Ok, ok......you're right Terry, "baiting" with acorns is a pretty good way to hunt around these parts.
I decided last night that I was going to try to hunt this morning at a stand I call the "Ridge Top Scrape" stand, you'll see why later. I had parked and was getting ready to leave the truck when I realized that I had forgotten to bring my two climbing sticks needed for this stand, I was not a happy man. I looked at the time and figured that I could make it home and back and be in my stand as daylight was breaking, and as Joe said, "You can't kill anything laying on the couch". I went home, got my sticks and made my way to the stand. I was able to get situated about five minutes before shooting light arrived, late, but still ok. The piece of land I was hunting is about a 350 X 450 yard piece of land surrounded by posted property on all sides except the northwest, which is where I park and enter from. There is a gully that runs southeast up a hill to a pretty good oak flat, with a thick stand of hemlocks to the east, to the west is dense brush that I think deer bed in. 200 yards past the property line to the south are a bunch of fields, so I thought the head of the gully would be a good place to intercept deer returning from the fields to their bedding areas. When I first scouted the area I found a very concentrated series of last years rubs and scrapes about 40 yards from the head of the gully, along the edge of the hemlocks.
I had been in my stand about 15 minutes when my son texted me about football practice, I answered him at 6:47, and wished him a happy birthday. Yup, Hunter is 14 today! I put my phone away and decided to grunt and rattle. The rattling session was about a minute long. Five minutes later I heard something coming from the west and saw a deer walking along the ridge on the other side of the gully. He crossed at the head of the gully, now 20 yards away and then turned and started at an angle towards me. He stopped at 15 yards behind a hemlock branch and then began walking from my right to left at 15 yards. He stopped again and I drew aimed and released as he began walking again, I heard the arrow hit but wasn't sure where. In the following picture he was standing at the middle leaf of the three yellow leafs when I drew on him......
He tore out of there hard away and to the right, and I could see now that I had hit him back too far, but as he ran it was obvious he was having trouble. He ran about 60 yards and then turned left for another 30. I thought I heard him go down at the last place I saw him, but wasn't sure. I was standing, and my leg started shaking, I don't remember it being that cold.... I gave thirty minutes and then began to follow what was initially a trail of churned up leaves. There was no blood in the first 60 yards, when I turned left I saw this and thought, "that sure looks like a deer right there"....
It was!!!!!
He had gone a total of about 80 yards, and the crashing I heard was him going down, I was happy for such a quick kill. The total time from the shot to him crashing was pretty quick, certainly less than ten seconds. I'm always amazed at at the damage a sharp broadhead will cause.
The bad part about the hunt was the shot. It felt good, I'm not sure if I didn't recognize that he was starting to move when I shot, but I hit him through the front of the hind quarters. I feel lucky to have recovered this deer so quickly.
I made a concious decision this year not to use scentlok when I hunted, instead hunting stands only when the wind was right. I've already seen more deer this year than in three full months of hunting last year......hmmmm.
Here's a couple more pics, I have always liked pictures of just the animal and the bow......
Now I'll throw my ugly mug in and you'll know why...
For those that care, he weighed 144 pounds with 7 points, three that had the tips broken off.....
Got a couple more spots to hunt now, see if I can't do this again......
David
Topic: Still Sick, Hunted Anyway and Got Bloody-Thanks All (Read 814 times)
