After taking over a month of deer hunting off since my last adventure (fighting bears, weather and getting hit on the highway....) I was happy to be back in a tree with a buck tag on Saturday. November 1st- so I left straight from my daughter's morning soccer game for the woods. I get to my tree and I'm just about to step on my ROS and look down my funnel and see a spike coming my way. He walked right under me and I thought "man it's on today". Surprisingly I didn't see anything else (except a couple bears and a hawk) for 5 hours!! Right around 5:30 I look up the hill and see a deer moving fast along the ridge. I watch it drop down coming my way and I see it's a buck and notice his light colored antlers. I finally have a buck tag and am looking at him deciding if I would shoot him on the first day of the rut. He cruises across about 30 yards in front of me behind some brush and starts heading away from me. I decided to grunt to see if I can get him moving back my way. I hit it and nothing, hit it louder and he stops and looks my way. He starts to continue on his way though so now it's a last ditch effort of the can. Now I've only ever called in a few small bucks with the can so I use it sparingly or as a last attempt but man this time I hit that thing twice and he turned around and came on a rope. He came right on a trail coming by at about 20 yards and when he stopped and turned my head towards me I in particular noticed his right antler and the length of the points and at that moment decided he was definitely a shooter. He took another couple steps and I noticed a wound across the middle top of his back and it quickly registered that someone had slinged an arrow across his back! He walked behind a tree, I drew and then he stopped just short of another tree looking around. He was ever so slightly quartering too but it was a perfect spot, I was drawn and it felt good so I put it right in the V and let it fly. It's amazing after having had such bad buck fever at times earlier in my life to tell you how much in the freaking zone I was on this deer and just on auto pilot. I watched the lighted nock disappear and immediately knew it was a dead deer. He bounded off about 50 yards and stopped and I was waiting for him to drop. I could see the huge rage entrance but instead of dropping he took about 5 more steps and bedded down. At that point I figured I must have hit a little low and got 1 lung. Memories of a buck I shot in 2020 that lived for 18 hours when I hit him low in the liver popped into my head but I knew this deer was hurting. I watched him try to get up twice and he couldn't even get up. I decided that if he was still alive at dark (I shot him 1 hour before dark) I would just back out and come back in the morning. It was quiet and with lots of leaves I didn't want to try sneaking up on him to put another one in him and end up having him get the energy to bust out of there. I ended up being able to hear him wheezing from the tree and fortunately a half hour after the shot I watched him put his head down for the last time. I decided it he didn't move for the next 10 minutes then I would sneak over there with an arrow nocked. I ended up doing just that and he was dead where he lay. I trekked back to the truck for my sled and after I got back to him began the 2 hour adventure of dragging him out through the brush, up and down the hills, over countless deadfalls and over the ridge. This is probably the deer that will commit me to the gutless method and packing out for back there in the future. Although all of the running I've done this year sure showed thank goodness. I shot him at 5:30 and didn't get out of the woods to go home until 10:00. This hunt was an absolute blast thought!!!
