Opening day of bow season came too soon. My daughter was expecting our second grandchild any day so I knew I would be out of town and unable to hunt much of the early season. Due to heavy rains the week prior to opening day, 2 of the 3 farms I had stands on would not be huntable due to high water. The farm I could hunt had 2 stands, but because of an opening day cool front, the wind was totally wrong for the west stand and not ideal for the east stand. If the deer would come from where I believed they would, they should present a shot before they got downwind.
The first evening, about 2 1/2 hours before sunset, I made my way through the standing corn to my stand in a small patch of timber that deer tend to bed in during the early season. We had seen a respectable 9-point feeding in a bean field across the road and watched him return to the patch of timber and actually had trail cam pictures of him. The deer hadn’t been disturbed all summer so I figured the chance of seeing deer that night was good.
About 45 minutes before dark, I noticed a deer 30 yards west of me in the timber browsing on leaves. The deer was feeding about 15 yards from where this stand had been the last 2 years, just my luck. When I first saw the deer, you could tell it was a buck, but he didn’t look that impressive. My first thought was that he was kind of odd looking, but if he continues to feed my way, I would take the shot.
As he continued my way, I saw he was going to pass my stand at about 12 yards, but there was a problem. A limb in the way was going to force me to let him pass broadside and take a sharp quartering away shot after he passed. By the time the deer presented a shot, he was almost directly downwind. At the shot, the deer exploded down through the timber and almost immediately disappeared from sight. I could see from the arrow placement, the deer had been struck in the ribs at a sharp quartering away angle, missing one lung, but probably passing through the liver and one lung. I called my husband on my 2-way radio to let him know I would need some help tracking a deer. He told me to stay in the stand and he would head my way.
75 yards east of my stand is a dirt farm road. I knew my husband would check to see if the deer had crossed the road as he came to my stand. He call me after about 20 minutes to tell me my buck had crossed the road, but not to worry. He could tell the deer was hit hard as he was bleeding out both sides and the exit side was bleeding heavily. My husband met me in the standing corn as I was making my way to the road.
After looking at the blood trail in the road and the amount of blood sprayed on the leaves where he jumped the fence onto the neighbor’s farm, a decision was made to leave the deer until morning. We knew the hit was fatal, but we were also sure I had only hit one lung. We knew if we tracked the buck and jumped him up, he would surely go into a 600 acre standing corn field or a 400 acre CRP field and the odds of recovering him would not be good. It was going to be a long night,
At daylight the next morning, we were at the fence ready to start tracking. We had contacted the neighbor the night before and secured permission to track the deer onto his farm. The deer wasn’t hard to track due to the amount of blood and the tracks in the soft ground. The deer was headed onto some bottom ground that had been flooded only 2 days before opening day. We had went about 75 yards when my husband noticed the tracks turning south and going down into a deep slough feeding the main creek channel. My husband motioned for me to ease up and look over the edge of the bank. There laid my buck. He had tried to cross the slough, but only made it part way up the opposite bank before dying and sliding back down. My husbands only comment as he saw me jumping up and down was, “I hope he’s dead.”
I am sure many of you have wondered why I didn’t send in a picture of my deer in the field. Due to the flooding, the deer was extremely muddy by the time we got him onto higher ground. We didn’t think they showed the respect for the animal that he deserved.
Topic: Opening day Missouri buck (Read 1123 times)
