I enjoy reading detailed recounts of people’s hunts. I also enjoy writing my own and filing them away at home so that I can always take a look back at them and hopefully my grandchildren can as well.
Having said that, here is a warning for everyone….this is a SUPER LONG READ, a whole lot of it is probably not of any interest to anyone but me!!!!
Here goes….
I’ve been blessed in the fact that I was born and raised (and am now raising a family of my own) in an area of the country where I have always had the opportunity to hunt and fish right out the back door. I’ve had a passion in doing so since I was big enough to follow my father through the mountains and along the creek banks here in southwestern Virginia. Abundant game, a lengthy archery season and liberal bag limits have allowed me to be successful in the field. After some thought, during my 20+ years chasing whitetails I had never killed one any farther from home than about 12 miles, with the vast majority of those kills being within 2 miles.
During the early summer of 2012 I received an open invite to hunt a reclaimed coal property in Ohio. The owners of the property are friends of mine who spend a great deal of time there (working and hunting). As tempting as it was for me last fall I never made the trip, it is hard for me to pull up and leave my wife and children at home for multiple days.
The possibility to make the trip happen this fall was on my mind throughout the entire off season. I had been in contact with the land owners off and on during the summer and just a couple weeks ago I committed to buying my out of state license and making the trip.
I arrived on Thursday (11-14) at around 3pm and was given a tour of the property. My host(s) went above and beyond in making me feel welcome. I was presented the opportunity to hunt any of their stands that were already in place, ladder stands or popup blinds. They also made it clear that I was welcome to go and do my own thing if another area of the property caught my eye. I had brought along my climbing stand and opted to not infringe on areas that they had been hunting or areas they already had setup with intentions to hunt.
That night I spent some time looking at their property map and asking questions about their different stand locations and the adjoining properties (all of which reportedly see lots of hunting pressure). I also took a good look at the property on Google Earth and checked the weather forecast so that I had an idea of what the wind was going to be doing over the course of the next few days. By the time I had finished I had singled out two out of the way spots that I thought were worth checking out.
The next morning (Friday) I was dropped off by another hunter within a few hundred yards of one of the areas I wanted to look at. I walked in, climbed a tree with my climber and was setup just as shooting light arrived. I stayed on stand until about 11:30am in what proved to be an eventful first sit. I had one 2.5 year old 8pt and two other 1.5 year old bucks pass by well within shooting range. After coming out of my morning perch I took about a half hour to look the immediate area over for deer sign. I did find a few small rubs and a limited amount of feed and travel sign. I was happy to have seen 3 deer that morning but I felt confident that I may be able to find some better deer sign to sit on during the next two days (I planned to leave Sunday evening so that I could be back to work on Monday.).
I had lunch with the other hunters and then had one of them drop me off near the other area I had eyeballed the night before on Google Earth. Prior to getting all the way to the spot I was headed towards I began seeing promising sign. I hadn’t gone very far and happened onto an area where all the trails I had seen were bottlenecked down between an old highwall and a small rise in the elevation of a ridge top. The spot was really thick and every direction I looked I could see BIG fresh rubs glowing!
I was really excited and in an instant I had begun to look for a suitable tree to climb on the downwind side of all the trails. I ended up having to climb a really skinny tree, much smaller than what I prefer, but my options were seriously limited in the spot I thought I needed to be. The understory was so thick that I was confident I would be well hidden no matter the diameter of the tree I was in.
I was settled into my stand that afternoon by 3:00 and felt very optimistic about seeing some deer, everything felt right. Darkness came without me so much as hearing a deer. I packed up my stand and walked out to meet my ride. I was still confident in my chosen spot and the sign that was there, I could not wait to walk back in there the next morning to hunt.
I was up and locked in before daylight, intent on staying in the tree until dark if that is how the day played out. The sign said deer were spending time there and the slick worn trails were proof that movement through the area was routine; I just needed to be there when they showed up.
The morning was enjoyable in that I was entertained by squirrels working in the area, a flock of turkeys that passed through and waterfowl passing overhead, but I still had not seen or heard a deer.
At 12:45pm another hunter on the property texted my phone asking about my morning and questioning me as to if I wanted him to pick me up for lunch. I gave him the update…”no deer, but I am staying til dark, I will meet you where you dropped me off”.
At 1:05pm my father texted me, he doesn’t deer hunt anymore as he would rather grouse hunt but he does like to keep track of my deer hunting. He wanted an update as well, and questioned me about staying in the same stand all evening where I had seen no deer the evening before. I responded to him, “no deer, staying here til dark.”
At about 1:12pm, 7 minutes later, I heard a noise that caught my attention. Squirrels had been working all morning in the area and causing lots of racket, but this was different. I turned to the direction where the noise had come from and immediately caught a flash of brown through the thick understory. I couldn’t make it out and didn’t see any additional movement. Seconds later as I peered through the dense Autumn Olive I seen more movement, this time it was the movement of bleached white tines that had grabbed my attention! The deer was already within 40 yards and closing, coming right through the bottleneck!
I quickly grabbed my bow and looked intently in an effort to get a better look at his rack, a few glimpses of it through the cover was all it took for me to know that he was a deer that I wanted to shoot.
I can’t remember looking at his headgear another time, the switch was flipped and I was in kill mode. He came through close, only about 10 yards from the base of my tree, and I really only had one small window in the brush to shoot through with him coming by that close. If I didn’t close the deal there he may get by me into more cover and not present another shot opportunity. As he approached the window, I began drawing my bow and when he entered the spot I needed him to be I faintly bleated at him with my mouth to stop him. He stopped and the arrow was on its way. When he stopped he was slightly quartered towards me and the off side leg was forward leaving his near side leg/shoulder back over his vitals, I drove the arrow where I thought I needed it to go to punch the lungs.
He bolted with what appeared to be a whole lot of my arrow hanging out of the entrance side. This would have concerned me had I not seen blood gush from his side at impact. He was quickly out of sight in the thicket, but I could hear him, he didn’t make it far and in seconds began thrashing around in the brush. I could actually see the brush moving where he was, moments later all was still, I knew he was down, but questioned myself as to if he was down for good. I peered hard through the brush to the last area I thought I had seen movement and finally something caught my eye. It was a big red frothy bubble coming right up out of his side! I knew for sure that I had just filled my Ohio tag!
At 1:15pm, 10 minutes after I had received the initial message from my father, I sent a message back to him, “I just shot a big one”. Needless to say over the course of the next few minutes text messages were flying around all over the place between the two of us and a few other friends.
I decided that I would stay in my tree for a while even though I could see that the deer was down. Lots of thoughts were running through my head! I knew he was a mature deer and had decent horns, but I also knew he wasn’t a truly huge buck as are some that I see come out of Ohio.
It’s funny the small details you can notice even when things happen so fast in the deer woods. As I replayed the sequence of events that had just unfolded a couple things jumped out at me about the buck I had just shot. I had noticed that he had a limp in his right front leg and that his right eye appeared to be almost swollen shut.
After 20 minutes in the stand I climbed down and packed up all of my gear and made my way straight over to the deer. He had broken off the arrow in the thick cover just as I had expected. I snapped 3 pictures of him just as he laid and my phone died. I had no other camera. I left all of my gear with the deer and back tracked the blood trail 40 yards to where he was standing when I shot. He was about 10 yards from the base of my tree when the arrow hit him, and I was about 15 feet up. I found about 25” of my 29” shaft that had broken off 15 yards from where he had been standing. The blood trail was heavy for the entirety of the 40 yards, especially considering that there was not an exit wound.
I tagged him and began digging through my pack for my knife to field dress him. I knew the broadhead was still in him so I worked carefully in the event that it was floating around in the chest cavity somewhere. I never felt or seen it, so I finished up, cleaned up, packed my stuff back up and carried all of my gear back to where I was dropped off. I then returned for the deer and drug him out.
I only had to wait about 30 minutes for my ride and we headed out of there. We all enjoyed the evening and I slept well. I woke up early Sunday and drove back to Virginia. After getting a few photos of him in my yard with a good camera I went to work caping him out and butchering.
The location of the entrance wound in the hide on this deer is misleading because of the position of his near side leg at the time of the shot. I knew where I had hit him the moment I shot, and while butchering him I followed the channel the broadhead cut. It entered just in front of the joint of the shoulder in that near side leg and lodged in a rib on the other side of the chest cavity. It penetrated through heavy muscle on the near side leg but didn’t encounter any shoulder or leg bone. The three bladed head took both lungs. I’ve had several people say, “You shot him in the neck”, but that is not the case. I have a picture from the butchering process to prove it, but it is graphic. I really don’t know that everyone that views this site would appreciate me posting it so I am not going to, but if anyone would like to see it I would be more than happy to email it, just send me a private message.
All the locals that I met while there were very nice and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience for my first out of state hunt. I am definitely smart enough to appreciate the fact that it rarely happens like that. I feel blessed to have friends who invited me to hunt and I am also thankful for an understanding wife at home who puts up with me hunting every spare second I get. I would have had a wonderful time and always remembered this trip even if I had never seen a deer, I am however extremely thankful to have been presented the opportunity to take such a nice animal. I’ve killed a few bigger bucks and hope to kill more, but regardless I think that from a standpoint as being a memorable hunt this one is going to be hard for me to top.
I was hunting with what I have considered to be my go to bow for the past 10 years or so. I have other bows that are prettier to look at but this one puts the meat on the table. It is a Bear Grizzly 60#, and it shoots where I look. My arrows were Beman MFX 500 Classics that are 29” long with 50 grain brass inserts and they were tipped with plain old 125 grain 3 bladed Muzzys.
I apologize for being so windy and drawing out the story, but like I mentioned earlier the majority of this text was written for my personal file and future reference and I just chose to add it to the site in the event that someone here may also enjoy reading it. Thanks to those of you who chose to do so and actually made it through all of that.
Here is a pic of how he was laying when he went down and also a pic with me posing him up.
Topic: First Out of State Hunt/Harvest - LONG READ WARNING (Read 1389 times)
