Above are the pics from the buck I took on November 23rd, 2004 with bow and arrow. As you can tell by the text below, there is quite a story to tell behind this deer. I recommend reading it because it's pretty exciting
Monday morning, after rifle season, I had the day off so I decided to go out to what I thought was my best spot to sit. As I neared my tree stand I noticed that it was no longer there, someone had obviously stole it. So as I stormed back to the truck I decided to go hit another spot where I had taken a doe in early October.
Once I got to my 2nd spot, it wasn't 10 minutes into the hunt when I saw this big buck coming right to my tree. He kept walking as he got to my tree so I decided to draw my bow before he was out of range. Being that it was dead calm out, the buck caught my motion and looked right at me. I had no choice but to fire an arrow at that moment before he darted. The buck saw the arrow coming, and flinched right before the arrow struck him. I had hit him high, so I waited it out for about an hour before I started trailing him. Once I got on the blood trail, I figured for sure I was going to find him because there was blood everywhere. I trailed him 1/4 of a mile and then the blood stopped. I searched for hours in every direction where the blood had stopped. At about 4:00 my parents came out to help me find him. We covered a bigger area this way, and because of that I found a blood spot about another 1/4 of a mile North of where I last had. But, there was only one spot in the middle of a corn field and we still were not sure where he went. It got dark but we kept looking until about 8:00. I was very frustrated at this point so I headed home.
The next day I went out after work to at least find him to know that I had not left him out there wounded. So dad and I covered a lot of area, and at about 4:15 dad spotted him in a nearby treeline and he was still very much alive. So we thought about the best way to go about getting him for a bit and then proceeded. Dad dropped me off downwind of him and then headed upwind with the four-wheeler to distract the deer. I snuck through a ravine that was about 5 foot deep trying not to make any sound. After about five minutes of that I noticed horns right to the left of me and they were facing North. At about that moment they turned in my direction. I wasn't sure what to do because he was about 5 feet from my head in a thick plumb thicket. I quickly drew my bow and popped up over the ravine. He jumped up and bolted, I released an arrow as soon as I saw him. The only shot I had was the back leg, but I took it knowing that there was a good chance that I would hit the main artery in his hind quarters. The arrow struck him right in front of the back leg and went through. He took off back south, so dad and I started tracking him again. It was a very easy blood trail to follow, so we were confident he hadn't gone far from the blood he had lost. We tracked for about a half a mile and then dad pointed up ahead, and there he was. I snuck up on him as he was sitting there and launched another arrow and hit him right in the heart. He still did not go down, so I took another shot and hit him again in the same spot and that dropped him.
After we thought about it, the second shot was what brought him down, but with only about ten minutes of light left, I was not going to risk loosing this animal to the dark again so I just wanted to make sure he was down FOR GOOD. He was a perfect 5 x 5 with about a 20 inch inside spread and some nice height in his tines. I am confident that he will make the Pope & Young Club.
