Monday, September 24, 2012
Win a Custom Sika Seducer
Maryland's archery season has already started and the sika rut is starting to kick in. This 2012 - 2013 season I am going to give away a Sika Seducer (I will post a photo of the custom call when it comes in) made of a custom wood, not the standard walnut, complete with a lanyard and directional tube to a hunter who used the Seducer to call one in and kill it. The hunter must tell the story (a testimonial) of the kill by commenting to this post in the COMMENT SECTION. Along with the story, please leave your name and a way I can contact you if you win. I will draw a winner from those entered at the close of the season. Get those testimonies in and have a great season in the sika marsh.
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5am as I head in the narrow trail thigh deep in muck, winds westerly a bit stiffer than I care for, makes hearing difficult and all the frag is swaying like ocean currents. I reach a small tree I'd pick a few days ago and hesitantly climb, the next tree 30yrds further was really where I wanted to be but the bark was real loose. Bugles n moans come from nearly every direction, my eyes strain threw the darkness to pick out distant tree tops against the skyline as references where the sounds are coming from. Skeeters are overwhelming as I fight the urge to hose down with spray, I snuggle closer to the thermacell. First light 2 deer trot down a path and stop 10 feet in front of the loose bark tree, the wind swirling my scent...they stand there several minutes and then carefully back track 30yrds. I blow a cpl moans toward the hole in the frag under me but they dont budge...maybe just a cpl hinds, probably bedded now, I bugled twice with the Seducer trying to imitate a younger stag, still they dont move. Daylight brightens quickly as I pass the time listening to a few stags in a distant point testing each other.....wishing I was there...I've been hesitant to bust the 600yrd trail threw 12' high dense frag. An hour later I hear one of the 2 earlier get up and swing around further to my left but staying 30rds out. Another hour or so, the wind has picked up even more, thought I heard a splash near the last movement.....I drift back to daydreaming about forging the 600yrd trail. 10:20am I hear 1 piece of frag snap further to the left completing the semi circle 30yrds out, connecting the dots, I remember how a mature stag likes his musky aroma to drift downwind and intimidate his competition or swoon his harem....it usually gets the deer to their feet and hopefully starts a chase of love or war. A slight water splash 15 yrds out...its moving straight to me, as silent as a ghost... searching for the source of the moans and bugles from my Seducer earlier...My eyes try to catch any different movement from the stiff wind. Something slight near my left foot....he stands 10' under me in a hole.....
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The story will be told in multiple series due to length. It starts on the morning of Tues, October 16. Upon suggestions from a close hunting friend, I searched a patch of the glorious Dorchester public marshes on Google earth and found an area that looked promising. I had been spending a lot of time on a section of this marsh but nearly 1 mile away as a crow flies and I needed to scout for a muzzlerloader hunt spot coming up on the upcoming Sat. I amazingly am able to make it in the dark to the very area on the map I wanted to go. As the sun was about to rise, I heard some distant bugles and decided to join the fray with my Seducer. The wind was howling all morning making hear the distinct splishing sound of an oncoming sika impossible. Around 8:25, a fabulous stag enters my hole about 92 yds. Away. He seems to be searching for me. I wait to watch his reaction. I try to blow a soft mew his way but I mess up the first call. He turns and looks my direction and decides to slowly slink away. I hadn’t hear a bugle for over an hour and decided to try it. As I did, he decided this was not the right time to challenge the stranger and moves off. Well, I found my spot for Saturday’s muzzleloader hunt.
ReplyDeleteSaturday morning arrives. I had planned this hunt with 2 other friends. We decided to sit just on the end of each others’ range in the morning based upon my experience and my friend Paul’s previous experiences with 2 nice stags in this area a couple of weeks earlier. The three of us get set-up in the dark and I notice Paul is much closer than we had originally planned and my other friend Rob, was right where I had placed a GPS mark for him to go. I didn't know what to expect but anticipation was high due to my Tues. encounter. I literally failed to get any sleep the night before but with such anticipation, I wasn't tired!
In the dark, we hear some serious amount of sika running around us and in a huge phrag bed about 200 yds out. All of the movement seemed to stop just before shooting light. As the sun rose, I heard a couple distant bugles so I decided to try out the Seducer hoping to let the nearby deer know a stags in the area. Well, as the morning moved on, no more movement or noise. I always seem to have good luck with stag sightings this far back around 8:30 am so I was getting ready. Around 8:45, I hear splish coming my way. A small hind walks out to a hole and walks to within 1 yard of my tree and starts to head Paul's direction. I'm hoping she drags along a love-struck stag but nothing comes. Minor movement time on the GPS was said to start around 10am and at about 9:45 I see a rump walk through a hole in the phrags and then immediately see a spike pop out. I have chosen to pass on spikes this year and so I just watched to see what would join them. The spike walks Paul's direction and I see him aim then shoot. I see the spike and a hind dive back into the phrags and so I figured Paul had shot at and missed the spike (Later to learn he shot at a 4 but missed). I watch him reload and settle back in. Around 11, hand signals between Paul, Rob and I begin because our phones are losing their power. Needless to say, hand signals DON'T work!!! I watch Paul climb down and re-position. I get Rob to climb down and meet at a tree overlooking the hole I saw the deer and spike walk in to try to plan an ambush location. Paul is giving hand signals and periodically pointing his gun as Rob and I debate what to do. It seems he wants us to join him but there is a lack of climbable trees around his set. We decide to push through the large phrag bed we heard all the movement in the dark, to investigate some distant trees. Rob and I make our way on deer trails through 300 yds of 10' phrag to get to the trees and find that there are no shooting holes out there. We pass through the trees to an open hole. To join Paul now would cause our scent stream to go into where he was hunting so we figured that was not a good strategy. We circled back through those phrags to head back near where we hunted in the a.m. We get out of the phrags and are now EXHAUSTED!!!!!! We ended up exiting the phrags at another area we had always wanted to hunt out here but had never. I said to Rob, you hunt that side of a feeder stream and I'll cross it to hunt just on the other side. Once climbing to my new perch, I notice I'm on the distant end of the same huge phrag bed Paul is overlooking and that we had just crossed through! Figuring that just ruined Rob's and my hunt, I allow myself to get sleepy.
ReplyDeleteAround 1:30pm, a shot from Paul wakes me and I watch him for a bit. He gets down and disappears only to reappear in the stand giving more hand signals. I think he makes a flathead motion so I assumed he was tired and decided to smoke a hind. He is waving his hat like a madman and gestures for us to cross over to him but as tired as I was now, there was NO CHANCE of that happening. Paul leaves and I settle back into a wonderfully needed stand nap.
ReplyDeleteI wake about 2 hrs before dark and decide that it's time to stay awake and alert. Time keeps slipping by and now 1 hr to dark. I feel a tickle in my throat and try to muffle 2 coughs. To my surprise, a hind and a calf are 60 yds away and the hind starts chirping at me. I raise the gun and place the cross hairs on her throat. I say to myself, if she keeps chirping, she's getting it!! However, I didn't want to shoot her because of the small calf. Fortunately for her and me, she stopped chirping and slowly walked back to the phrags I could only assume she had come from.
A distant bugle tells me that the boys are just starting to get on their feet. I answer them with a couple series of Seducer bugles. Dark is fast approaching and I think I hear that tell-tale splish sound coming from where that hind had been earlier. I focus my attention in that area and see a head with antlers attached magically appear. I am certain that he was searching for the source of the bugles coming from me! He is intently scanning my area. I slowly grab my gun from its' resting place and very slowly point it. As I look through the scope, I CANNOT find the stag. I move my head to use my eyes without the scope and see movement again. I look through the scope and see the stag but no shot. He moves to my left and I lose him again. I say to myself, that's why they are the "Marsh Ghost". I still don't know what type of stag it is but knew it was high off its' head! I shift from my scope again and notice the stag is slowly moving off. I decide to mouth growl at him. I see him stop and turn to look. I look through the scope; place the crosshairs on his shoulder and Boom. Nothing follows no sounds, no running, and no stag visible. I think to myself, I must've dropped him!???!
I mark some tree's I think he's near and continue to mark them as I climb down from my 24' high perch. I walk over to the area now in the dark and find my marked area. No blood, no deer, no fresh running tracks. I'm doing circles in that area saying to myself, "I never heard him run off, and no way had I missed him!" Rob is now down from his stand and he asks if I need help. I asked, if he heard anything run off which he said he hadn't. He starts to walk my way and I'm still circling. Starting to doubt myself, I decide I must have missed and start to make my way back to the stand. As I walk another 10 yds back towards my stand now completely dejected, there he lies on the left side of my marked tree, not on the right side I had thought he was on! I shot him slightly quartering away through the near shoulder/neck junction and the slug is still lodged under the skin midway up his neck on the opposite side. I love neck shots with a gun!!
ReplyDeleteRob and I are trying to figure out how to get my gear and this stag back when we hear a sound. "You guys need some help?" I couldn't believe Paul had walked the 1.5 miles all the way back out here but since he was there, I said "Hell yeah, get over here!" Paul joins us. I said, you shot a hind right. At first he says "Yeah" but he couldn't hold back and then told us he had shot a "Monster". I almost didn't believe him but the sparkle in his eyes told the truth! He didn't share much more waiting for us to make the trek back to the truck to see for ourselves. It was long and tiring especially since I was working on about 1 hr. of tree stand sleep on top of all the hiking through the marsh in the am and noon times! We get back to the truck and there is his MONSTER. He had shot a huge 6 point that is only slightly larger body size than mine. What a day spent in the marsh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The stag dressed out at 80lbs. His main beams were 11 ¼” x 12” and is my best stag to date!!! We shared some great stories about the night on the drive home and putting the pieces of the day together from each other's eyes/experiences. Unfortunately, Rob never fired his gun and only laid eyes on 1 deer even though he was covered up by deer in the dark of morning and dusk. Plus, the whole day, he and I were hunting not more than 200 yards apart at any given stand set.
ReplyDeleteI have to say thank you to Doug Wigfield for his wonderful call. I’ve been practicing with it for the past 4 seasons and only now feel as though I’m becoming adequate with it. Earlier this bow season, I had the opportunity to call in a true bruiser of a stag. Unfortunately for me, I was unable to get him to close enough for bow range but I saw just how effective this call can be when blown correctly at a rutting stag. I firmly believe the stag I harvested with my muzzleloader was the very stag I had seen on the previous Tuesday and that he only came in because he was searching out the visitor stag in his neighborhood! Wow, I love these Sika’s and Doug’s Seducer is the best way to call in a rutting stag that I have found!!
Here he is along with Paul and his Stag:
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DeleteI was very fortunate to shoot this stag the second day of Maryland's firearms opener. The story starts a little earlier though. I remember in mid-October when I opened my email and saw the trailcam pictures of one of the biggest stags I had ever seen. Aside from his rack, I was really impressed with the massive size of his body. He was twice the size of the hinds in the trailcam pictures. His body more closely resembled the black drum of the feeder than it did the other deer. From then on, he was known as stag-a-saurus because of his massive body. He was a regular visitor to the feeder, but like most mature animals, he was solely a night time visitor and always there checking in on his harem of hinds. We knew he was the dominant stag in the area and he had a very deep distinct bugle. Upon hearing him bugle all the other stags would keep quiet.
I had limited time to hunt during the season as my second child was born on Nov. 1st so I missed the peak of the sika rut in Oct. Despite my limited time, I set one goal and that was to kill stag-a-saurus.
One of my hunting buddies had a close encounter with him about 2 weeks prior as he told me the story of having a stag with a very distinct gutteral bugle screaming repeatedly every couple of minutes inside 40 yards. He never showed himself thanks to the thick entanglement of swamp that he called home. I was keeping my fingers crossed that he was still bedding in the same area. My suspicions were confirmed when my other hunting partner had a similar encounter with him bugling, but remaining unseen in the thick stuff the afternoon of the firearms opener.
DeleteFiguring he wouldn't come out of the thick swamp during legal shooting hours, my strategy was to challenge his dominance with some bugles to call him out. Little did I know that my strategy would work out and leave me with vivid memories of one of the most exciting hunts I've ever been on.
Here is how the hunt unfolded. It was the first Sunday of the gun season opener as I quietly snuck into the stand for an afternoon hunt. It was a great evening for calling as it was quite windy and I knew I could sneak in close without disturbing him. With the sun getting lower in the sky and after hearing a number of other stags sound off, I was starting to wonder if my stag was there. Getting a bit antsy I let out a sequence of bugles on the sika seducer. About a minute later, my question was answered as the stag bugled back within 50 yards. His bugle was so loud and gutteral it made the hair on my skin stand up. By now, my heart was racing. A few minutes later I followed up with another series of bugles and a growl. The stag immediately answered back with his own bugles and I figured I had better get ready. Shortly thereafter I caught a glimpse of some pearly white antler tips sneaking through the thick swamp. I knew immediately it was stag-a-saurus when I saw him coming through the swamp looking for whatever stag had dare to challenge him. Fortunately, he stopped in the one opening I had and having a good rest and my grandfather’s trusty 30-.06, I dropped him where he stood.
DeleteI got out of the tree so fast I almost forgot to unclip my safety harness. After jumping through some briars I had to play hopscotch across small islands in the flooded swamp to get out to him. The above picture is exactly how I found him. I sunk up to my waste in the muck trying to drag him out. He tipped the scales at 101 lbs. His head and neck had evidence of a number of battle scars. There was even a small piece of antler broke off in his forehead. I'm hoping the taxidermist can bring him back to life for me. Every time I look up on my wall I will be reminded of distinct sounds of his bugle.
Not only did the sika seducer make my hunt a success, but it also tremendously added to the excitement of the hunt. I prefer to "actively" hunt and I enjoy calling all types of game I pursue, but I must say no other animal is as exciting as having a bit mature stag bugle back at your call. I have since called in a number of mature stags and this is my favorite way to pursue the sika. If you run into me out in the marsh you can bet I'll have the seducer around my neck.
This year I got onto a new lease in Kerr County, Texas. I have hunted the area before but had no idea about the healthy Sika population.
ReplyDeleteI was bow hunting for whitetail and heard a ton of bugling in the surrounding hills. I had seen a few on my trail camera but had no idea how to hunt them. Not knowing, I started to rattle to see if they would respond, to my surprise a nice stag came withing 50 yards, just out of bow range.
That Monday, I immediately scoured the internet researching ways to hunt and call them. I found Doug's site and immediately ordered a Seducer. I was a little stressed about getting the call in time... Thankfully, I received the Seducer in the mail on Friday.
My 7 year old son killed his 1st deer (Sika) on Saturday!
A few bugles with the Seducer and some rattling made it happen! We called in two different stags. The 1st was a smaller bull and he came within 20 yards.
The second Sika came running in and my old son made a great shot at 50 yards with his 243.
I have hunted all my life and have to say, watching my son take his 1st animal was the best experience I have enjoyed in the field. I am truly blessed and hope others have the same opportunities. Thank you for a great product and an incredible experience!
I'm going to start this off by saying doug you have a neat lil product. I have been practicing with the saducer for the past several months and with a lil patience you can pretty much sound like one of those lil critters. a couple mews made the stag pretty curious. I had a buddy (Collin from the above post) that was around 150 yards from me and later on said the mews I was making with the saducer sounded life like.
ReplyDeleteok on to the story
This story starts a week ago when I took a long weekend off and hung out on some public land in Dorchester . Mornings turned out to be off the hook while the evenings were pretty slow. I concentrated on one area and had seen and pretty much pinpointed two reel nice stags. Everytime I saw them they were at least 50 to a hundred yards out. I nicked named one "High and tight", he was a reel tall big bodied 6 point that had 1" points brows and points. The other was named "Moaner" just B/c's that was all he would do Moan and Growl. This stag would be my dream stag and probably everyone else's if they saw it. Moaner had everything going for him reel tall and his brows and point were perfect. Never had these boyz in bow range but did have the opportunity to see these brutes in action.
Fast forward to 10/20, Two good bodies of mine collin (cbass1465) and chevynitro (rob) decided this past summer that we were going to hunt this area for the early muzzle loader season and we chose this weekend to try our luck. The morning started by heading to Dorchester around 3 am knowing we had to get to the area before the rest of the crowd and we ended up at our destination around 415 and headed our way at 430. My morning started by stepping into deep hole and ended up getting water into my chest waders... Luckily I only had one wet foot and the temps were not going to be that bad. Got to the location I wanted to hunt and settled myself in and noticed that the only lights I saw were Robs and Collins. Sweet!!! Sitting in the dark for at least a hour and just hearing all the action around me was just awesome, just hoping it would be the same when the sun popped up. Of course everything dyed down.
I saw my first deer at about 830 and ended up dosing off and waking up to a spike and lil four point in front of me fallowing a hind. I was in brown its down mode and took a hundred yards shot at the 4 point. Miss .... I tried to reload but I was way to slow and they headed off into the phrag beds. I kept on eyeing this one solo tree in the middle of a monster phrag bed and my gut was telling to go there. Headed to that tree at 1030 and pretty much from the time I got up to the tree I was watching hinds getting pushed all over the place. Collin and Rob got down and were trying to figure out where to go at about hundred yards from me while they were there I had A spike and two hinds in my scope with no shot b/c they just kept on moving. The next thing you know I watch "High and tight" hall tail like a gray hound in a race across 500 yards of open short grassed marsh and from the looks of it he was heading my way. I kept on looking for him hoping to see him pop out of a small phrag bed that was about 80 yards from me and the next thing I'm dosing off again. With just 2 hours of sleep my butt was tired.
Still in a daze I woke up to a hind bleating and heading my way through the phrag and some how just disappear at about 20 yards I kept on looking for her about 15 minutes when by and I catch movement at about 60 yards in the phrag. I saw bits and pieces off a monster and it looked like mister moaner. He disappeared in the phrag and for the next 30 minutes I was watching him push satellite stags away from what turned out to be a hot hind. I hit my saducer a couple times and did a couple mews when they would disappear in the phrag beds and for some reason I knew it would be just time until he would present a shot. Moaner disappeared in the phrag and it was quiet for about 30 minutes and then I saw him again and this time he was heading my way.
ReplyDeleteHe was in some tall grass and I only had shots of bits and pieces of him and then I see the hind about 30 yards on a trail in front of me. I'm thinking to myself that it's going to happen don't mess this up. The next thing you know this awesome looking beast presents a shot at 62 yards. The only thing I could see was his head and shoulders and said to myself its now or never. Put the cross hairs on his shoulder and pulled the trigger and he disappeared. I kept on looking at the spot where I shot at him and did not see or hear a thing. Put another load into my smoke pole marked the spot and got down to check out the spot. Still in disbelief of what just happened I slowly walked to the spot expecting a stag to pop up and take off... That did not happen b/c he was dead in his track. I jumped up with excitement and was punching my fist in the air said a prayer and just took it all in. The stag was a monster and had everything I vision a mature stag would look like. He was perfect the only problem was that my shot placement was a lil off... forgot that my gun that I borrowed shot two inches high at fifty yards and ended up shooting him just above his eyeball splitting his skull. Oh well, I will take luck over skill any day. Got all my stuff together and the next thing you know I'm watching the hind that was with Moaner get chased by 5 other stags through the marsh. Of course my phone had died and for about 5 minutes I was trying to tell Rob with sign language that they needed to head my way and of course they had no clue what I was doing. LOL
Ended up taking all my gear back to the truck and headed back gutted and threw the stag over my shoulders and went for a 2 mile walk. When I got back to the truck it was around three and ended taking a long nap waiting hear a gun shot from Rob and or Collins direction. Heard a gunshot about 15 min before sunset and I headed into the marsh hoping to give a hand. Turns out Collin smoked a good one and ended being "High and Tight". I'll let Collin tell you that story.
What a hunt
Two monsters down both dressed out at 80 plus pounds.
We doubled up on two monster on public ground.
Still can't believe it.
beams were 12 1/2 and 12 3/8 in length
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