2000 YTD milestone surpassed

Running:
Now that the 9 day regular deer gun season is over my running has gotten back to normal for this time of year. Nothing spectacular. I’ve been running 5 miles 5 days a week the last couple weeks. Still taking the weekends off to hunt and complete other chores around the house. I’ve been running without the Garmin since I ran the Lakefront back in October. I had been using just a regular watch since I was running known routes. When the battery on my other watch went about 10 days ago I tried the Garmin again and it no longer works. Now to figure out if I want to get a newer version or get the old one fixed. My runs the last couple weeks have been untimed. But I would guess around 40 minutes give or take a minute for each one. I’m writing them down as 40 minutes in my log. On 12/09 I passed the 2000 mile YTD mark. This is the 5th time in 6 years to match or surpass this milestone. Last year I hit 1900 miles and in 2004 I hit 1800. My seven year total since I started training for my first marathon is over 15,000 miles. Through 12/09.

MTD 35
YTD 2001
ODO 27167

Hunting:
I was able to get out hunting both Saturday and Sunday last weekend. On Saturday afternoon I just decided to go out in the back yard. I didn’t even go out until a little after 4PM. I wasn’t there very long when I heard a deer munching on the ears of corn still standing in my food plot. Sticking my head out of the tree blind a bit I saw there were three deer. Two were bigger and one small. At one point I could have taken any of the three. The two bigger does then walked off out of range while the smaller deer continued to feed just below me. After watching for 10 minutes at least to see if a buck was going to come I decided to take the smaller deer before time ran out. I didn’t need more meat, but would be happy to earn another buck sticker. I took aim and fired. I could see the arrow made a complete pass through and could tell I made a pretty good hit. I waited a few minutes and then went to follow the trail. The deer went off my property through the neighbors. I followed it a couple hundred yards across a small field when it jumped up. I knew I had to wait then. In the morning I picked up the trail and found the deer right away. This was my 3rd deer with the bow and 5th this year. Pretty good so far. On Sunday I had the most exciting hour of hunting I’ve had in a long time. I went to hunt on my bow stand where I got the two nine pointers earlier this year. I hadn’t been there for several weeks. With the new snow, the first of the season here I was excited to see if the deer would be active. I watched the entire Packer game so I got out a little later than I had anticipated. I wasn’t there long when 4 does approached from the west. They walked single file within 10 yards of my stand passing over my tracks I made on the way in. Each deer stopped to sniff as they passed my trail. I could have taken any of them, but chose to pass. Not more than 5 minutes later I saw another deer approach on the tracks of the does. Turned out to be a nice 8 point about the same size as the two 9 pointers I got earlier from this same stand. Again I chose to pass and just watched the deer as he passed through. When it was off a ways I decided to test my grunt call just to see how/if the buck would react. I grunted a couple times, when right behind me a deer blew and ran off. I never saw or heard the buck larger than the eight pointer and his little pal 6 pointer approach from behind. Can’t believe I screwed up like that and amazed that I had 7 different deer within shooting range in less than an hour of hunting. One of those does must have been in heat or about to be, to attract that kind of following. Too bad this weekend is an antlerless only season with that kind of activity going on. I still might go out a bit just to scout if nothing else. With the snowfall last night and more forecast for Saturday I can get an idea where they are bedding and traveling for late season.

Gardening:I don’t know how many garden catalogs you all get, but I get dozens of them. Seems if you order from any place they must sell your name to others to get that many. I always order from the same two or three places, but I always keep a few that have unique plants, good ideas, or some new things to look at. Most just end up in the recycle bin. Used to be you didn’t get any until after the new year. Not any more, they keep coming earlier and earlier.  Kind of like the Christmas music and decorations do.