Thanks, everyone. Even though I shot the buck today, I will start the story a little further back to explain why I was able to hunt this evening.
I have been working kind of funny hours lately, but mostly working from noon until 8-10 pm, so I have been able to get some morning hunts in. I took the day off on Tuesday to hunt with a buddy who lives an hour and a half away who has been asking be to come down and hunt with him for some time. Last week he said he had 7 deer that would score 130 or better, and one that was around 160. Not wanting to seem desperate, I made him wait a week before I came down, lol. Well, that and our work schedules were clashing. Pretty cold temperatures for down here for the last week or so, and it was 15 degrees on my drive down to his lease. I had plenty of clothes, though, and figure I would be fine. At dawn, I had a real big deer, maybe a 145, come out and give me broadside shot at 15 yards. I shifted my weight for the shot, and a loud "CRACK" sounded from the seat of my buddies homemade stand. Off the buck went. I saw 4 doe and a button buck that morning, and after we figured they were bedded down, we tightened the seat on the stand, had some lunch, and came back for the evening hunt. That big deer came back, but he stayed behind cover and the wind shifted, and it was ballgame over. A buck was shot a little far back near dark, with sparse blood trail, so we pulled out for the night. I drove home, but came back the next morning to look for the deer with my buddy. We found it, butchered it in the field and packed it out. By the time I got back home, I was a couple hours late for work.
I knew that if I stayed at work until midnight, I would wake my wife up when I came home, so I talked to my partner, and we came up with a solution. I would work from 2 pm until 10 am, and have the rest of the day off. Sweet. I get to hunt the afternoon/evening. Especially good, since there is some rain predicted for Friday and Saturday, my days off.
I actually had my mind more set on shooting a hog. I was hunting an area of my property that I call the plum thicket. It has a mixture of sand plums and persimmons, and a narrow strip that I planted as a food plot last year, although some stray cattle worked it over pretty good. I had hunted there a few days back during a snow shower and had seen 7 doe and one small buck. A good day, and I figured if the ladies hung out, a decent buck was bound to show up sooner or later. The problem was, hogs were tearing up the narrow field over the last couple days pretty reliably. I was hoping that either the hogs would show up during daylight or that a nice buck would show.
I got in my ground blind around 1 0'clock and had beautiful weather, with highs in the lower 50's. I was actually a little too warm after the recent colds spell, but it was nice to hunt with less clothes on for a change. Around 3 o'clock I had a button buck and small doe feeding in the field, and eventually they meandered off. I was facing mostly south out of a ground blind, as the field was rectangular and ran mostly east/west. I couldn't see much from the west window because the sun was in my eyes, and I kept that window mostly closed. At 4 o'clock a buck came in and was on top of me before I knew it. He was looking straight at my blind, and when I made up my mind that I would shoot him, he turned directly away from me and walked away. I grunted, but he didn't care at all. I saw him working some scraped off in the distance, and eventually it looked like he caught the scent of a hot doe, and he took off into the woods to my southeast. Around 4:30, the action really picked up, and I had 7 deer (a mix of does and button bucks) feeding in front of me. They stayed in the field until around 5 o'clock, when a buck showed up and was running them all over the place. It was either a 5 point or 6, but with a real tall narrow rack. Kinda bad genetics, and I was going to try to take him. I like unusual racks anyway, even though he probably was only 2 1/2 years old. I grunted at him, but he moved away, and before long the buck that I had seen earlier came on in. He came straight for my blind and stopped at 5 or 6 yards away, and quartering to me. I am not advocating the shot that I took, but I was very confident that I could put the arrow right where I wanted to at that range, and I took the shot. The buck jumped straight up, around a 2 foot in the air, mule kicked out, and sped out of there like he had been hit with a hot poker. I was pretty confident that I made a killing shot, and texted my good friend Dave Sisamis the story. My wife was originally going to pick me up around 6 pm with the truck to keep me from leaving a scent trail in the area, but I texted here to come a little later and bring the dog. We have a Belgian Malinois that my wife is training in Schutzhund, but I am hoping to use him as a tracking dog when his show career is over. He is pretty good size for his breed, weighing around 75 pounds. He has been progressing well in his tracking program, but it is scored tracking with carefully laid foot trails. Far different that a running deer with lots of other deer in the area. I had seen the first 50-60 yards of the deers path, and there was very good blood at the impact site, so my wife and I thought this would be a good track to get him started. He is used to tracking much more slowly, but with that deer running like crazy, it made it a little more difficult for him to track with his nose deep in the ground, so we allowed him to wind scent and track more quickly than he normally does. The wind was at our back, but he had no trouble following the exact path of the deer. Around 80 yards into the trail, the deer took a sharp left and only made it another 15-20 yards. A very happy dog at the end of the trail, and a pretty good bodied deer for this part of the country. I could have given him a couple more years, but I don't think his tine length was getting much better. Strange. I grew up I Pennsylvania at a time when the average age a deer lived to before being shot was 1 1/2. Back in those days, I shot basically any deer that gave me the opportunity. Now that I have my own land, I have tried to hold off on shooting the younger deer to give them a chance to develop a little more, since there is a good possibility that I will see them again. Anyway, just glad to have had the opportunity to take him. He was the second biggest one that I have seen on my place this year, but I know that bigger ones usually show up at some point.
Topic: Tip strikes again (Read 975 times)
