I am a little slow in posting this one. I shot this little button buck on the Virginia opener October 6th. It is a cool story start to finish I hope you enjoy.
A few years back I posted on the Bowyers Bench forum here on Tradgang looking for someone to help me harvest some osage/teach me to build a bow. I got a response pretty quickly from another builder and it wasn't long before I headed up to his property to get to work. His name was Mike Schwister and it didn't take long for us to hit it off. My first bow was a little rough but the second one turned out to be a nice BBO that draws 73# at my 28in draw. I nearly froze to death making it in his garage that winter so the bow earned the name "Frostbite" I finished it off with a rest made of an elk ivory from an elk my father killed (a bow hunter himself, however he passed away when I was ten). The bow shot well and kept me exercising through my time at UVA and it was always pretty easy to run to Mike's to stump shoot.
I had hunted a bit over the last three years but never had a good shot opportunity so I watched many deer walk. For the Virginia opener this year I went back to Mike's to hunt.
I saw some does out of range in the morning so I just sat back and enjoyed watching them pass. The middle of the day was spent stump shooting and I headed back to the stand at about three. At about 4:30 two does walked in but offered no clean shots. However, they were definitely close enough to get my heart racing and my legs shaking. At about 6:35 two more deer walked in and decided to hang around. The closest one to me was about 20 yards over might right shoulder. That made it somewhat difficult for me being a right hand shooter but I was able to turn around in the stand and angle myself enough to draw my bow. After what seemed like a year he stepped into a clear lane and gave me a quartering away shot. I drew and released and watched my arrow bury into the deer and it seemed to be a little farther back than I wanted but not bad. The deer took off into the woods running downhill towards the small stream on his property.
We waited for what seemed like an eternity to start tracking. There was good blood as we tracked down the hill. However, suddenly we heard a deer get up and crash through the briars. We backed out to give the deer time to bed back down and avoid him going to another property.
The next morning we worked our way back to where the deer had bedded down in some ferns and started searching. After looking for quite awhile we were turning up nothing and walked back to where the deer had bedded down to start over. As we got into the ferns Mike nearly tripped over the deer. It turns out that another deer had been bedded down near it and had jumped when we came to get mine. I have never been so excited/relieved after riding the roller coaster all night wondering and questioning the shot. The blood hadn't lied and the shot was good and my first traditional deer was down! It was an incredible experience to build the bow and the arrows on that property with Mike and then kill and recover the deer with him as well.
Good luck to everyone in the rest of the season. Thanks for listening. Shoot straight and be safe.
Jake
Topic: First Trad Deer (Read 766 times)
