casts_by_fly
Well-Known Member
Hi All,
New guy here, but I know how much I like reading others' stories so I figured there's probably more like me. I'm a bit long in the fingers so hopefully you're bored at work and need something to fill it. With the season winding down for me (yeah we have 2 months left, unlimited doe tags, and another buck tag to go) I thought now was a good time to recap and review what went right and what could be better.
For starters, some background. I've been deer hunting 30 years now and bow hunting for over 25, but I spent 12 years in the UK not bow hunting so really got out of it for a long while. We move back from the UK to NJ in Sept 2019 so I didn't hunt that fall. I did however have the bowhunting fire ignited. We live at the end of a cul-de-sac, bordered by a nature preserve, a golf course, and a WMA. We also have ~3 acres that sits in the middle of that. I wish I could say that I picked this house for this reason, but it turns out that our yard is a natural funnel. The next 3 houses on each side of the street all have fully fenced yards. So for deer to cross the street from the golf course woods to the preserve they have to go around, which means coming through our yard. There is a minor electrical line perpendicular to the street through the back that serves as a deer highway at times. We knew we saw a few deer every time we saw the house of when we first moved in, but it took fall and the rut to show me what it meant. The 3 1/2+ YO bucks really don't live here. I've scoured just about everything inside a mile or two from the house for buck bedding zones and summer territories. I have some suspicions (there is a heck of a swamp in the WMA) but haven't confirmed it yet with cameras (that's this summer). So around the house we get a lot of neighborhood does and their fawns, plus the previous fawns when they are young bucks. I don't shoot the neighborhood deer because we like seeing them. Also, does attract bucks when the rut kicks up, so I want the does to feel safe and want to bed right in the back yard. Suburban hunting at its finest.
After seeing these two and 3 more decent bucks on the same day one morning on the way to work, I decided that the next fall I was bow hunting again. My dad gave me his old bow and I got back to shooting. I was good enough that at 30 yards I was happy to take the shot, though I had occasional flyers so I tried to limit myself that fall to 25 or less. The deer all pass through the same patch of woods next to our yard to hit the powerline, so I set a permanent stand 20 yards off that. The fall of 2020 was awesome and awful at the same time. I shot a big tall 8 one sunday evening, but he was just a couple yards further than I thought and I passed through right above the brisket and didn't hit vitals. I tracked him a long way the next morning but never found him. I saw him 2 weeks later in the next neighborhood over chasing does. I had some close calls in that stand but not close enough until the middle of November on a cold Thursday evening. My calls wrapped early so I wanted to get ~2 hours in the stand at last light when the does were coming in. I geared on and climbed up, only for the landscapers to come for the year end cleanup. Fortunately, they left with about an hour of shooting light left and not 10 minutes after they finished the deer started coming through. In the distance I could see two stragglers coming my way and in a short 90 seconds they were 60 yards and closing. In the fading light, all I could see on the second deer was white rack. At 30 yards he stopped and the doe kept walking past me. I drew as he started to walk again, hoping he'd come into one of my two shooting lanes. A few seconds later he turned right into the lane I hoped and I shot. Whether it was a flyer or whether he was walking really fast, the lumenock looked back. He made a couple bounces to the edge of my yard and stood there. It was too dark at this point to shoot again so I had to let things happen and watch. He decided to turn back the way he came and walked up the powerline 40 yards and laid down. I thought I saw his head fall over, but couldn't be sure so I slipped out of my stand and waited 2 hours. I didn't need to. I hit the base of the liver and cut all of the main arteries. He didn't know what happened and bled out very quickly. Happy as I was to kill my biggest archery buck ever, that still left me with a nagging feeling though whether I tweaked the shot and got lucky or what happened. Fall 2021 would confirm my fears.
I shot a lot the summer of 2021. I have an unfinished basement with a 22 yard span that I can shoot in. When the weather was good I'd go out back and shoot from an old ladder stand that was left on the property. I could stretch to 35 yards easily from that stand and I was getting much better. I put on a better sight with smaller pins that better fits how I shoot (the old 0.029" pins were HUGE). I got some new arrows (went down the FOC rabbit hole) and broadheads. I was ready for the season to get started.
Fast forward to Oct 29th. As I said at the intro, bucks don't start showing up around us until the last week of October or so. You can just about set a calendar by it. So I don't start sitting in earnest in that stand until that week now. There was a weather front coming through on the night of the 29th, so I figured deer would be moving and feeding up. I was right. About 4:30 after some light tending grunts I again see bright white rack coming down the powerline. This time it was a wide, thick 8 (as best I can tell from my picture memory). He was more cautious than the other buck and coming from the opposite direction, but he was coming right down my path to give me a sub 10-yard shot. I got drawn and as he stepped into my lane I shot for a steep quartering away shot that I expected would pop out right below his heart. The arrow had other ideas. In my haste and used to shooting 20 yards in the basement, I put my 20 yard pin on him and hit high and forward. The arrow got about 10" of penetration and stopped. The arrow was practically vertical as the deer ran off, but I thought I would find him. Surely that hit vitals. There was decent blood for the first 40-50 yards, then less and less. At 200 yards it was pinheads and around 400 yards in the blood entirely stopped right around the edge of the property I could search. Remember that stormfront? That's about when it opened up and ended up being the remnants of a hurricane, so a couple hours later all sign was gone. After conferring later with a dog tracker, he thinks it was steep enough that the scapula directed it almost straight down and away from the vitals. I've replayed that shot in my mind and on a target many times over since and I think he's right.
A couple weeks later we had a similar spell of warm weather and a storm coming through, this time I was going to hunt the back side of it. I went to a public land spot where I knew some does were moving through. At this point in the season I was open to shooting any legal deer. I snuck in while it was still blowing a gale and got set up on the edge of a thicket. About a half hour later a spike snuck in through the thicket at 20 yards. I had no shot given the thickness and he was jumpy in the wind. He started coming to me and then would turn away. He finally settled and had a defined path. I ranged a birch log right at 35 yards and was ready. He came out right there but was dead away so I waited. What I didn't notice was that he made a few steps away before he turned. When I shot, I watched my lumenock disappear in his armpit, but only just. When I got to the shot site, there was a LOT of white hair. There was good volume of blood, but it was all fresh muscle blood and it quickly disappeared about 40 yards in. I followed the pinheads as far as my permission would allow me, and even a little further until it completely stopped. The next visit to the site revealed what happened. He was actually at 40 yards when I shot, so my 35 yard pin was well low. I had a couple of other miscues last season between my first saddle sit and setting up in too open of a tree (got silhouetted) and another morning where I was halfway climbed down and disassembled when a huge 6 came through at 25 yards. I had dropped my bow rope and couldn't get to the ground in time to get it. To say last season was a downer would be an understatement. I considered whether I really wanted to keep archery hunting after that. Two deer, back to back, not recovered, and 3 of 4 over two seasons was a pretty poor track record. I didn't hunt much in December and not really anything in January. By February though, I had made up my mind that I needed to right the ship. I spent some time on some new public land looking at trails, trees, etc and picked a few places. I made a plan to get the bow tuned to me which turned into my finding a great used bow that I got tuned to me. I shot a lot in the summer and stretched things out to 50 yards on a target. The flyers were gone and my 30 yard groups went from just acceptable to cutting vanes when I shot the same spots. At 50 on paper I was holding 5" groups (not that I am going to shoot a deer at that range). I felt good coming into the season.
New guy here, but I know how much I like reading others' stories so I figured there's probably more like me. I'm a bit long in the fingers so hopefully you're bored at work and need something to fill it. With the season winding down for me (yeah we have 2 months left, unlimited doe tags, and another buck tag to go) I thought now was a good time to recap and review what went right and what could be better.
For starters, some background. I've been deer hunting 30 years now and bow hunting for over 25, but I spent 12 years in the UK not bow hunting so really got out of it for a long while. We move back from the UK to NJ in Sept 2019 so I didn't hunt that fall. I did however have the bowhunting fire ignited. We live at the end of a cul-de-sac, bordered by a nature preserve, a golf course, and a WMA. We also have ~3 acres that sits in the middle of that. I wish I could say that I picked this house for this reason, but it turns out that our yard is a natural funnel. The next 3 houses on each side of the street all have fully fenced yards. So for deer to cross the street from the golf course woods to the preserve they have to go around, which means coming through our yard. There is a minor electrical line perpendicular to the street through the back that serves as a deer highway at times. We knew we saw a few deer every time we saw the house of when we first moved in, but it took fall and the rut to show me what it meant. The 3 1/2+ YO bucks really don't live here. I've scoured just about everything inside a mile or two from the house for buck bedding zones and summer territories. I have some suspicions (there is a heck of a swamp in the WMA) but haven't confirmed it yet with cameras (that's this summer). So around the house we get a lot of neighborhood does and their fawns, plus the previous fawns when they are young bucks. I don't shoot the neighborhood deer because we like seeing them. Also, does attract bucks when the rut kicks up, so I want the does to feel safe and want to bed right in the back yard. Suburban hunting at its finest.
After seeing these two and 3 more decent bucks on the same day one morning on the way to work, I decided that the next fall I was bow hunting again. My dad gave me his old bow and I got back to shooting. I was good enough that at 30 yards I was happy to take the shot, though I had occasional flyers so I tried to limit myself that fall to 25 or less. The deer all pass through the same patch of woods next to our yard to hit the powerline, so I set a permanent stand 20 yards off that. The fall of 2020 was awesome and awful at the same time. I shot a big tall 8 one sunday evening, but he was just a couple yards further than I thought and I passed through right above the brisket and didn't hit vitals. I tracked him a long way the next morning but never found him. I saw him 2 weeks later in the next neighborhood over chasing does. I had some close calls in that stand but not close enough until the middle of November on a cold Thursday evening. My calls wrapped early so I wanted to get ~2 hours in the stand at last light when the does were coming in. I geared on and climbed up, only for the landscapers to come for the year end cleanup. Fortunately, they left with about an hour of shooting light left and not 10 minutes after they finished the deer started coming through. In the distance I could see two stragglers coming my way and in a short 90 seconds they were 60 yards and closing. In the fading light, all I could see on the second deer was white rack. At 30 yards he stopped and the doe kept walking past me. I drew as he started to walk again, hoping he'd come into one of my two shooting lanes. A few seconds later he turned right into the lane I hoped and I shot. Whether it was a flyer or whether he was walking really fast, the lumenock looked back. He made a couple bounces to the edge of my yard and stood there. It was too dark at this point to shoot again so I had to let things happen and watch. He decided to turn back the way he came and walked up the powerline 40 yards and laid down. I thought I saw his head fall over, but couldn't be sure so I slipped out of my stand and waited 2 hours. I didn't need to. I hit the base of the liver and cut all of the main arteries. He didn't know what happened and bled out very quickly. Happy as I was to kill my biggest archery buck ever, that still left me with a nagging feeling though whether I tweaked the shot and got lucky or what happened. Fall 2021 would confirm my fears.
I shot a lot the summer of 2021. I have an unfinished basement with a 22 yard span that I can shoot in. When the weather was good I'd go out back and shoot from an old ladder stand that was left on the property. I could stretch to 35 yards easily from that stand and I was getting much better. I put on a better sight with smaller pins that better fits how I shoot (the old 0.029" pins were HUGE). I got some new arrows (went down the FOC rabbit hole) and broadheads. I was ready for the season to get started.
Fast forward to Oct 29th. As I said at the intro, bucks don't start showing up around us until the last week of October or so. You can just about set a calendar by it. So I don't start sitting in earnest in that stand until that week now. There was a weather front coming through on the night of the 29th, so I figured deer would be moving and feeding up. I was right. About 4:30 after some light tending grunts I again see bright white rack coming down the powerline. This time it was a wide, thick 8 (as best I can tell from my picture memory). He was more cautious than the other buck and coming from the opposite direction, but he was coming right down my path to give me a sub 10-yard shot. I got drawn and as he stepped into my lane I shot for a steep quartering away shot that I expected would pop out right below his heart. The arrow had other ideas. In my haste and used to shooting 20 yards in the basement, I put my 20 yard pin on him and hit high and forward. The arrow got about 10" of penetration and stopped. The arrow was practically vertical as the deer ran off, but I thought I would find him. Surely that hit vitals. There was decent blood for the first 40-50 yards, then less and less. At 200 yards it was pinheads and around 400 yards in the blood entirely stopped right around the edge of the property I could search. Remember that stormfront? That's about when it opened up and ended up being the remnants of a hurricane, so a couple hours later all sign was gone. After conferring later with a dog tracker, he thinks it was steep enough that the scapula directed it almost straight down and away from the vitals. I've replayed that shot in my mind and on a target many times over since and I think he's right.
A couple weeks later we had a similar spell of warm weather and a storm coming through, this time I was going to hunt the back side of it. I went to a public land spot where I knew some does were moving through. At this point in the season I was open to shooting any legal deer. I snuck in while it was still blowing a gale and got set up on the edge of a thicket. About a half hour later a spike snuck in through the thicket at 20 yards. I had no shot given the thickness and he was jumpy in the wind. He started coming to me and then would turn away. He finally settled and had a defined path. I ranged a birch log right at 35 yards and was ready. He came out right there but was dead away so I waited. What I didn't notice was that he made a few steps away before he turned. When I shot, I watched my lumenock disappear in his armpit, but only just. When I got to the shot site, there was a LOT of white hair. There was good volume of blood, but it was all fresh muscle blood and it quickly disappeared about 40 yards in. I followed the pinheads as far as my permission would allow me, and even a little further until it completely stopped. The next visit to the site revealed what happened. He was actually at 40 yards when I shot, so my 35 yard pin was well low. I had a couple of other miscues last season between my first saddle sit and setting up in too open of a tree (got silhouetted) and another morning where I was halfway climbed down and disassembled when a huge 6 came through at 25 yards. I had dropped my bow rope and couldn't get to the ground in time to get it. To say last season was a downer would be an understatement. I considered whether I really wanted to keep archery hunting after that. Two deer, back to back, not recovered, and 3 of 4 over two seasons was a pretty poor track record. I didn't hunt much in December and not really anything in January. By February though, I had made up my mind that I needed to right the ship. I spent some time on some new public land looking at trails, trees, etc and picked a few places. I made a plan to get the bow tuned to me which turned into my finding a great used bow that I got tuned to me. I shot a lot in the summer and stretched things out to 50 yards on a target. The flyers were gone and my 30 yard groups went from just acceptable to cutting vanes when I shot the same spots. At 50 on paper I was holding 5" groups (not that I am going to shoot a deer at that range). I felt good coming into the season.
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