The 2011 deer hunting season is drawing to a close and all indications are that it will be pretty average for most hunters. The weather has been rather mild throughout the season and that's been fine for hunter numbers but late season lovers have expressed a lot of disappointment with the lack of cold and snow.

Anybody who has ever hunted the late season, with some consistency, comes to enjoy the regular schedule whitetail tend to keep when December does what it's supposed to do. Coldness and snow force those deer into some regular habits of movement and feeding. When it feels like November most everyday, those deer don't tend to alter their schedule very much. Why does it need altering? After the firearms season, a lot of the more mature bucks and does shift to an almost exclusively nocturnal schedule.

My 2011 deer hunt was also an average one full of opportunities and should-haves rather than much success. Friends and relatives fared much better I'm happy to report. Take this one, for example.

My dad's cousin David Hustvedt shot this buck on October 22, 2011 with his compound bow near Blackduck, MN. The buck was an eleven-pointer with a 18.5 inch spread weighing in at 180 pounds fully field dressed. Hustvedt took the shot at a heart-racing distance of 10 yards and it's the largest buck he's shot with his bow. It's one he had been watching for a long time on his trail camera.

Another great deer was arrowed by a former student of mine. Brody Boese of Elk River has been bowhunting for only a few years but has managed to do quite a fantastic job in a short time. In addition to bagging a few does this fall, turning 16, getting his driver's license and having his braces off--Brody arrowed a massive drop-tine buck the Sunday of the firearms season.

I'll provide a full rundown of the epic hunt in an future blog cowritten by Brody and myself. The photo below should do enough to whet your appetite until then and his story is a lot of fun. Being both an outdoor writer and a teacher affords me some fun stories to share with my students and this is one of my favorites. I was in my deer hunting woods hunting when my phone buzzed in my pocket with a text from Brody. His text said he stuck a nice buck and wanted my advice on how long to wait for it to go down. We exchanged a few messages and then I didn't hear anything for a few hours.

Adding to the drama of the story was a rather ridiculous Facebook debate that launched earlier in the weekend. Apparently, one of Brody's "friends" was ribbing him about the lack of a trophy deer at this point in the season. The anonymous "friend" posted some pretty dumb remarks and I joined the conversation for a bit before departing it due to the ridiculousness of it all. That kid had to eat some crow come Sunday when word spread fast of Brody's trophy. If you have a great deer hunting story from 2011 get ahold of me and we can share some blog space as well. Post a comment here on the blog if you want to share!