Things were really getting thick as I moved closer to where I had bumped him a few days ago. Hard to be quiet and I was worried he was ahead of me and moving away. I was second guessing my decision to wait for help and surround the area so someone might be able to get another arrow into it. Why did I rush?
Then, everything changed. I saw a small splash of orange jutting out from behind a downed trunk. My eyes followed that spot down and I realized my buck was there upside down and wedged beneath branches. I was overcome with a wave of gratitude and relief. My goodness, I had done it! I went after the biggest buck I had seen in 30 years of hunting this hard hit public Mountain area and actually ended up with the deer in a way I would have never dreamed.
The arrow impact wasn’t as bad as I had thought. It entered in front of the last rib and traversed the liver and one lung ending up centering a rib on the far side about 5 ribs up. While he was running and crashing through brush the arrow backed out and chopped around the inside until it actually exited out of the same side as the impact. The ace head had sliced a bunch of stuff as he ran including the stomach. That made it all look like a gut shot, but was actually through the cage. It appeared he died very quickly after he ran out of sight.
I drug him out of the brush and noticed a small round seeping puncture wound on the edge of his chest/shoulder. Thought maybe an antler tine injury maybe. I would see when I butchered him.
I set up a few selfies and got to the dressing task.
I stopped and reflected a moment at the recent loss of one of my hero’s Ron LaClair as I used the little skinner knife my friend Mike gave to me when my son was born.
The realization came over me that this was the hunt of a lifetime, and I was sharing it with a camp full of like-minded friends. What a blessing. I texted my wife who probably didn’t get it all, that this trip had been epic. I was tagged out of deer in this county in two days.
After dressing him, I went back up to the road and met Dan who was driving his jeep back and forth to find me. He gave me a quick ride back to camp and I stripped to a T-shirt, pounded some Gatorade, and picked up some dragging rope. It was going to be a long hard haul up that steep hill, but I didn’t want to cut it up down there. I wanted to take my time butchering and do it back at camp.
Dan helped, but the steep drag was a few feet at a time. I was glad I hydrated, but it wasn’t long before I had him up the hill and on the truck. Back at camp we decided to haul him up to a meat pole and used the winch on Dan’s jeep to hoist it up which helped immensely.
As the other guys filtered in there was much discussion and celebration. It was really about a chance encounter more than a lot if hunting skill, but I retold the story as each came in. Some locals came by when they saw the animal hanging to snap a photo, and I got to meet a fellow TG member “Charlie Chocks” who lives only a few miles away and just happened to visit at the same time.
The temperature was climbing into the mid 70’s so I started to get nervous about getting the meat on ice. Starting the skinning, we probed the puncture wound. It was a few inches wide and several inches deep of infection, but the rest of the shoulder was fine. The yotes must have smelled the injury, knew he was an older buck, and decided to run him down.
While skinning the neck we noticed a traumatic injury that had healed up long ago. The throat muscles were missing in about a 4-inch circle and the esophagus was missing a 1-inch chunk. How he even survived such an injury was amazing! There was also a large patch of shortened / stunted fur on the back of the shoulders. To me, it looked like something had jumped on the shoulders and ripped at the throat at some point. Later, a local deer biologist I know told me the age of the buck was 6.5 years old (by teeth) and that injury was likely caused by a bobcat.
In any event, I saved this old warrior from a long and painful death at the hands of coyotes, and he will now hold a place of honor in my mancave and memories. A fitting end to a true survivor.
Sharing it all with a camp full of friends is icing on the cake.
Topic: Longbow extravaganza week (updated with buck pics) (Read 2214 times)
