Brad Romero Jr., a self-confessed hunting and bass fishing addict, perpetually looks for signs to point him in the right direction in either endeavor.
That explains why the New Iberian has shot two deer with his bow and arrow nearly one month into the archery season for deer in the Sportsman’s Paradise.
“If you don’t have sign, you’re wasting your time. I kind of move around to where they’ve got some sign,” he said Friday afternoon, warming up to his ultra-favorite subject.
Signs include scrapes, hoof prints (tracks), trails, droppings, rubs and bedding areas. For hunters like Romero, they are tell-tale signs.
A Romero arrow accounted for his second deer on Wednesday afternoon, a spike that he shot while bowhunting on the Attakapas Wildlife Management Area on the western side of the Atchafalaya Basin in St. Mary Parish. The first deer came early one morning in the marsh about two weeks ago when he drew back and fired while bowhunting on the Four Bayou Hunting Club lease in St. Mary Parish.
The 24-year-old outdoorsman, who credited much of his hunting knowledge to his father, Brad Romero Sr. of New Iberia, shot the spike while sitting on a long log in the woods near Ruiz Boat Landing along the West Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee. He was there in his camo with his archery equipment for a reason.
“I went out to check an area and saw some tracks by the water,” he said, noting deer obviously were crossing in that area.
He positioned himself to the point where he was almost invisible and waited. And waited. At approximately 4:50 p.m., his wait was rewarded.
“I heard a deer blow. Then it started walking toward me. I let it get as close as possible. It was darned near at the end of the log I was sitting on. I let it get about 10 feet from where I was sitting down and shot it in the chest. It ran over a hill and died about 15 yards from me,” he said.
Romero’s deer hunting fever was assuaged earlier in the season on a bowhunt in the Four Bayou area. The day before he dropped the 8-pointer, he saw does using an ATV trail.
He set up in a deer stand before dawn the next morning.
“I heard a deer coming out from the same place. I thought it might be one of the does. It was kind of dark because the sun was just coming up. I didn’t know it was a buck,” he said.
It got a shade lighter and what he saw thrilled him. Four Bayou Hunting Club has a 6-point or better rule, he said, and he saw four points on one side of the buck’s rack and at least two on the other side from his perch in the tree.
But the deer sensed something was wrong, he said.
“He got under my stand and kind of tripped out. He smelled me or something. He looked like he was going to take off running. I had a couple seconds to decide if I was going to shoot,” he said.
At a distance of 30 yards, he let the arrow fly and it hit a vital area. The buck was his first kill of the 2018-19 deer hunting season.
That he has downed two deer to date with, in all probability, more to come, doesn’t surprise the young outdoorsman.
“I mean, I kill my share of deer every year. I guess I hunt hard,” he said.
Romero, a weld inspector for Oceaneering International, admits there might be more successful deer hunters than him, but at the same time it’s apparent he outworks a lot of them in the field before the hunt.
He almost always knows where the deer live, where they travel, where they eat, where they sleep. If he doesn’t, he gets out in the woods, swamp or marsh and scouts around to find them.
That approach has made him successful on the water as a competitive bass angler the past two seasons in local evening mini bass tournaments.
When the waterfowl hunting season begins in November, Romero will put down his Mathews Creed bow and Swacker broadheads and store his Browning 30.06 rifle in a Louisiana minute, pick up his Benelli shotgun and hunt ducks, nothing but ducks, until those days when the deer are in rut around here in December or January.
“If I could duck hunt every day, I’d duck hunt every day. It’s something I look forward to every year,” he said.
“Other than that, I’ve got a problem. I like to fish and hunt too much. I can’t get enough of it. I hunt. I fish. That’s about it,” he said. “I’ve just been doing it so long, since I was a little kid.”
His duck hunting destinations, like his deer hunting trips, mainly are on public lands such as the Attakapas WMA and the Atchafalaya Delta WMA, specifically the Wax Lake Outlet, he said.
“It depends on where the birds are,” he said.
And, of course, the signs.
Source: https://www.iberianet.com/sports/romero-relies-on-signs-scouting/article_8aaeaac0-da6e-11e8-b8c9-3f05803ed361.html
No comments:
Post a Comment