Hunting early season is always something that I probably hit way too hard every year. It’s always hot, deer are on patterns but very weather dependent, and my expectations and beyond what is realistic for that time of the year. This year I wanted to hit Nebraska on the opener, September 1st. My original plan was to go alone, but the way things worked out, my buddy Clay Hudson was able to join me and run a camera for the trip. I was very grateful for this as I never get to have myself filmed on hunts. My main target was whitetails in farm country. But we managed to find ourself in every type of terrain that Nebraska has to offer.
To start off the trip, I went to KC on the 30th for a Zach Bryan concert. Clay came up to KC on the 30th as well and I picked him up on the morning of the 31st and we headed west. We started in the central part of the state. In sandhill country but also a good mix of pines. We scouted that night and came to the conclusion that this wasn’t what we wanted to spend our time on this time of the year. We headed south. We found a spot to camp at around midnight and planned to go into a hill country spot in the morning to glass. We slept in the bed of the truck, the first night sucked for me. I slept horribly and actually got cold around 3 am. So I was excited for morning time to come.
Opening morning, and we didn’t have much of a plan. There was a truck at the first spot we tried to go into. We went to the other side and ended up seeing that guy in the middle of the property. We went another direction and glassed until 10. Only seeing a doe and a fawn. The middle of the day was very hot, we drove around a little bit to look at other properties. We found a bean field to hunt that evening. To waste time we went back to our camp site and had some lunch. We went into the bean field around 3, this way we could scout a little bit as we went in. We ended up getting set around 5:30 and instantly started seeing deer. Clay wasn’t even settled yet and I saw a doe and fawn 37 yards away. They had to have just stood up. Most of the evening was spent with deer below us and this made time go by quick. But, no bucks.
To sum up the next couple days, it was hot, deer weren’t active in daylight, and we were getting exhausted quick each day. The one thing I am proud of is we didn’t quit. We worked hard the 3 days we were in there. The intel I gained was super helpful for when I return and for future references. I do plan to return later in the year to hunt some better weather. And I also just love that area, you can find any type of terrain you want to hunt as well. As I finish writing this, Missouri deer season opens up this week and we are looking at some awesome weather to start out with. Hopefully our home state season is full of highs and lots of learning.
