I have been hunting hard this season and it's been great, but using less than traditional equipment, so we'll leave it at that. Last night was my first sit of the season with my trusty shrew. I picked a funnel along the edge of a swamp. The recent rains and melting snow have really flooded it and really encouraged the deer to go around it, instead of through it. The area has very little deer sign, but one trail was littered with very large tracks. I sat there in hopes of catching up with the buck that likely made them.
I hadn't seen a deer all afternoon and was hoping a buck would cruise by just before dark. As the sun got low in the sky, at that perfect time in the evening, I heard a buck walking towards me from the area I was expecting him. He had that "buck walk" and I knew it before I even saw him. Steady, heavy, methodical foot falls. I saw him at 80yds and he was closing. He stopped at a stone wall crossing, 25yds from my stand, facing me. I was standing facing him, bow up tension on the string. He stood there for what seemed like forever, but was only about 2 minutes. The wind was perfect and I had good cover in my stand, but he knew something wasn't right. He slowly turned broadside to leave and stopped, looking toward where he came and was likely going to go back to. I focused as I hit full draw and watched as the arrow streaked towards him. The shot felt great but I lost the arrow, the final few feet of it's journey and he exploded out of there. He took off smashing through trees and bushes, stopped in a thicket at 80yds, I heard a crash and saw a flash of white and silence. I glassed the area I last saw him until dark and quietly climbed down and walked out. I was a wreck. i was pretty sure I watched him crash, but I didn't see the impact and decided to play it safe. My buddy met me at the truck and since it had been an hour since the shot, we decided to go have a look.
We had blood at the shot and were able to follow it for about 30yds, where we found the back half of my arrow with blood a good 4 inches up it. All the clues indicated a good shot, lodged in the offside shoulder, with no exit. Since we weren't positive and the blood wasn't as heavy as we'd like, we backed out. He went home to let the dogs out and I went home to tell my wife and see if she wanted to come back with us. An hour later found us where we'd left off. We had no problem following the blood and 50yds later, we found him piled up where I thought I saw him go down!
The shot was perfect, tacking out both lungs, the top of the heart and lodging in the off shoulder! I was using my 55#, 56" Shrew Classic Hunter, 340 Beeman mfx shaft and a 250 grain Terminator 1-1/4" broadhead. This six pointer scores 124-1/4" and weighed 189 pounds dressed.
Topic: First Trad hunt of the season- Huge 6 pointer! (Read 2312 times)
