A couple other folks stopped in Saturday afternoon for a while. John Herron and Roland from Germany. I forgot to include John French, catfishon, in the list earlier but he came back on Saturday also. So as of Saturday, we had a bunch of Hoosiers, PA, NJ and Germany represented. Next year I'm calling it the International Southern Indiana BowHunt. We really didn't do any serious bowmaking.
Saturday evening I busted some ash and got up on top of one of the ridges and found this awesome saddle south of the campground. It is a burn area and is thick with greenbriar. It also separate the capground area from the some more remote land. It has to be a hot spot later in the season especially when the orange army invades. Late in the year, when other browse is gone, I bet the deer hit the greenbriar hard here. Ihunted back down towards the campground from the saddle and found trails with scrapes and rubs. This is another spot that will see me later. One the way out I bumped into a couple compounders from Lawrenceburg who were hunting in the same general area. I also got to meet the representative from PA, Fred. He had seen a buck and a doe in the area Joe and I had hunted in the morning.
I was hanging around back at camp when catfish showed up with this buck he killed nearby.
Sweet.
Darren Shue, HackBow, called to let me know he'd be in at 2:30 in the morning and to have his air mattress set up in the Hotel Scifres so he could roll into bed for a couple hours sleep before our hunt on the private property I had hunted Friday night.
Darren got in right on time and barely even slept before our hunt. We got in a little after light and I showed him a nice trail to sit while I climbed into my stand.
Around 9:30 a doe shows up behind me right in my shooting lane. She looked up as I drew but the sun was right in her eyes so I don't think she could see me. I shot as she looked back down and it was perfect except I forgot about a small branch I needed to duck slightly and it sent my shot 2" below her chest. She blew out and I thought I was screwed for the morning but at 10:19, a small buck starts heading right into the scrape I was set up on. He gets about 5 yards away and I shoot him right there. A short dash and a crash and I was pretty sure I had him. Darren came in 15 minutes later as arranged and we took up the trail. It was pretty easy to see where he ran and we follwoed tracks. The lack of blood made me a little nervous but the placement and half an arrow sticking out of him put my mind at rest. I figured I hit his off shoulder which prevented an exit hole. It wasn't long before Darren found some skid marks and then some obvious places where he fell. Not 10 seconds later, Darren said "There he is". He had crashed and started tumbling into this hollow before some greenbriar snagged his leg and planted his antler into the ground. That made an already brutal drag at least a little easier. Darren has all the good pics but here's one after we found him and oved him to a tree to keep him from falling any further. He had ran about 75 yards and tumbled another 40.
The shot had entered a little high but had center-punched a rib and then passed through about 1/2" into the off side shoulder.
Thanks God Darren was there to help me drag. Thanks bud!
Topic: Southern Indiana Hunt (recap) (Read 2154 times)
