Thanks Kevin. I got the message while I was there at the ranch that you said "hello".
On with the stories. Two mornings after I shot my doe John dropped me off at a new tree stand. I always volunteered for the highest stand because most of the guys in John's truck (Larry Surtees, Boyd Stayley, Wayne LaBauve and Tommy Bell) aren't too fond of heights. At about 23 feet high, this tree stand was a little lower than the one where I was sitting when I shot the doe. I was taking my usual little cat nap when the feeder went off at 7 am. Even when you are awake and alert, the sound of the feeder going off is always startling. I went back to sleep and then awoke to a crunching noise. As I became aware of my surroundings I realized that the noise was a deer eating corn at the feeder. It turned out to be a young buck, although in the dim early light it initially looked like a doe. After awhile it wandered off. Later I noticed several does coming in to feed. Since we had two does we could shoot, I decided to take one if I could. The does came in, but like all the other deer, they were extremely skittish. Everything seemed to spook them. After awhile, a nice sized 8 point buck and the little buck I had seen earlier walked in and the does decided to leave. Although the 8 point was one that I would always pass on at home in Oklahoma, I had seen that it was a nice deer for the Austin area, so I decided I would shoot it if given a chance. After failing to present a shot, the bucks left that area and I settled down to wait for John to return in the truck to pick me up. To my surprise, I heard corn crunching again and slowly looked over to see that the two bucks had returned. After a long wait, the smaller buck turned to face directly away from me and the larger buck was quartering away 26 yards from the base of my tree and about 28 yards slant distance from where I sat. The bigger buck was just a couple of yards directly on the other side of the feeder, so my shot was between the feeder legs. I aimed low on the buck's body and near the last rib so the arrow would hopefully enter his right side, range up through the buck's body taking out both lungs and exiting his chest just inside his left front leg. The shot was perfect, but as I watched the arrow fly, the buck squatted, pushed off with his left front hoof, and turned directly broadside with his right side facing toward me. The arrow made a beeline straight for the center of his right rear ham and made a tearing noise as it penetrated half its length into the flesh. The deer stiffened at the impact and then slowly hobbled away behind the cedars. Unlike my doe where I immediately saw a saucer sized blood stain around the entry hole, I saw absolutely no blood coming from the buck's wound.
I text messaged Terry the details of my shot and both of us decided I needed to quietly slip out of my stand before the truck got there and leave the buck unpressured so he would hopefully lie down and bleed out or stiffen up. We would then go back for lunch and return with the dogs. I followed that plan, and upon being picked up by John found out that Larry Surtees had put an arrow in a doe a short distance away from me. Larry has a great story that I will let him tell; however, I will say that the story of Larry's hunt was written on the ground where it all took place.
After lunch a number of us went back to look for the doe and the buck that Larry and I had shot. I won't tell you what happened with Larry's doe, but I can say that with my buck we found no sign of any blood and certainly did not see the deer. Robert's dog, Robert, Terry Green, Jeff Berberick, Larry and I did a lot of walking and looking, and some of the other guides helped out too, but it seems my broadhead did not cut any vital tissue. The buck probably pulled out the arrow and went off to heal from the clean cut of a sharp broadhead. I was hoping to recover my arrow with it still attached to that deer. :rolleyes: Although the arrow did not hit where I had hoped, with the way the deer at Solana move upon hearing the string release, I was probably doing well to have even hit the animal. I did find the spot in the mud where the buck had pushed off sideways with his left front hoof and left a mark like someone scraping a flat edge 4 inches across the ground. It sure made it easy to see exactly where the deer was standing when I shot. My hits on flesh were now two for two with the new Classic Hunter, but I was disappointed that my kill ratio was only 50%.
Now a little about the new Sitka Gear clothing I was using. I had brought along the 90% jacket, the Celcius bib, the Celcius vest, the Celcius jacket, the Traverse beanie, and the Kelvin jacket. Some of the other guys like Carlton Carter and Michael Langahans also wore some of their Sitka Gear, although I seemed to have the most items of anyone. I also wore light merino wool long underwear and heavy Polar Dry long underwear along with wool socks, gloves, a hand muff and additional headgear. The Sitka Gear is great stuff, but as many people have observed, most of it is not designed to sit motionless in a tree stand in freezing temperatures and keep you warm. The exception was when I added the Kelvin jacket to the Celcius bibs, vest and jacket. The insulating properties of the Kelvin jacket helped create the warm, cozy (and still non-bulky) protective cocoon around me that I was hoping for. The Sitka Gear is extremely well made and well worth what I paid for it, especially since I got it on closeout sales at almost half off the normal retail price. I have not yet received the Sitka Gear underwear I ordered, but I was very happy with the merino wool and Polar Dry underwear I got from Cabela's. I doubt that I will see appreciable improvement in performance from the Sitka Gear underwear compared to what I used at the hunt; however, the Cabela's underwear cost me about the same as what I am paying for the Sitka Gear underwear, and both were on sale. I also wore a pair of Cabela's Mountain Hunter boots that were fairly new and I had never used before on a hunt. Even though they were the uninsulated ones, they were fairly warm with the merino wool socks and were super comfortable. In fact the boots were the only shoes I wore the entire trip other than using some Crocs around the cabin as house shoes. I am not sponsored by Sitka Gear like Guru and J.C. are, but having used the clothing every day on this hunt, I can say that everything that Guru and J.C. have written about Sitka Gear is 100% accurate, which should not come as a surprise to those who know these fellow TradGangers.
More hunting stories and gear reviews later.
Allan
Topic: Solana 2010 (Read 11149 times)
