I've had a GREAT year! I was lucky enough to take my second 10 pointer of the year last week, making my 2 biggest bucks both come in 2023. There is a property with a 4 day gun in early November that is about 25 minutes from my house so I decided to give it a try last year. Unfortunately the property had been hit pretty hard by EHD recently. I tagged out early with my bow last year so I was able to put a few good scouting trips in where I covered a lot of ground and didn't find much great sign. I hunted the property pretty hard last year and only saw 1 does. With such little going on I decided to do some scouting on the fly and I ended up finding 1 decent looking spot and 1 spot that had more sign than I'd seen anywhere else on the property. Fast forward to this year and I only managed to get one scouting trip in. I decided to do a walk through a new area and then speed scout the 2 best spots I found the previous year. I found a few small scrapes on the one new area and jumped a couple does, but it didn't look great. I got to the spot that had the sign last year and was happy to find rubs and scrapes popping up again. The other decent looking spot was pretty bare so I scouted that area further and did jump a couple more does. Knowing the property had pretty low densities right now I decided I would hunt it for 2 days and then get back out in the woods with my bow on November 3rd. All of my sits were going to be limited to midday sits because I had to drop the girls off at school and then be home for soccer practice. How life changes! Day 1 I had a 3" spike come by at 10am after I was the in the tree for about 40 minutes but that was it. Day 2 I was in the tree a little early and spotted a doe just milling about about 100 yards away at 10am. Eventually she disappeared and I continued to wait. Sometime after 11 I heard just a loud noise that made me think deer coming from the swamp. I cocked the muzzeloader but I was blocked out of that direction by a big pine tree though so I kept watching. A few minutes later a squirrel pops out. I've been fooled many times but I was pretty sure he didn't make that noise so I kept looking. Not a minutes later I see a hoof through the pine tree and then a rack pops out. He is only 15 yards and if he goes the way the spike did he'll go broadside and I'm already set up for the shot. Of course he starts walking right at me and then something spooks him and he bolts under my tree going out and away to my right. As this happened in one fluid motion I brought the muzzleloader up and over my bridge and put it on him as he stopped at around 30 yards away. Rather than just pull the trigger the little voice in my head said "make sure you pick a spot" so I vividly remember taking that extra 1/2 second to settle the crosshairs where I wanted them with him quartering away pretty good. I squeezed it off and he took off looking hit and I heard antlers breaking branches and then silence. It seemed good to me because there is all water and swamp that way and I knew he didn't hit the water. After calling my dad I took my time getting down and walked over to where he was only to find no blood or hair. Now this is the first deer I have shot with a gun since 2011 so I'm so used to finding my arrow and evaluating it!! I really felt I hit him good so I started creeping along the way I thought he went and found some good looking blood after about 10 yards, but not a ton of it. I tracked it for another 10 and then lost it. I saw something ahead of me at the edge of the water that could have been a deer body so I went to look at it. It was just a big long rock but when I turned my head to the left there he was and I could see the dead branches he went through. I was shocked to see that he was a 10 pointer and he was actually even bigger than I realized in my less than 30 second interaction! I facetimed with dad to share the moment and after me initially being hesitant to mount him I realized that he was my second biggest and he would be getting a place on the wall. Now I have 2 at the taxidermist... first world problems I know. I ended up shooting him at 11:25 to add to my list of deer shot at midday during the rut. Between Nov 1 and thanksgiving I have never shot a buck outside the hours of 9:30-2:30. My track record is so good during those hours that I feel confident going in after I drop the girls off and then leaving early to get home with them. I certainly wouldn't have said that 10 years ago.
Awesome job!!!