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First saddle deer (Iowa buck)

HalfsackZac

New Member
Joined
Nov 13, 2021
Messages
27
Location
Iowa
Harvested my first deer out of a saddle on Monday 11/22/21 3:30 PM. Had movement all around most of the day at 3:00pm a big boy came in 120 yards to my west and I decided to try rattling him in. Did two short rattle sequences that didn’t seem to cause him much worry. The big buck continued to move west away from me and as I watched his antlers walk off into the trees I heard a branch snap behind me. Swung around to the other side of the tree and saw the buck in the picture I will attach cross a deep ditch and come directly into shooting range. At 25 yards he gave me a chance to draw as he looked away I capitalized on this drew, picked my shot, and let one fly! He ran 70 yards and I heard him go down. Good double lung shot and just like that I filled my first tag out of a saddle. I can’t explain how happy and thankful for this deer and the experience he gave me and the meat in the deep freeze. Thanks for reading! Here is a pick of this beautiful Iowa animal.
 

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Beauty! Nice work and congrats. I recently tagged my first saddle deer (maybe I should write it up!).
 
What ended up working? Details on set up??? Was it the new property you mentioned in another post???
 
Yes new property. I ended up taking a whole Saturday and walking every inch of the 200+ acre property and marking every decent tree on onX. I ended up finding a perfect tree that was 20-25 yards off of a pretty good pinch point crossing through a nasty ravine and that is where I set up for this hunt. I was worried about the impact of walking the entire property before hunting and messing up the deer traffic but it ended up working out in my favor.
 
Congrats! Great buck. Got my first saddle deer this year too so I can relate!!
 
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