I posted this on the Southern Indiana Bowhunt thread but it's a good enough story that it deserves its own.
Saturday morning we all got up early to hunt. I went to a spot that proved fruitful last year in deer sightings at least. This year was different. It was a beautiful morning to be in the woods. This has been an aweful year for rain. We haven't had appreciable rain, at least in Indy, since July 28. The woods are crunchy and tinder dry. Still-hunting is out.
I hunted until around 10:00 and then saw my only deer of the morning as I was getting into my car.
Sometime around the time I was leaving the woods, Darren's deer story begins. He hunted up above the campground and around 9:00 as he was changing locations, a deer approached and caught him in the open. He managed to kneel down behind a stump but the doe caught the movement. She was suspicious but not spooked and continued forward. At about 25 yards, she walked behind a tree which allowed Darren to get his bow up. She walked behind another and he drew. She slowly moved forward offering a broadside shot. The shot was a bit farther back than hoped for but still looked to be in the vitals. As she crashed off, Darren watched her progress but quickly lost sight of her in the thick stuff.
45 minutes later he took up the trail. Blood showed pretty quickly and seemed red enough to be liver but definitely not lung. Still hoping for the best, he followed good blood for a couple hundred yards. He realized then that the blood he was following was muscle blood and he needed to keep on her to keep her bleeding. But the nagging doubt of the apparent shot location caused a bit of uncertainty. The shot looked to be dead center mass. Muscle blood didn't make sense. Still he followed. And the blood stayed good and fairly easy to follow. Her route caused much concern though as she was going uphill. Still he kept on.
At about 800 yards into the trail, he jumped her. At this point he wanted a second opinion and maybe some help. He came back to camp. We discussed it and decided it was likely a high hit through the backstrap and a difficult trail would continue. But we had to keep her moving. Billy, Brent, Darren and I went back to where he had jumped her.
The doe had actually climbed the ridge into the little valley that holds the campground and is in a non-hunting area. We got back on the trail and quickly saw that the blood was petering out. This can be good or bad but definitely makes it more difficult. We'd find blood and Billy would post on it. Then we'd find the next spot. She was still going uphill when we lost it for a while. Darren and Brent went forward and left looking closely for some sign. I split off right and after a while found another small spot of blood. The good news was that she had turned downhill. The bad news is that we lost blood quickly again after finding a fairly large, still wet pool. It didn't look like a bed but could be. After several tense and unproductive minutes, I found a tiny spot, again downhill from last blood. We saw where she had apparently run and concluded that we had bumped her. Walking along her trail, I looked downhill and saw a suspicious gray spot in the creek bottom. I pointed it out to Darren about the time I concluded it was a log. But then the log moved. It was her, about 40 yards away and looking straight at us. Darren pulled an arrow from his quiver and was going to try to finish her off and then she jumped up and started running again.
Darren asked me "Should I try to run her down". Without answering we both just took off and ran on pure instinct crashing downhill, trying to keep an eye on her without killing ourselves on the blowdowns or rocks we were forced to hurdle or the bankcuts we jumped. I must admit it was exhilarating as heck. With my binocular vision trained on the running, and weakening, doe my peripheral vision guided my body over the terrain. It is the first time I have truly appreciated our predatory nature. It was primitive and visceral and felt like it was exactly what I was designed to do. My heart accelerates now in the retelling. We were a two man pack chasing our prey.
The doe managed to run down the creek bottom for a hundred yards or so and then went back uphill. At the top, she stopped and was panting. Darren was still holding the arrow he pulled earlier (and just run downhill with) and stopped, preparing for a shot. Within seconds the doe took off again. We rushed after her again and at the top of the hill, we panted to a stop as we saw her down again, this time in a deep bend that had cut into the bank. She was spent and Darren was able to put a perfect finishing shot into her lungs at 18 yards. She jumped up on her final run and I said "She's done now". Within 50 yards, she was.
She's a nice doe. Here's Darren, Billy, and Brent. Billy and Brent had held back as reserve for when Darren and I pooped out.
Here' the track assist team. That's me in the middle. Still trying to catch my breath.
She started on the right, sidehilled for couple hundred yards, went down into a hollow and then up and over a saddle in the main ridge. Then she went up and down a couple hollows and finally up another large point and finally down into the creek. Over a 4 hour period, she covered over 1000 yards. Darren and I went back through the trail and GPS coordinated confirmed a nearly 1/2 mile track over some of the toughest terrain in Indiana. She was kind enough to go towards the campground and Darren and Billy only had to drag her a couple hundred yards to the road, which was a couple hundred yards from camp.
After all the formalities of tagging and checking, the boys got to retrieving all useable pieces from the doe. Darren did the bulk of meat cutting and Chris (Sticks-n-Strings) recovered the sinew. I think Billy got the liver and Darren and I took the heart and tongue. It's an interesting thing to see a bunch of self-bowyers descend on a carcass.
We had backstraps and fried potatoes for dinner. I was frying backstrap while Darren was finishing up the meat cutting. I heard tell that a bit of backstrap tartar was consumed in the coven-like gathering of meat eaters.
Topic: Hackbow's Megatrack (Read 539 times)
