Gene Figge had no way of knowing that the 2004 season would be his last to hunt the Jersey County, Ill., farm his family had enjoyed for nearly three decades. About a month after deer season ended, the landowner died, and the property was sold.

The new owners have not been as generous.

But while the '04 season ended on a sour note for the Figges, it began with a bang.
Literally.

Opening day of shotgun season found Gene hunting the farm with his father, Dennis. Even the worst weather couldn't keep them indoors, since the season lasted only three days.

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It was opening day of Indiana's 2006 gun season, and Johnny Thacker was hunting with his cousin, Randy Buttery, Randy's sons Andy and Jason, and his brother-in-law, Pedy. The group leases 120 acres in southern Indiana that border a large state-owned tract. Lots of deer travel back and forth across the property, especially when the firearms season is under way.

"I was in a 17-foot ladder stand that I had used several weekends during bow season," Johnny said. "It's a great spot, about 60 yards into a wooded area from the edge of a cornfield. I could see the corn stubble from my stand as I watched the gully that ran down from the field to my left. At the bottom of the gully is a small stream."

Johnny, who lives in Ohio, had spent the previous night at Randy's home, which is much closer to the lease and allowed for more sleep. The whole crew was at the leased farm well before daybreak.

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Nov. 18, 2006, was just another morning to go deer hunting for me, though I'd had considerably less sleep than usual. Instead of counting sheep, I'd counted mileposts all the way from Mississippi to Indiana.

I have hunted Crawford County, Ind., for probably 10 years and harvested my share of trophy whitetails. There is probably no one who knows those woods better than I do.

I got in a couple of weeks of bowhunting that year before my job took me to Mississippi. I hunted morning and evening during that time and saw some really nice bucks, none of which were big enough to tempt me. I knew there were some great deer there.

After that, I took a job in Mississippi and had to abandon my hunting spot for the rest of the early bow season. But when November came around, I told my superintendent I was going back to Indiana to hunt for a week. I left late on Friday, Nov. 17.

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Ohio hunter David Cain was in a deer drought, much of it self-imposed. In 2002, he'd arrowed a BTR 12-pointer with split brow tines. But since then, he'd been passing up inferior bucks. 

"My family hunts on a 150-acre farm, and we've been managing it for big bucks," Dave said. "We've taken many does, and it took about six years for us to start to see the big bucks."

Dave's 2005 archery season was laced with sightings of a quality buck.

"I saw that buck half a dozen times during bow season, but the closest was about 80 yards," he said. "It didn't respond to calls, although I tried everything.

"Right before the rut, I saw it through binoculars, very far away, and I wasn't sure how big it was," he added. "Then when I saw it at 80 yards, I judged it to be at least a 140- or 150-incher."

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After twice bumping a 10-pointer that was every bit of 40 inches BIGGER than the 130ish 4x4 he'd shot during his trip to Illinois in 2003, Carson Bradford was painfully aware of how short three days can be. That's how long the state's first (of two) shotgun season lasts.

It's hard to rebound from such a misstep when you're trying to attach a tag on a mature buck.

This was the 28-year-old Tennessean's fourth visit to the Promised Land of deer hunting. He'd been hoping for a chance at a 150-class whitetail.

Carson and his dad, Steve, left Tennessee on the morning of Nov. 17, 2005, the day before the opener. They arrived in Schuyler County a few hours before dark with just enough time to do a little scouting. Their bowhunting buddies had enjoyed the run of the place for a week.

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The first time that Robbie Heyes encountered a real Massachusetts wallhanger, back in 2003, a misfire rained on the 20-year-old's parade. The following year, it was indeed the rain, not his deer gun, which doused the young man.

The misfire came when Robbie was slipping quietly through a swamp. He'd unknowingly wandered within 30 feet of a bedded 10-pointer. When it rose and tried to sneak away, Robbie shouldered his muzzleloader, braced for the blast and squeezed the trigger.

Instead of a boom, however, he heard only a soft click. The gun never went off, but the buck did.

"I thought about it all the time after that," Robbie said. "Every time we hunted in that area, I went to that spot -- my favorite -- and thought about that day."

The following year, Robbie planned his vacation around the December shotgun season so that he and his dad, Don, could hunt every day.

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Whenever my husband, Steve, gets the urge to go hunting, he doesn't have to go far. We live in rural Greenfield, Ill., on 37 acres. When the season is in, all he has to do is fire up the tractor and drive to the elevated stand he calls his "tree house."

That's exactly what he did during the November 2006 gun season, all three days. On Friday, he saw only does and yearlings. They were restless, often looking over their shoulders to check their backtrails. But Steve never saw the bucks he envisioned would come.

He didn't have time to go out again that afternoon. He and I run a home-based scheduling service for American Airlines flight attendants who work out of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. He spent the rest of the day working on their December schedules.

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Bob Cuozzo of Pine City, N.Y., began hunting deer when he was 12 years old in northern Pennsylvania. Leading up to the 2006 season, he'd bagged 53 bucks, everything from spikes to 10-pointers.

Last year's season was his best, even if he'd never ventured afield on Dec. 6. Early on, while hunting in Pennsylvania with his dad's bolt-action .308, he shot an 11-pointer - his biggest ever!

But not for long.

In preparation for New York's southern zone shotgun season, Bob sighted-in his new bolt-action shotgun with just four shots. After such a productive shooting session with his new deer gun, he was confident in his shooting ability for shot No. 5.

Bob hunts in the vast Region 8, one of the state's top deer zones. Western New York continues to lead the state in deer harvest densities. The county where Bob hunts yielded 1,232 bucks in 2006, or three bucks per square mile. One of those was Bob's. Bob's spirit was still soaring from his 11-point Pennsylvania buck when the New York season opened. The first week, during which he babysat stands within a QDM unit, was a bust. His game plan changed for the second week.

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With ancestors like Davy Crockett and Sgt. Alvin York, hunters from the Volunteer State can claim a pretty good bloodline when it comes to hitting what they shoot at. So what happens when a bunch of guys from Tennessee travel to Illinois when the rut is in full swing? Well, for Jason Rhoton and his friends, the trip north in the fall of 2005 was not a dull one, that's for sure.

Jason and eight friends, all Tennesseans, leased 1,200 acres of farmland there in 2002. All three farms were in Cass County. The owner leased the property to other hunters during the bow season, but Jason and his pals had exclusive use of the farms during the shotgun seasons.

"We took some pretty good bucks during the first four years, but we didn't hit the rut just right (the firearms season fell afterward) until 2005," Jason related.

The group headed north on the morning of Nov. 16, a couple of days early. The three-day season opened on Friday.

"We like to go up early and stay in a motel, to use the day before the season opens to scout around and hang stands," Jason said. "That year, the weather was in the mid-20s -- perfect for hunting. David Dyer, Wayne Harper, Gene Patterson and I were going to hunt a 450-acre tract, while the rest of the guys split the other two areas.

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After Labor Day, when most hunters focus on scouting and finding the perfect places for intercepting deer, Denny Kommes turns his attention to another kind of harvesting. For about 14 hours a day, he works on a crew combining corn and bean fields.

In addition to helping put vegetables on tables across America, the Exira, Iowa, hunter can also “bring home the bacon,” or in this case, venison. His work schedule means that he only gets to hunt one weekend a year. But in 2004, Denny made the most of his time in the field, knocking down a slammer that he’ll remember for all the weekends — and weekdays — of his life.

“We may chase out some deer while combining, but doing that kind of work doesn’t allow any time for scouting and not much time for hunting,” he said. “We start in September, and, usually, with 45 farms or so to do, we’re working through November, sometimes as many as 100 hours a week.”

Denny runs a piece of equipment called the auger wagon, which catches the harvest from the combining equipment and transfers it to trucks. In addition to running the wagon, he also tends to any mechanical problems.

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By the time the buddies met at midday on Nov. 15, 2003, to discuss plans for the afternoon, the wind had already kicked up enough to rattle the windows and door on the old trailer. The 30- to 40-mph gusts were seriously dampening their opening-day enthusiasm.

Jeff Foskey spent the morning watching a couple of does in a food plot, and he had no qualms about resuming the vigil that afternoon, in the same homemade stand. But when his friend, John Walls, said that he’d been feeling sick and was considering heading home, Jeff offered to let him finish the day in his food plot stand.

John declined, however, so Jeff returned to it.

“It had gotten so windy that I had almost decided not to go myself,” Jeff said. “But it was opening day, and I don’t get a lot of time to hunt.”

The 39-year-old works two jobs, one as a correctional officer at a state prison, the other as proprietor of his own lawn and landscaping business. It’s a wonder he found the time the previous summer to fool with his food plot, a mix of oats, alfalfa and clover.

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