Today was the first chance I've had to get into the woods on my land near Bellevue, Iowa. I didn't have to be there long before I scored on a nice, old doe though. I got into my stand at about 6:20 this morning. Legal shooting hours started at 6:41, which is about the time I stood up to have a look around. I saw two does to the south of me on my neighbor's land about 50 yards away. One ran east, so I had to watch the trail to the east of me and the food plot in front. I checked the east trail, and when I looked back, both were gone...crap. I froze since I didn't know where they were. I checked east, then when I looked back south, they had crossed my line fence and were about 35 yards away. My pulse picked up considerably.
They started to walk up the hill to the west toward another food plot we have. Dang, it didn't look as though I was going to get a shot. Then the lead, and larger doe, turned around and started back down the hill right at me. I was afraid she was going to keep coming and again not give me a decent shot, but when she got about 15 yards out, she turned broadside and stopped. I was already at half draw. When she turned her head to look back at the other doe, I hit anchor and the arrow was on its way. I saw it hit about right where I was looking, but it sounded kind of odd. She jumped and kicked and I heard my arrow snap. She ran about 20 yards to the north and stopped in some waist high brome grass. She seemed to stagger but didn't go down. The other doe ran over to where she stood, then my doe walked back east and stopped in the food plot about 40 yards north of me. She stood there for a minute then limped into the timber to the east. I wasn't quite sure if the shot was as good as I thought it was when the arrow hit home, so I waited 20 minutes before I went to have a look at my arrow, or what was left of it.
I climbed down and walked over to my arrow. It had snapped off about 12" back from the broadhead. This was my first time shooting Simmons Tigersharks, and at that moment, I was not sure I'd made the right choice. I went back up into my stand and gave her another 30 minutes. Meanwhile I tried to text my son, Ed, who was hunting a stand about 150 yards north of me. No luck...phones don't work so well in the hills of Eastern Iowa.
Finally, I got down and walked over to where she had stopped in the rye. Good news! She was leaking pretty profusely, so I stuck what was left of my arrow in the ground where the blood was and walked over to get Ed to help me track and drag her out. We picked up the blood trail easily. It turned out to be one of those Stevie Wonder trails...you know, the kind a blind guy could follow. It was also pretty short. She made it maybe 30 yards into the timber.
We've got more than enough multiflora rose on our place, so even though we were dragging her downhill, it was pretty interesting. She is the biggest bodied deer I have taken I think, bigger than most of the bucks in my old hunting grounds.
Even though I didn't get a passthrough, the Tigershark made a huge entrance hole, plenty large enough to leave a great, short blood trail.
Once I pulled the hide down, it was easy to see why she was limping!
The bicep muscle was pretty much sliced off the bone. The arrow then entered her chest and sliced off the back lobe of both lungs, which explains the dandy blood trail.
This was the first deer taken on the place my wife and I bought in April. We've done a lot of work here, but this is what makes it worth it.
My Orion has now accounted for a turkey, a coyote, and a doe. Next up will be a buck...I hope. Stay tuned!
Topic: First deer taken on my own land (Read 1873 times)
