8 Pt.

[Anointed Archer]

excellent

[AWPForester]

That's a great buck bro.  God Bless

[Pat B.]

Way to go !

[pitbull]

Well done!  

[Big Ed]

Very nice!!

[Hoyt]

Thanks for all the congrats.

Kirk, I had several pictures of the bow with the deer..but I just wasn't in the mood after lossing all the photos to put a lot of effort into the head shot. He had blown blood out of his nose with the heart, lung shot and I didn't feel like cleaning it up for a photo. Came close to doing harm to my camera.

Anyway, what makes it extra bad is..(I'll do a little synopsis of what my photos would have shown)..I decided to hunt a place I found one spring while gobbler hunting, have been wanting to hunt for 3 yrs..my favorite spot as far as potental for big bucks. I haven't hunted it because it's so far and hard to get to, but yesterday I left the house walking two hrs before daylight so I'd have plenty of time.

I'd hunted way back in there about 1/4 mile short of this spot the afternoon before and left LW Hand Climber and safety harness there.  I picked them up on the way in.

I'm already tired and now have a full backpack (wool vest, wool shirt, longjohn top, fleece pull over, thick cotton Asat shirt, rattling horns, kitchen sink and everything else I always carry...along with climber and harness, sooo... eventually as I have been doing for about 3 yrs... I talk myself out of going way back to the best spot and head to another good one on the way.  Get to it and didn't like the looks of the trails, so head for another good one. It's getting daylight by now and soon as I get just about to this spot deer start blowing.  Now, I've stunk up the whole area zig zagging walking circles everywhere around looking for these spots and now blown deer out..so my confidence level is really low in the whole area. I've seen exactly one little doe since opening day Oct. 1 and tell myself I'm not going to climb a tree that as soon as I get up there I'll wish I was somewhere else.

In frustration I say to hell with all this it's already daylight and I'm going to hunt that best looking spot no matter what.

When I get through all the head high greenbrair, tip toe through all the 2" locust thorns, climb over the blow downs..I'm to the top of the highest saddle in the chunk of Shawnee I hunt..about a 3mile long by 3mile wide at one end and 1 mile at the other rectangular with no roads in it. It's 7:30am when I find the tree I want to climb and it's in the middle of several well used trails.  

I'm soaked, from the wet woods and sweat, feet wet, from wore out boots and it's 40 degrees. Taking blood thinners that's cold.

I tell myself..heck with it, I'm going to sit up here a couple hrs. and then go order some damn boots.

I'm going to get my money's worth out of them lost photo's so will do another post to finish the story..

[Randy Morin]

Nice Buck, Congrats.  Good story!!!

[Hoyt]

This is the only photo I managed to save..I'd downloaded it and put in in a folder when I noticed the tag on it so decided to name all the photos.."select all" and eventually ended up deleting all of them.
I decided to turn the can bleat over a couple of times and then blow a long bleat with it. It's about the last thing I remember doing when all of a sudden from my right ( out of the right of the photo) I catch movement. Immediately I see it's a nice buck walking fast with it's head down and knew right off he was an eater. He's at about 10yds when I first see him. All I really notice is it has decent horns that curve way around and he looks medium size. I don't have time to stand or do anything but pick a shooting lane, swing my bow around and draw. It's a good thing I have plenty of cover to my right, because I don't have time to be sneaky. I tell myself when he goes behind the big tree ( in the middle of the photo) I'll draw..he did and I did. I leaned forward as far as I could while sitting, opened my knees wide enough to draw and hoped like hell the bottom limb of that 64" Big Foot  had clearance when I released. The last instant before I released I made my last adjustment and lowered my aim to right behind his left elbow and as usual if I hadn't I would have shot high.
He exploded from the spot,  stumbling and almost falling all over himself while tearing through the thickest green-briar around. I knew finding first blood wasn't going to be a problem, because as he was going over a blow down at about 20yds out I saw red spewing from low behind his shoulder.
That is really why all the photos..having seen the blood from my stand, I felt fairly confident about everything while I was sitting up there and decided to make the wait go faster I'd take photos of some of the areas I could see from the stand,  first blood, how thick it was where he ran, jumped and crawled through..everything the whole process and I did.
However, after about 45 minutes of it and I had climbed down as quiet and I could..got my stand off the tree, packed it together and locked to another tree so I could pick it up when I came back in.  I found the first blood right where he was hit..about 12 steps from tree and at about 20yds where he busted into the thorns I found more. But it wasn't as much as I thought it would have been and it was chest high with some on the ground.
To finish this long story off..I've got to try to go back in there today..my back is about destroyed from carrying the meat out yesterday so it's iffy..but anyway..I really had a hard time finding that deer. There were 3 different times I completely lost the trail and had to just start looking. I had come to grips with the fact of no recovery. If I hadn't have had my old dollar store reading glasses I use to see my GPS I wouldn't have found him.  The ground was soaked from rain the night before, the sun was right in my eyes the way he ran and blood was just specs in some places and then steady streams in others..so it seemed to my old eyes anyway. But if anyone could have seen the 4" long football shape open hole behind the lower shoulder with bloody bubbles all around..there was blood somewhere..I just wasn't seeing it all. I shot him at 8:30am started trailing about 9:45am and finally found him at 12:00am..he went in a semi circle about 60yds from stand..that's how thick it was where he stayed and how hard it was for me to trail

[Easykeeper]

Good looking buck, too bad about the pictures.

[limbow]

Congrats!!

[Hoyt]

.

[glass76]

Good shot, congrats.

[BrownA5]

Very nice Buck... Congratulations!

[Hooper]

Nice buck! Congrats!

[Night Wing]

Looks like a typical high basket rack.

These types of racks are very common amongst the buck deer where I live.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Great story Don. It never ceases to amaze me how some of these deer or elk that you get a real good shot on, and think you would have an easy time tracking just isn't the case. And others you get a bad shot where the animal stops short, or moves and they walk 20 yards and flop over dead.

Congrats on getting your deer, and thanks for sharing the story.          

[John Scifres]

You might be able to recover the photos depending on what you have done after deleting them.

  http://www.zdnet.com/blog/digitalcameras/how-to-recover-accidentally-deleted-photos-from-a-memory-card-for-free/137  

 http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15120/get-back-that-photo-picture-or-file-you-deleted-accidentally/


Nice deer and story.

[maineac]

A beauty!!

[Hoyt]

John..you're a lifesaver..I tried the second link and fooled with it for over hr and couldn't get the recovered images to open..about 2000 of them. Then I tried the first link trying to get them off my card..it worked.

Thanks a bunch,
Don

 

[Hoyt]

I got to get out of here and into the woods, I've seen one little doe way to far to shoot besides this deer and have hunted every day since the first...here's a couple of the pictures till I get back..after two hrs of finding and losing the trail, etc. I finally got this look.