I will make this as short as possible, I live six and a half hours away from my three day hunt in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. I have a few hours of scouting available before opening morning. After thirty or so years of hunting in the same area, I have chose a spot that the deer are plentifull. Most years you can choose the deer you want. I never have had many big bucks walk by, but have had alot of full grown does and six to eight pointers walk by. This year after three straight days of rain my daughter and I hunted hard and saw only one very small doe that ran by the both of us. We don't shoot super small deer so we both let it go by and neither one of us saw another deer all weekend. Usually the deer are running us over, this year they did not exist. We saw a coyote and two other huge dogs that looked like timber wolves, a few squirrels and heard some owls. Other than that the woods were lifeless. Has anyone ever had this happen before?
