Sorry for the delay fellas. Last night was a whirl wind…
So the week started out as about as bad as you could imagine weather wise. We had been battling 15-20mph South winds, and low temps in the high 60’s, and high temps in the 80’s. There had been absolutely no daylight movement, and we were getting quite discouraged. I spent the 1st two and 1/2 days glassing. I was just hoping to catch a shooter cross a field, or pop out of the trees for a second.
Yesterday’s high was 67 at day light, at about 10am you literally felt the switch flip. One second the wind was warm and out of the south, the next second it was cold and north west. At 1 pm a tornado touched down on part of the farm. It actually took out a shooting house my brother had been hunting. The worst part thunder storms moved out about 4pm, and I was headed into a creek bottom that had been know to hold big deer, but we hadn’t seen any on camera yet…especially since the batteries had been dead for a week.
I get out of the truck, and start to head across the field, and lighting starts popping all around me again. I hustle 300 yds across the field, and get to an old ladder stand that had grown into the tree. I scurry to the top, set my platform, and hook into my saddle. When I get set up I realize my wind is borderline blowing into where I think they are bedding. But, there is bedding North of me too, so I reset to make sure I had a strong side shot to that side.
The 1st hour I’m there I bet it rained 1.5” thank god I was wearing a really good rain suit. About 1 hr before dark 2 1.5yr old bucks come from the North like I expected, work in front of me, and head into the bedding South. I watched them cross the creek, and head into the bedding. Amazingly they never blew. My wind was obviously pushing further West then I thought. I thought to myself, “your in the ball game, stay on your toes. It’s going to happen tonight”.
I was still predominantly watching North where the two young bucks came by, and trying to stay as still as possible. I had no cover except the tree I was hooked in to. I look left where the young bucks disappeared in the thicket past the creek crossing, and there is a deer in the creek getting a drink of water on the same trail as the young bucks. He’s tight to my wind, but he is just far enough East I know I got his ass. As he drops his head back down, I slowly get my bow off the hanger, and put my release in the D loop. The buck crosses the creek, and looks to his left. That’s when I see some tall G2’s. I say “he’s a shooter, don’t look at his antlers, look at where you want the arrow”. He comes straight don’t the trail. He gets to 25 with his head behind a tree, so I draw. I’m holding my bow downward, I don’t want the pin on him yet. I’ve found that causes me to shake more. At 15 yds he goes behind another tree, I raise my bow. He takes 3 more steps, and 3 coons run down a tree. He freezes to watch them, and that’s the last thing he probably saw. I put it right through his heart at about 13 yds. He ran 20yds and fell over dead. I shot him right at sun set. It was a beautiful hunt, in some of the wildest conditions I’ve very seen.
He came out in the bend of the creek you can see in the back of this pic, and walked straight down this creek bed.
You can barely see my Halo knock in between the 2 trees.
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