Scouting at Blanton Creek WMA...

This past Saturday, October 8 my buddy Chris and I went down to Blanton Creek to find a spot to hunt during the next weekend's Adult/Child hunt. The cool thing about this hunt was not only are we planning to camp out, but you can use a rifle a week earlier than the regular gun season starts.

So we looked around in several places finding lots of acorn trees that were dropping, but only one rub and no place that we felt extremely confident about. We pretty much narrowed it down to two places, either a thinned out area of pines that would give us viewing in greater distances, or a hardwood ridge with a few white oak acorn trees that were dropping. We were there about 3 hours and went home tired & sweaty.

I really wanted to find something better to hunt for the weekend so Walker would have a better chance at seeing something during the hunt so I decided to go back down to Blanton Creek Monday evening after school. It had been raining all day and I decided at the last minute to go ahead & go anyway, even if it was sprinkling.

I had a place in mind that I wanted to look and I went straight to that spot. I parked & walked in and found a good trail running along side a creek bottom. The creek turned right but the hollow made a bend in the opposite direction, to the left so I followed it. After about 100 yards I found this:

I kept walking, looking for a good place for us to be able to hunt on the ground, either sitting at a tree or in a ground blind. I saw several great places for tee stands, but nothing great for the ground.

I saw several places where armadillos must have been rooting, and I even saw one armadillo.





Finally, after walking about 600 yards I found something to get really excited about. It was one of the biggest rubs I had ever found myself, and it was on a cedar tree about the size of my bicep (no jokes please...).

A little more looking about 20 yards from the big rub was this, with a very clear hoof print and fresh droppings in it:

At this point I was pretty excited and started looking around at where we might get to hunt in this area. In the direction I was walking I could look up to the left to see a hardwood ridge, but it was really too thick to be able to see much. To my right was a thick area about 20 yards wide, which opened into an area of thinned out pines.

If I turned around from this spot and walked 20 yards I would be looking into the hardwood bottom where the big rub is and where we plan to hunt this weekend:

So needless to say Walker & I are really excited about this coming weekend. The fact that we are camping out and that we are going to have a group that we are hunting with will only add to the experience and the fun. Hopefully one of us will have some luck this weekend and see some deer. And just maybe it'll be us seeing the buck that made the big rub on the cedar tree...