After a two-day visit to my daughter Jourdan and her fiancé Ryan Blue in Nashville, I got back to fun hunting. I needed some woods time after negotiating all the traffic. Were it not for GPS, I would still be lost.

My next adventure was with Tom Daily on a put-and-take pheasant hunt at Huntington Reservoir. He has a couple of fine bird dogs that go on point when they find a bird. We were allowed two pheasants each, flushed three and shot two. My poor wing-shooting was exposed when I missed two shots at a cock pheasant. Tom, a lifelong trap and sporting clays shooter, seldom misses. My main mission for the day was not to hunt but to get Tom to a surprise birthday party. He turned 80 the day before. The hoax was for me to take him to a church fish fry. It all worked out with his daughter Sabra organizing the event.

STATE PARK HUNT

After the physically challenging hunt at Whitewater State Park, I was ready for a ride to my stand. Larry Lawson invited me on a hunt to Union County. He pulled an ATV out of the barn and I hopped on. Larry dropped me off at the edge of a woods. “You will find a tri-pod stand about 300-yards just off the field edge,” he said.

The stand seat had standing water in the seat. While I was using paper towels to dry the desired destination of my posterior, two does ran under me. They acted like the devil was chasing them and indeed, he was. I looked back, from where they came, to see movement. I sat down and shouldered the borrowed Remington 308. Larry assured me the gun was sighted-in. Quickly, the largest, darkest coyote I have ever seen came out of the draw. The old predator was about to become the prey. He stopped between two trees just long enough for me to find him in my scope. He went down with the report of the rifle.

COYOTE DOWN

Larry had been seeing this odd-colored coyote for a couple of years. I’m sure this wily old predator has killed many fawns and wild turkeys. His hide will be tanned.

After that exciting event, the woods grew calm with not so much as a squirrel to entertain me. We moved to watch a field edge the last half-hour of legal light.

BLACK FRIDAY DEALS

Black Friday deals may have many of my outdoor friends standing in line at 4:00 am but do some research first. Go online to see how the product is rated. Especially, find out how cheap guns and trail cameras are rated. I did so and was surprised.

The market has been flooded with high-powered rifles for $300 or less. For there to be profit, corners must be cut. Plastic magazines and $30 scopes are often the norm. Cheap triggers are usually the case, many creep and are a little hard to pull. I do like the trigger on my Mossberg Predator.

Ruger American

My research leads me to believe the Ruger American bolt-action rifle at $349.99 (cheapest brick and mortar price I found-most stores will match) is the best budget gun on the market. It does not come with a scope.

One fellow found a deal on trail cameras. “They were so bad that I trashed them. I could have put them in a rummage sale, but would not do such a thing to a fellow hunter,” he said.

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