If there are 250 bucks born each year, there should be no problem. BUT, how many people do you know that sets a lease standard of a 150 class deer when there are only a handful of them scattered abroad. Suddenly, your trophy standard has been compromised to a 120 class 8 point, which is good, but not full potential.

I don't know if this was a staged picture or not. It would seem to be, however, it still brings a good point to the table. If we are only trying to manage our hunting land for OUR benefit and these things keep happening, then what will our children do? They will have to start all over. It's just a shame to me! Sometimes the overall cause is greater than the personal vendetta resolve.