Saturday morning was quite cold for Florida with a hard freeze at 23 degrees. On Thursday, this area got almost 2 inches of rain as the cold front passed, making a pretty clean slate to find fresh tracks and scrapes. No hunting is allowed on this WMA on Mon/Wed/Fri during shotgun season, so I wanted to be very mobile Saturday moving frequently until I found really fresh sign. The first spot I went to I immediately bumped a large group of does just before sunrise. I stayed in my Phantom at ground level on a edge of a cut corn field, where I had seen a really nice buck at the end of archery, for about an hour and then made a quick jump to a second area.
The second spot was recently selectively logged (pretty open but the grass is at least 3-5' tall) and had a ridge extending from a peanut field east a couple hundred yards until rapidly dropping to a lake. The elevation change from the ridge to the lake is about 60' over 120yds, which is crazy huge for Florida where it's generally measured in feet per mile! I found another tree that gave me good cover at ground/standing level and tied in. Winds were coming upslope from the lake and I was near the top of the ridge where it was flat behind me. I grunted a couple times and within 10 minutes had 2 does come up out of bedding near the lake towards me. I waited about an hour after the does passed and moved another hundred yards or so to the east with another ground/standing set up.
About 5 minutes after a light grunt or 2, the 6pt came up out of another bedding area towards me from about 100yds away. He walked straight at me until he was about 60yds then took a hard left and started angling upslope. At about 50yds, I had a good quartering away shot and just a I squeezed the trigger on my 20 gauge, he lurched forward like something down by his feet surprised him. The slug hit back and broke his back leg, but he ducked into enough cover that I couldn't get off a second shot fast. I knew I had to get another shot in him as fast as possible, so I was able to get within 40yds before he jumped again. We repeated this 3 more times before I had a clean shot and put him down. Afterwards, I went back to the initial shot area and walked from there to where he initially bedded and found very little blood. I am glad that I aggressively followed up as I don't believe the leg wound would have killed the buck quickly and didn't leave much of a blood trail. From the initial shot until I finished him off was about 15 minutes.
I have really come to favor using the saddle to get comfortable at ground level and move as much as needed to cover a lot of area when gun hunting. I always carry a stick or two depending on trees/cover but don't always use them. Being too high makes it much more likely to be skylined in this spot since I'm higher on the ridge. During archery, I almost always used 2-3 sticks. This buck is my first saddle buck and I'm really looking forward to next archery season already!! I hope to get 1 more long weekend hunt here in mid January.
