Thoughts on the Hunt

• Fort Knox is a beautiful place to hunt, as always.  There is little to no activity in a lot of the areas except for Army training, so it's not a park.
• Having limited access to your hunting area before the day of the hunt means lots of work done with maps and satellite images.  
• Pro-tip - Maps and satellite images are not a substitute for good scouting.  What looked like a hay field in 2006 turned into 6 foot high brambles and brush by 2011.
• Driving into your hunting area and seeing "Impact Area" signs off the side of the road gives you a good excuse to have the "If you didn't drop it, leave it alone" discussion with the kids.
• A friend goes hunting with you.  A good friend changes his plans to come and pick you and Girlie Bear up when your truck refuses to start two days before the hunt.
• It's called hunting, not harvesting.  I saw precisely one deer all day, and that was a buck that was too small to shoot.  Hunting Buddy's daughter saw a doe, but her dad didn't get a shot off.  All of us still had a good time.
• Animal count for the day:  1 buck, 27 bluejays, 4 cardinals, and 27 squirrels the size of a Yorkshire terrier.
• Sitting in the woods and listening to an armor unit go through a tank range a couple of miles away is pretty cool, actually.
• Doing a full day at the urban warfare center followed by a full day of walking up and down hills then sitting still for several hours at a stretch makes for a very sore DaddyBear come Sunday morning.
• Getting your daughter away from the TV, radio, little brother, older brother, friends, and homework for a day to just sit in the woods and talk quietly is worth more than any amount of meat in the freezer.