The NH bear season proved to be very frustrating for me. For two years I have had great action at the baits that Laura and I set up on our 24 acre piece. Probably because of the severe drought this summer bear activity at our sites was very limited. F&G regulations require hunters to end baiting and clean up your sites after the three week baiting period. I went in on the afternoon after the baiting was over to clean up. It was warm and humid. I made a lot of noise and it took me longer to do than I had planned. However, since the bear season and deer season overlapped I decided to bring my bow and other gear because I have a deer stand that I love to sit in even if activity is slow. It is right on a river bank overlooking a hellacious marsh that is on our property. The wind was favorable and my cameras were showing deer activity on the trail I had cut through there several years ago. Beaver had backed up the river flooding the marsh and the huge bull pines growing in there, which once served as a heron rookery, had died off and as they came crashing down they blocked game trails along the riverside. My good friend and sometimes hunting partner, Todd Gregory (Birdbow here) and I spent some time with our chain saws a few years ago to clear out the blowdowns and reopen the trail. It was a good plan as we both have taken deer right there over the last nine years.
Since the bear and deer season overlap, my wife Laura, found little time to make use of her bear stand. She didn't feel ready to take on a bear. But when deer season opened she was in her deer stand ready to hunt and enjoy the sights and sounds she cherishes when she gets to see nature in its undisturbed state. I was about 400 yards away in a group of hemlocks where I took a doe the previous season. I was surprised when Laura showed up at my stand about an hour before dark. That could mean only one thing, she had an arrow in a deer.
She told me she thought it was a poor hit and we confirmed that when we found her arrow with some fat and hair on the broadhead and no blood whatsoever on the shaft. What she told me was that soon after she got settled a spike buck showed up and she proceeded to shoot right under him. He didn't know what had happened and continued to feed so she prepared for another shot. She never got it as a "buck of a lifetime", as she described him, showed up and proceeded to bully the spike. After calming down she got the shot she wanted and as I have already said, hit him harmlessly in the shoulder. We were pretty sure we would never see him again at her stand or, perhaps, anywhere on our property.
After cleaning up the bear sites, I checked the wind and decided to enjoy the last two hours at my riverside stand and enjoy the sunset. It turned out to be one of those dead calm sits. Very little air movement and so quiet you could hear a mosquito fart. Sunset was around 6:40 and around 6:00 I thought I heard something cross the river about a hundred yards away. I was sitting in the stand and decided to change my seating position so I was 90 degrees to the trail in case it was a deer that I heard and if it decided to come down that trail I would not have to shift to shoot. About 6:15 or so I heard the unmistakable sound of a deer walking and it was close. I caught a glimpse of the rump of the deer and assumed it was a barren doe that we knew was in the area. The deer appeared to be alone but it took almost 20 minutes to walk 15 yards to a place I could shoot. However, 90 percent of the vegetation on our peppery is high bush blueberry bushes, 6 to 8 feet tall and although the deer stopped right under me I could not even see it at 8 yards. I caught a glimpse of antler and thought that it might be the spike that Laura had missed a few days earlier. The next 20 seconds or so was a blur. The deer decided to step into my shooting lane and all I could see was antler and a large body. The shot was quick and a bit high with the buck slightly quartering away. Penetration was about half the arrow length so I knew that I would no have an exit wound. He ran out into the marsh on a death run and in about ten seconds all was quiet. Giving him 30 minutes would have me tracking him in waist to head high brush with no exit wound. The marsh is hard to walk thru on a sunny day so I was not anxious to give it a go on my own in the dark with no sign of blood at the site. If I killed him I assumed he would be where I last heard him so I backed out and called my friend, Todd, who was happy to meet me the next morning to take up the trail.
We were back at the stand about 8 AM and found a spot of blood some 20 yards or so from the deer trail. Blood was hard to find as it was raining off and on. We were able to determine he was on a pretty straight path but then the skies opened and we experienced a downpour for about 5-10 minutes. We were forced to walk existing deer trails. After about 10 minutes Todd found a bit of blood sign that hadn't been washed off from the rain shower and as I walked forward on that trail I saw an odd stump which turned out to be his rear end. The arrow was still in him and the broadhead did a devastating job on his innards. Dressing him out was not a pleasant experience. Being soaked from the rain made it even more unpleasant.
Getting him back to my truck is another whole story so I'll just finish with some pics. The interesting thing about the buck was that he was still in velvet and he had a wound on his right shoulder. It turned out to be the buck Laura had shot at a few days earlier. The deer we thought we would never see again is now what's for dinner.
The buck where we found him minus the arrow.
Me, soaking wet after a messy field dressing job (the deer looks a lot better than I do). If you look closely you can see the lens of my glasses was fogged up. I didn't even notice that until we had to decide on how to get him out of the marsh.
The bow I used was a DAS Gen I riser with 54# Morrison Max 2 limbs. Arrow was a 400 FMJ tipped with a 200 grain Razorcap.
Topic: Velvet buck (Read 1527 times)
