I go home to WV to hunt the week before Thanksgiving every year - I have done this since the very first year I moved away after grad school which was the 2003 hunting season. My father's getting up there in age so each year I get to go, is one more batch of memories I get to spend with him in the woods. He is now 78 so he doesn't hunt near as hard as he once did, but it's still great time spent with him and my family.
We had a weird year in terms of we really didn't see the typical rut action that we see that time of year. I did have a handful of small bucks in range that I let walk, and saw a few decent rack bucks that I would have taken a shot at if given an opportunity, but they seem to know my effective range with the recurve.
I was hunting with a bit of shaken confidence as I had gone up a couple weekends before and hunted the farm on Halloween weekend. That particular Saturday evening I was given a display and a great shot opportunity on a unusually large true 6 point - very cool buck with a huge frame and tall g2s and brow times. Long story short, buck fever got the best of me and I chunked my release and hit the buck far back in the spine but did not penetrate the spine enough to get to the spinal column. Good news is I caused very little trauma to the deer. A friend of mine got a trail cam pic of him a couple weeks later, just before he was killed by a neighbor on the opener of rifle season.
So with that still in mind I was feeling a little unsure of myself with recurve in hand, but got after it anyway. On a particular morning where I had seen a lot of deer, but none close, I did get an opportunity at a very large doe however she squirted through my closer shooting lanes too quickly. She paused quartering away and completely unaware at 28 yd. I do practice out to 30 yards, but that's more of an effort to hone in my close shots. I decided to draw, and to my surprise I was very settled and comfortable and I let the arrow fly and delivered a perfect 10 ring double lung shot and watched her fall about 60 yd away.
Never did connect with a nice buck as I had hoped, but it was some really good meat for the freezer and a shot that I really felt great about to counteract the poor shot I had made on the buck earlier. As we all know in so many things, including bow hunting, confidence is everything.
This bow is a 64" Browning Fire Drake 55@28".
Topic: My WV hunt... (Read 960 times)
