I could go on about how the morning went and describe a wonderful day in the woods, but it wasn't to be a long hunt. 30 minutes after getting settled just as the sun was peeking over short mountain i heard the faint steps of an animal approaching. like a ghost he all of a sudden was there looking in my direction. talk about the ticker thumping, man my heart was about to jump out of the tree and leave me hanging. i took a few deep breaths and regained my composure.
at first it looked like he was going to walk across in front of me and then at the last second he turned back to his left. at this point i knew i would need to stand in order to get a shot, so as soon as his head was behind a tree i stood up.
relax, breath he doesn't have a clue your there i thought to myself. he continued on his path and it looked as though he was not going to get any closer. he was at my max range. take the shot now or it will be a missed opportunity. slowly i brought the bow up finding my sight picture and hitting my anchor the arrow was gone.
everything went into fast motion as he bolted back in the direction from which he had came and then the woods were quiet. Wow! talk about things happening quickly. I had been in my stand for about 40 minutes total.
Knowing the buck was out of sight i climbed on down to take a look. couldn't find my arrow, but there was plenty of blood and it was bright red. i looked around for about 10 minutes for my arrow and then took up the blood trail. the buck had turned once over the crest of the ridge and ran side hill for about 30 yards before turning straight down hill. when i say down hill i mean almost cliff straight down. it was so steep that i had to actually slid on my butt to follow the blood trail. he had gone only about 15 yards before falling and then sliding another 20 yards before crashing into a small tree where he stopped.
wrapping my hands around his antlers and patting his big body brought back some fond memories of many great times i had had on this ridge and of the deer that i had taken as well as the ones that got away. he was lucky #7 from my ridge, or i guess i was lucky. he wasn't so lucky on this day.
the drag to the bottom was nothing more than a push from around the tree and then a long 75 yard slide to the bottom of the draw. from there it was about 500 yards of labor to get him back out to the train tracks at which point i decided i was going to go get some help for the rest of the work.
Topic: "2nd Annual Rough Mountain Rendezvous" (Read 2496 times)
