Tell me about the one who haunts you.

[lpcjon2]

Hey guys we all have had an animal that has eluded( the legends)us or just plain got away from us do to many reasons. Tell me about the one(deer, elk, turkey, ect) who got away and why, and what you have learned from it. And does it still haunt you?

  And please add why he got away and what you learned from it and changed so others can change the way they approach a similar situation.
Thanks, Tim

[Alexander Traditional]

I'm glad you posted this. I was stalking on my lease in Menard Tx. and stalked up on a big nice buck bedded down. I was so cold and over bowed that I could not make the shot. I learned a lot that day. I   learned to practice in my hunting clothes and to make sure I could shoot the bow when conditions were worse than my practice conditions. That's been 15 years ago and I still think about it all the time.

[Sean B]

Two seasons ago, I went into my spot of open hardwoods when i realized that I forgot my safty harness.  The tree that hunted out of had a large boulder at the base of it with a rotted tree trunk between them.  I decided to hunt from the base of he tree, using the boulder as a blind, & the tree trunk as a seat.  I wasn't set up for more than 20 mins when I saw a large 8 walking right to me. I lost sight of him behind the boulder.  from the angle that he was walking at I figured he'd appear at about 10 yrds to my left with a nice quatering away shot.  

So I readied my recurve to my left side waiting.  i could hear him walking through the leaves.  I noticed that I was hearing him better with my right ear.....I slowley turn my head to the right when he appears from behind the boulder to my right at 8 FEET! I distinctly remeber looking at the pours in his nose, and looking through is rack.He stood there for what seemed like 15 mins but was probably no more than 30 seconds.  needless to say that my heart was in my throat.  

Im sure that what spooked him was either my heavy breathing, or my heart pounding.  he turned and ran off.

[fnshtr]

I chased a nice WV 10 point last fall. Seen him several times pre-rut but didn't really go after him as I was "saving him" for my son that gets so little time off work. My son missed him (overshot) the first evening I put him on him.

The next evening I went after him but couldn't close the deal as I couldn't stalk closer than 40 yards. That was on a Saturday and when I got back after him the next week... he disappeared. The rut was on and he went traveling.

We seen him during and after rifle season went out and had hopes of one of us taking him with the bow (only way we would even attempt) during the late season.

After all seasons were out... and we hadn't seen him since ML season... with no pics of him showing up on the game cams... we started wondering what happened to him. (I just called him "him"... and my son knew which buck I was talking about).

Early in January, with all deer seasons over... a neighbor described him to a T and said a fellow hunting over a feeder on the last day of ML season shot him. BUMMER!!!!

What I learned was... get after them as soon as you can. Don't wait for anything or anybody. Their patterns change and you just don't know when they will disappear from your area.

Nice thread!

[steadman]

One?    LOL!!

[Anointed Archer]

It was 12 years ago we had a huge white tail buck (Tully Lake Buck) in our area, several of us had seen him but only at night in the beam of our head lights but very few seem him during shooting light.   November 3rd 2000 I got out of work late that evening and when I finally got up into my tree stand I had only about 30 minutes of shooting light left.
I wasn’t in the tree stand 10 minutes when I heard a grunt from the swamp and here he was coming straight at me.  He came and stood broadside to me at 18 yards staring out in the corn field straight ahead.  I pulled my 60lb Bracknberry back, anchored, picked a spot and let her fly.  I watched as those all white banana feathers raced to its mark, when I heard the wack and watched this giant run off. I just stood there in disbelief, what just happened?  As I stood there trying to make sense of everything that just happened I looked up and there was my arrow suspended in midair.  
I had center punched a ½ inch maple branch that I could not see in the low light, and there my arrow hung like it was suspended in time.  My heart was broke; I could not believe that I had the biggest buck in my life dead to rights only to watch him trot away.  Never seen him again, two weeks later my neighbor came over and told me Tully got hit by a car just down from the house.  He was a 12 point and measured 24 inch inside spread with a 12 inch G2.
What did I learn? To make sure to clean out all shooting lanes of any branch that could possibly deflect an arrow.

[Ray Lyon]

It's happened twice now with two different species (elk and turkey). First time was back in the late 80's in Montana.  I was hunting the back side of Lone Mountain in Big Sky and had elk bugling above me in the timber. There was a large clear cut (about 5 acres) to my left and behind me. I was on a finger of cover that extended up into the dark timber and above a service road about 15 to 20 feet from where I thought the elk would come down through and past me like a tree stand.  We bugled back and forth for about 20 minutes  and the elk were slowly working down the timber towards me.  Just when I thought things were going to get interesting I heard a bugle over my shoulder from knoll in the clear cut.  Here stands a 6x6 at 50 yards looking for the 'elk' he just heard a few seconds before.  I can't move as the only cover I have is the 3 foot pine tree in front of me that I thought I would be hiding BEHIND when the elk showed up.  After about 30 seconds, he turned slowly and walked down back over the knoll. I quickly repositioned a few yards away in better cover for that bull and bugled again. Nothing.  I waited for a 5-10 minutes and bugled again and only got a response from up in the timber.  I slowly crawled to the top of the knoll and saw the 6x6 entering the timber at the bottom of the clear cut. It was starting to get dark so I backed out.  

I had a turkey do the same thing when I was calling for a friend one year.  We had gobbles coming from 100 yards out in front in the woods but not coming closer. I left my friend and went back about 40 yards and started calling again, but didn't really set myself up for a shot.  After trading back and forth with the gobbler out in front of my friend I heard a putt, putt over my left shoulder (I was using a slate and peg call).  A second bird had snuck in behind silently and pegged me.  

Moral of the stories.....be ready for a second participant when engaged in hot calling of critters.

[Sean B]

Oh yea...i learned not to set up so close to the wall of a blind to were i cant change positions, $ not to forget my harness!!

[Iowabowhunter]

His name is Nightmare, and he is a stud whitetail. Started 4 years ago (2008) on a perfect October morning-I had been hunting quite a bit (my dad allowed me to take a few days off school to hunt)  and I nodded off! About 9:45 I woke up to see a nice wide ten pointer about 70 yards away on a trail that, for a short time, is 20 yards from my fathers permanent stand! I grunted and bleated but he didn't even turn his head back. Next year (2009) I didn't see him at all during bow season, and only caught a glimpse of him during muzzle loader season but didn't have a shot. The following bow season (2010) I had him at 15 yards sometime in early Nov but he had been fighting and busted his left main beam off after his brow tine! I decided to pass him up,  and I am glad that I did. My buddy that was hunting with me called me crazy, but I almost felt like I had caught him at a time when he wasn't at full strength. I never did see him last year, but also didn't hear of him getting taken or hit by a car. As long as he didn't lose a ton of mass, he would have been B&C gross easily, so needless to say I am really hoping to get a shot at him. I am thinking he has to be at least 7 years old by now, and pretty well entrenched in his habits. I believe the problem with this guy is just simply not being in his core area, and not hunting "smarter" (watching the wind, trying not to disturb the area too much, being diligent with my scent minimizing etc. I have read a lot of books, and also have been studying topo maps of the surrounding public land to try and pin down where exactly this dream buck has been escaping to. Wish me luck in my quest to take him (my first bow buck and first trad animal-unless I get a tom) this fall.

[jcar315]

Hurts too much to even think about it.....

[Ulysseys]

It was a buck in PA for me - I hunted from dark in the morning until about 3pm 2 Novembers ago in an absolute downpour - I love hunting in rain - well at around 3 I was soaked and freezing so I crawled out from the big pine tree I set up under and headed back to the house. I was there for about half an hour when I started to get the itch to head back out, so I figured I'd just go for a walk/stalk with about an hour and a half of light left. I put my soaked rain gear back on and headed towards a small scrub field in the middle of the woods at the top of the mountain (a PA mountain) across from our place. I had a heavy uphill wind so I walked around and past it so I could look down in to it.  The field is surrounded by new growth saplings and you can make out deer moving in the field before you bust in to it and scare them. Well from the top I look down and see what I think is a turkey in the field so I stalk a little closer and see that it's a deer - the first one I've seen all day.  I drop my pack and nock an arrow and start on my hands and knees towards the field edge.  I make it just to the edge, behind a wall of thorn brush, only to see no deer.  I hung there for a moment thinking I spooked it when a huge 8 pointer (for PA) walked out from my left, about 10 yds. in front of me and shook off water like a wet dog - it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.  Well now I can hear my heart beating in my ears, I'm actually going to get this buck; I just have to shimmy to my right a little bit and I'd have an open shot at him feeding. As I start to move my arrow is catching in some twigs in front of me so I think rather than move the whole bow and arrow around them I'd just break them at the base, muffling the sound with the meat of my hand in the heavy wind and rain. So I break one and you would of thought I fired a .22 because the deer looked up and started trotting towards me to investigate.  Realizing I was busted I dropped as low as I could, elbows between my knees and chin almost on the ground, and stared at him - 5 yards away bobbing his head up and down looking in to the thorn thicket I was in.  I took him all of 5 seconds to get out of there and I slumped back on my butt and watched him trot away.  One of my best and worst hunting experiences. My lesson - be patient and get in the woods, no matter what.  I stuck with the spot and took a great 8 pointer from a stand inside of the thicket on the edge of the same field 2 years later as he slunk back to a bedding area on a November morning. Full circle.

[T Lail]

It was a hog in Georgia.....on Greg Campbells place........saw him  a long way up the trail....set up and waited for over an hour....a true 250 pound boar....after all the others worked by , he finally walks by at 8 yards....I felt like I full drew, I felt like I picked a spot, but the shot was high....he jumped, grunted and walked by a tree and broke the arrow off....obviouslly, not hurt at all, he follows the sounder off to better places.....how, how, how could I have blown that shot ???????????  

[Killdeer]

Ulysseys, you gotta write more stories!
That is an excellent read!

Killdeer

[Bowwild]

Big non-typical white-tail on Election Day (Nov. 3, 1981). I had come in from working with private landowners to improve habitat on their farms. I threw on hunting clothes and hustled to my tree stand. I climbed a tree I called the "crow's Nest". The farm was 1,100 acres on the Indiana/Michigan line in Elkhart County Indiana -- "Steinbicer's".

It was an evening hunt. I was looking toward the south expecting my quarry to come from the impossibly dense button bush swamp about 80 yards away where the woodlot I was in met the marsh.

The buck walked out about 30 minutes before dark. I don't know how many points he had -- lots of them. I was measuring about 75-100 deer a year as part of my job in those days and I'm sure this buck was 200" plus. The rack was a very dark grey.

He was walking right towards me and I couldn't decide whether to get ready on the left or the right. I was a RH shooter in those days. I just kept facing him hoping for a left walk-by. He walked by on the left, perfect for a righty.

I couldn't draw as he walked towards me because he would see me -- I was only 12' in the tree.  He stopped directly broadside to the left. I could see his eye-lashes. I chose not to try to shoot for fear he'd see me. I waited until he had moved 5-6 more steps and then I drew. He had stopped in group of saplings within the larger forest. He was staring ahead about 40 yards into a picked cornfield.

I didn't shoot. My only shot was steeply angled away. I would have to hit him just forward of the hip and angle towards the opposite shoulder.

The buck walked on and I never saw him again...that I know of.

I don't regret not shooting but I do remember this buck well.

[LongStick64]

For me any deer is a trophy, I respect them that much.
I was hunting some state land that gets a fair share of hunting pressure. On these lands I try to find the nastiest place to get to. Hoping everyone else avoids these areas. Sure enough I was onto a deer that was using some real nasty cover for home turf. Not a single tree in sight that could be used for a tree stand and I wasn't about to walk around with a tripod. This was going to be hands and knees hunting. peeking under bushes and trying to work through some nasty wild rose.
I kept the wind in my face and crawled through that stuff. I hadn't given any thought to how I was going to get a shot, but I had to give it a go. I knew the deer sought this refuge when the hunting season took full swing, I knew they were in there.
Well as I crawled up a low rise, I got this feeling something was watching me. Sure enough I hear a snort and there 5 feet from me, bedded down covered by a bush was a doe. I don't know who jumped first but we both gave each other the look of "Oh Jolly". It was priceless fun.
I learned next time to find where they entered these areas and get myself there before they did. I tried to position myself between food source and security zone. And I never crawled in there again.

[reddogge]

1972 and I watched a big 12 point buck follow a line of smaller bucks on a path that would miss me. They suddenly bedded down and lesser bucks were sparring and bedding while the big boy rested. All at once they got up and took a diagonal right towards me and I had nice bucks pass withing 10 yards of me. I waited for the big guy who was at the end and was about 30 yards out and I let fly with my 50# Damon Howatt Super Diablo and watched the Bear Razorhead hit the shoulder bone and bounce out of the buck.

I blew the shot on the biggest buck I have ever seen. Do you think it haunts me? Like it was yesterday.

It is actually not one.....but two for me. I have been hunting in South Africa twice and have made a terrible shot which resulted in a lost blue wildebeest twice. I do not have aclue what caused the first one and think I was just too excited on the second one as it was the first animal i got a shot at on the second trip.

The good news is I really want one bad now, so it looks like another hunting trip to Africa is in my future!

Bisch

[drewsbow]

turkeys with my bow , dang those stinking turkeys

[Bowwild]

Whoops, I forgot to tell what I learned from that NT encounter. I learned that sometimes the shot doesn't get any better.

I've had to relearn that one a few times since so maybe I didn't learn anything?

[Terry Lightle]

Palmated 11 point,he even walked the full length of the front porch of our cabin one day during a snow storm