I am on cloud nine. What an amazing feeling. This is truely a day I will never forget.
Four years ago Jim (raineman) introduced me to trad archery by showing me his bow collection. I was immediately interested. He answered the hundreds of questions I would have over time. From teaching me how to use a stringer to teaching me how to identify and give the correct year a Bear bow was made, he did it all. He later introduced me to Rich himself (Droptine 59)and I was consumed. As most of you know I got a little "too consumed" early on.
I started attending the shoots with Jim and Rich and met all you wonderful folks. What a great group all of you are. Well for 4 years I have been attending the shoots and trying my best. I was never a good shot and I would never allow myself to hunt with a recurve because I was so afraid of wounding a deer and not harvesting it.
This season at Denton Hill Bobby "Shacko" really spent time with me on the practice butts. He taught me to use my rear shoulder and back muscles for those last few inches of draw instead of being all arms. When I left that coaching session with Shacko I was shooting better than I ever have. After putting a heart shot on the "iron deer" at Denton I decided this was going to be my first season afield with a recurve. I got home and put into practice everything he taught me until it became 2nd nature.So, this morning I grabbed my 1964 Bear Kodiak in factory camo. I got the bow from Mike Breslin. It pulls 45 pounds and sports a Raineman string and bushwacker puffballs. I would be hunting a friend of mines house near where I live. It is a place that Jim and I have nicknamed "The Meat Market". Upon stopping at the end of his driveway I saw a large 8 point running a doe across his back yard. I walk down to my tree and go up it with my portable climber. My back is to a greenfield. To my front is a rise that goes on for 50 yards or so until it reaches a flat. In the morning I often see deer coming out of the field and going diagonally across that rise. I ended up seeing a total of 3 bucks (2 of them bigger than anything I have ever harvested) running does. I have never seen as much chasing as I saw this morning. Nothing came in to bow range and nothing ever slowed down, but it was great fun to watch.
After a little lull I hear all heck breaking loose behind me. I quickly stand up and sneak a peek behind me over my left shoulder. I see 3 does hauling the mustard coming straight to my tree. They are 70 yards away and running towards me as hard as they can. I instinctively look for the buck that must be chasing them; but I see none. That's a little weird because I havent seen any does all morning without a buck in tow.
They are at 60 yards, 50 yards, 40 yards. I had still been looking behind them but never did see a buck. I then put all my attention into these does. I notice that one of them is huge. They are still running as fast as they can until they get DIRECTLY in line with me. I dont know if they smelled me, of if they saw something up the rise that i had been staring at all day. But all 3 of them stopped running and completely froze. The big one was 18 yards away. To my left. Broadside.
Now in my mind I have played over what I always thought would happen the first time I drew back a trad bow on a deer. I would think to myself- cant the bow, roll the shoulder, make sure you get to anchor etc. NONE of that happened. I seriously cant tell you if I ever hit anchor or what I did. I just didn't think at all. I remember burning a hole in that deers right shoulder with my eyes, pulling the string back, and releasing it. The arrow went EXACTLY where I was looking.
All 3 deer do a 180 and haul butt back towards the green field they came from. I have my eyes on the big one that I hit. She runs behind my tree. I notice that she is not using her left front leg to run (the off side leg). It is just dangling. Her tail is down. She runs away from me; behind me until she gets 40 yards away, and she stops. At this point I expect her to fall over on her side. But instead she gently lays down into a bedded down position. I look at my watch. It is 9:02. I probably first saw the deer at 9:01, that's how fast it all happened.
I keep staring at her and she is not moving. No kicking, no head falling over. She is just in a peaceful bedded down position. I decide to keep watching her. I take a breath. Man my heart is pounding in my ears. I need to calm down. Breath Bill, it's a freaking doe for crying out loud. I stay in the stand and at 9:23 I see a HUGH buck at exactly the same point the 3 does were when I first saw them. I wonder if he is the one that had them running. It's 20 minutes later though. Perhaps he was chaing them and broke off with another one. I will never know. He never comes up to my area. He skirts that field the whole time with his nose down and walks out of my life.
At 9:30 my doe still has not budged. I get down the tree and walk over to her with another arrow on the string. She has expired. She died in that beeded down position. Her head never even fell over to one side. It was surreal. I sat down next to the doe on the forest floor and put my hand on her back. I thought about my Mom who passed away at the end of September, I thought about all you guys from this site. I thanked God, the deer, and Fred Bear. I realize that this was the first arrow that I ever fired at a live deer from a recurve. I have taken over 100 deer with a compound and none of them have given me this feeling. Not only did it go exactly where I was looking, but the deer died 40 yards away within my view. It took me 4 years to get good enough to have the confidence to hunt with a recurve.
I know I wanted pics. I am hunting alone and would normally have to resort to the hold the camera out in front of you trick, but those pics suck. So I call....... Raineman. I share with him my good fortune. Him being him, he tells me that he will take some time off his lunchbreak at work to get good photographs of me and my first trad deer ever.
It's a full circle. 4 years ago I was standing in the basement of the house he bought from me, admiring his recurve collection. I was a kid in a candy store with a million questions. I had not even heard of Fred Bear. Never knew he existed. Now turn the page 4 years later and Jim is the one taking pictures of me with my first deer harvested with trad gear. Wow. What a bud.
So - sorry for the long story - but here she is. I guess the only thing that would have made it better is if she was a he sporting huge headgear. But she is what she is. And to me, she is beautiful.
What makes this extra special? This off season I won the Chris Surtees hat auction here on trad gang. This morning on my way out I grabbed one of Chris's hat. It must have had some mojo in it.
I also used a sticshooter knife to do the dirty work on this doe.
It's basically a trad gang conglomeration harvest for me.
Topic: A 46 year old man (Me!) gets his first trad deer (Read 959 times)
