A half-moon cast in a cloudless sky lit the field when I parked my truck this morning. Perfect light for creeping into the woods undetected, I thought. After preparing all of my gear, I walked through the steel gate and into the pasture that would lead me to a fire break just above my stand. Thinking I was alone, I watched the dew-covered ground in front of me, careful to make as little noise as possible.
The deer let me get to within twenty meters before it blew loud and ran, forcing out what was left in a bladder I thought I’d just emptied. After collecting myself, I moved carefully through a forest that still slept.
By 7:00 a.m. the moon yielded to dawn, which cast a gray light through the hickory and white oaks. Soon, I heard the familiar scratching of nails on bark. A dozen squirrels raced to the tops of white oaks and began gnawing out acorns with unusual urgency.
Normally, our white oaks drop all their acorns by mid-October. This year they are just beginning to fall and we’re a day away from Halloween. The forest was suddenly alive, a cacophony of noise, with acorns raining down through tree limbs, woodpeckers slamming their beaks into trees, and nearby cows baying for a farmer to deliver breakfast.
I caught movement – a lone doe – out of the corner of my eye. She walked in directly under the white oaks and began popping acorns like hard candy in her jaw. She fed within twenty yards of me for well over half an hour. I never had an opportunity for a shot, but I was still confident. I saw eleven deer in the same stand yesterday.
The confidence that I was sure I’d see more deer was not lost on me. It was such a contradiction to my childhood – a time with there were more snapping turtles in our pond than deer in the State of Georgia. I remember going on a weeklong deer hunt with my father in the mid-1970s. We camped on a mountain in the Cohutta Wilderness Area. Icicles hung from tree limbs and a light snow fell. Men hunted hard to no avail.
I recall a man excitedly running from camper to camper one day, telling everyone that he’d seen tracks. The men pulled knit camps down over their ears and walked the mile and a half to the mudhole just to see the tracks for themselves – proof that they did not hunt in vein.
A snapping twig caught my attention. I turned my head and saw a big 10-pointer going directly to the scrape twenty yards behind my stand. He began pawing the dirt and rubbing his antlers and head in the beach limb above the scrape. I was ready for the shot. All he had to do was continue forward for maybe three steps.
He took two then turned 90-degrees. I watched the buck disappear over the ridge in seconds, but before my heart could sink at the missed opportunity, I heard something behind me. Slowly, carefully, I turned around to find another nice buck eating a few acorns as he also made his way to the scrape. His path would take him ten yards behind my stand. I readied my bow.
When the buck stepped into the gap, I hit anchor, set the gap, took one more second to make dang sure the sight picture was right, and the arrow was gone. It disappeared into him right behind the shoulder. Perfect!
The buck ran about thirty yards and stopped. I figured he’d go down right there. It would be over in seconds. He stood for maybe fifteen seconds then began falling forward. With momentum on his side the dying buck stumbled for almost 200 yards off a steep bluff. Just my luck.
I finally heard him crash.
It was a beautiful and exciting morning for me. I love this time of year. The orange and yellow leaves will last a couple more weeks before a gray cold will take over. Today, I was hunting with a bow my friend, James Parker, gave me. I saw James at a 3D archery shoot a few months back. I bragged on his bow, so he handed it to me. He said, “Shoot a deer with it and send me a picture.”
Here you go my friend.
45# longbow. 5/16” cedar arrows with an Ace 125 grain broadhead.
Topic: Middle Tennessee Buck (Read 10187 times)
