Last Friday I killed a nice fat button buck. Unfortunately no one was there to take pics and it was warm and I had to get the deer in the freezer quickly. However, the stand I shot the deer from is special to me and I fee like telling the story.
I had never hunted it before. It is at the far end of our property and is about 1/2-3/4 mile paddle in my canoe. Last Spring my friend Todd Gregory and I worked on a "wall" of dead pine trees. Years ago beaver had the area flooded and a number of big bull pines died and fell creating in several places a wall that was difficult to get over or around....and it was obvious that the dead tree trunks had fallen across a previously used game trail. We took Todd's chain saw and cut away some of the logs that opened the old game trail to be used once again...at least I hoped that would happen. I made a mineral lick there and within a week we had deer using the trail. Here are the first visitors back in May. You can see one of the fallen pines and the "door" we created.
Later in the summer I put up a tree stand that is almost over the river. Here is the view from the stand as of yesterday when I took some pics to go along this this little story (stories without pics just don't seem right, to me).
This is one of the views as I look over my left shoulder.
And another......
And another....
A view looking upstream towards the South.
Over my right shoulder. You can see how close I am to the river.
And a view toward the North. When I get out of the canoe I let it drift downstream on a long rope. Where it is in the picture it cannot be seen from the game trail.
Well, it seemed that the trail had seen little use and my camera was out of commission after ants had gotten into it so I had no pictures of activity there for most of the summer. I was unsure about the use of the trail. But it was apparent that deer were leaving tracks in the mud, and droppings when I walked the trail towards the downstream direction. The trail was being used but it was hard to tell how much. So when I finally went in to put up the stand I brought along some corn (legal in NH, especially on your own land) to see if it would have any effect in attracting more deer and set up my reconditioned camera, as well. Before too long I had a visitor. The pictures I had did not tell me much about the deer but seeing one there was promising.
Here's the visitor.....
As I said previously, I hunted the stand last Friday. It was a beautiful day and the sit in the stand was great. I had the feeling that this stand held a lot of promise. When Todd and I went in to cut the logs out of the way, we had two deer bedded nearby get up and walk away during our work session. What I like about the stand is the location and the fact that the paddle in gives me the feeling that I am hunting in the wilderness and I have it entirely to myself. The only bad thing about the stand is that the marshy meadow that I am looking into has grass that is four to five feet high, has lots of dead trees in it and holes that are knee deep with water. In short, a great place to hunt because of the security it provides the animals (deer, moose and turkey) but a difficult place to trail and drag....as I was about to find out.
At about 5:30 PM the deer in the pic showed up right under my stand. I had no idea where it came from. It had to have crossed the river. Towards the south (upstream) there are several places where it is clear the deer cross back and forth but this guy sort of came out of the ground.....never saw him or heard him coming.
The shot angle was very steep and I could tell it was a button buck...and he seemed pretty healthy (good eating). For a while I wondered about shooting him. We needed meat in the freezer and neither Laura nor I had yet killed deer on the new property. It wasn't long before the deer was broadside and I decided that everything felt right. I have passed up numerous shots this close but there was something serendipidus (sp?) about the moment.
Without much further deliberation I was drawing my 60# DAS. I took a bead on the heart and before I knew it the arrow was buried nearly to the fletching in his shoulder. As he ran off into the meadow my heart sank. It wasn't until then that the reality of trailing and getting a deer out of there hit me. I knew the shot was deadly.....everything else seemed a bit uncertain. All of these thoughts went thru my mind in a nano-second and as my mind got cloudy I saw the deer go down. Can you spell RELIEF?
I waited a minute or two to clear my head and descended the stand. I walked to where the deer feel....or so I thought. I couldn't find him. I went back to the canoe thinking that I had only imagined him going down. I took off two layers and went to the site of the hit. About ten yards away a lot of blood about waist high. Ten yards farther another big blotch and then nothing. The high grass and rough terrain under it was not easy to negotiate. Then I noticed blood on the ground under the grass. It puzzled me as I was pretty certain that I did not get a pass thru. I followed the specs of blood until they, too, vanished. I had only gone about 30 yards and it seemed like the deer, as seen from the stand, had gone quite a bit farther. But then I picked up the tell tale smell of a stinky buck. A glance in the direction of the breeze and there he was...he hadn't gone 30 yards. As I pulled him from the wet hole he had fallen into I was surprised to see my Razorcap protruding directly between his front legs...I did get two holes! When I finally got him home and did the autopsy it was apparent that the broadhead had severed every major blood vessel leaving the heart. In addition his tarsal glands were totally black and pungent so I removed them for use later in Nov. when the rut is in high gear.
I had a really genuine feeling of accomplishment as I loaded him into the canoe and paddled out that afternoon. It had been a beautiful afternoon, a quick clean kill, first deer taken on our property, a new potentially productive stand and after doing this for more than half a century it was almost like the first time.
Topic: Button buck at the Riverside stand (Read 313 times)
