This season like most has had it's up's and downs. I knew going into it, it was going to be a tough one due to losing all of my private hunting ground and being forced to hunt public land, as well as significantly lower deer numbers in my area. But it's what I love so I remained positive.
October started out very slowly. 8 hunts in and I had still not seen a single deer. In mid-October I went in for my 9th hunt of the year. I setup on the ground along some tall grass in a ghillie suit. Right at dark what I thought was a large doe offered me a shot at close range. I made a perfect shot, but upon retrieving the deer I found it was not a large doe, but rather a buck with only one side of a small deformed rack, that I simply did not see when I shot him.
He ended up weighing 198 pounds on the hoof and since my freezer was empty, and it was a thrilling hunt on the ground, I quickly got over the fact that I mistook him for a huge doe. This was my 9th consecutive hunt, and my first deer sighted thus far. Yes, things have changed in my part of Illinois.
The rest of October went on like the beginning of it with only a few deer sightings here and there. By Halloween I had made 15 or so hunts and had seen 5 deer including the one I shot.
With the November rut about to hit, I had some good luck in that I gained permission for a very small piece of private ground near my home. A guy had called me to help him track a badly hit buck. We were out late and came up empty handed (he shot the buck in the hindquarter). He was so grateful for me helping him that he gave me permission to hunt the area!
This area is right down the road from where I live, and even though I drive past this patch of woods daily, I had never before been able to step foot on the property. There is very little timber so scouting it was not going to take long. On November 3rd. I covered the whole place on foot. I hated to do it but felt I needed too if I was going to have a chance. That evening I saw 2 does.
Fast forward to November 10. I went in with a stand and sticks on my back. I setup near an inside corner that happened to be adjacent to a river crossing. The area is choked with honeysuckle, so I only hung my stand about 6 feet off of the ground as to take advantage of the honeysuckle.
At 3:30 or so I saw what looked to be a big 5x5 and the first decent buck of the year. He was 75 yards away when I first saw him. He got back in the honeysuckle and I could no longer see him but I could tell he was walking away.
With nothing to lose, I hit him with a loud drawn out snort wheeze. I heard him stop walking. He stood there for a minute or two and then began walking away again.
I hit him with another wheeze and then used my bow limb to thrash the honeysuckle as violently as I could. That did it. He turned on a dime and started coming right too me.
When he got to 25 yards he stopped and thrashed some honeysuckle. His ears were pinned back and his hair was standing up. He was obviously pissed off. He stepped into my first lane at 10 yards but was quartering too me so I held off. I thought for sure he would see me since I was only 6 feet off the ground but the honeysuckle hid me well.
When he got to my next lane he stopped and put his nose in a mock scrape that I had put there to stop cruising bucks. He was about 8 yards away when I let him have it.
As soon as I shot him, I knew something went terribly wrong. I hit him exactly where I wanted too, but my arrow barely penetrated at all. I have no idea why. This is a setup that I have used to take a number of big game animals with no problems. All I can think of is that it was a freak accident glance off of a rib, or terrible arrow flight for whatever reason.
The buck immediately jumped into the river and was bounding his way across when I saw my arrow either fall out or break off! Unfortunately, I will never know because the arrow was lost in the river.
The buck made it too the opposite bank and because he had already traveled 150 yards to the other side it was apparent I did not get both lungs. Dumbfounded, I watched him travel down the opposite river bank for another 100 yards with blood down his side before I lost sight of him. I backed out and decided I had better wait till morning to track.
With no sleep at night, my wife and I were on the trail at first light. The trail was decent but not great. Add to the fact that the deer backtracked once and made a complete circle once, and the trail quickly became difficult.
Eventually, the buck went into a property that allows nobody access for any reason. They are anti-hunters and will not allow you to even look for a dead deer in there.
By now the buck had gone over 300 yards from where I shot him, and I was feeling pretty low.
I got ahold of the landowner where the buck went and begged and pleaded permission to go in there with a tracking dog. Unbelievably, the landowner knew the owner of the dog. He told me the guy with the dog could go in and look for the buck but that I could not step foot on the property.
I got ahold of the guy with the tracking job and he told me he could not be there until the following morning, so I would again have another sleepless night.
That night, conditions deteriorated. It rained, and then the rain turned to snow. The following morning all I could do was show the guy with the dog where the trail went into the anti-hunters property and hope for the best. He came up empty handed. Because his dog is such a good tracker, he tried to console me by telling me I must have hit him in the shoulder. I really did not think this was the case, but I had no other explanation for the utter lack of penetration.
This is where it gets unbelievable. After sulking around for a few days, I remembered that I had a trail camera on the exact trail where I shot the buck. I figured it was a long shot, but if he was not mortally wounded and if that camera happened to be in his core area, maybe I would get lucky.
I went there a few days after all of this and checked the camera. There he was. Four days after I had shot him I had three pictures of the buck with a visible wound right on his side. I am 90 percent sure it is the same buck. The only thing holding me back from 100 percent certainty is that he does not look nearly as big in the trail camera pictures as the one I shot. But the pics are a bit blurry, and it is possible I overestimated him in the heat of the moment. I think it is actually more unlikely that this is NOT my buck considering there is an obvious wound on his side exactly where I thought I shot him, which is obviously behind the shoulder.
Also, deer numbers in this intensely farmed area are very low. There simply are not very many nice 5x5's out there. So here are the pics of a buck I have named "Lucky".
Topic: A buck named "Lucky" (Read 622 times)
