Got done grinding up the 50 some packages of burger tonight and had my first real chance to sit down and share the story of the deer I shot sunday morning. I should give a little back story for perspective. My bow season in Wisconsin I try to be pickier about what I shoot, finding fun in the cat and mouse game of trying to get a 3 year old or older deer into range and able to get a good shot. For some reason I have never been able to figure out it is also next to impossible for me to get a good doe in range, or even see them on stand, and we have neighbors who shoot several does every year also so I’m not really in a rush to drop one anyway. I also have over the last 5 years or so loosened up some in regards to tactics and became more open to the trial and error learning curve of testing out different methods to try and trick Mr big, like rattling, decoys and such. Consequently I eat a lot of archery tags.
So back to last weekend, as anyone who already read my post ‘got close tonight’ I had a neat encounter with a good 3 year old buck, who put on quite a show posturing and asserting his dominance over the martian (spike) buck. I was pretty excited over the encounter and really looking forward to trying a set I had sunday morning that was on the fringe of a large thicket that, though I had no proof, I had a good hunch there was a good buck calling it home. The conditions were right (no wind) and Saturdays deer showed they are right at that phase where they are very susceptible to ‘challenge’ calling (aggressive grunting, rattling) but not yet actively seeking/chasing does. So sunday morning I head out for that stand. This stand is out in a horse pasture, but this time of year the horses (they are my dad’s) usually stay near the barn which is about a 40 length away. I had hid my doe decoy in some brush the day before as not not have to lug it all the way, I grabbed it and started making my final approach. When I was about 60 yards from the stand (and about that far from the pasture fence) I hear something moving. Then a snort, didn’t really sound like a common deer noise but it was really dark. Then I can see a white spot in front of me about 30 yards away. Shoot I figured, the deer were still out in the open and I just spooked them. But the white spot keeps getting closer, how can a deer walk backwards??? Then the white form let’s out an unmistakable snort of a horse. $!#@, I forgot to look and make sure the horses were up at the barn before I left. Well, needless to say 2000 pound draft horses aren’t real fond of moving objects they don’t recognize in the dark and they (all 5 of them now) start coming at me. So I booked it back for the fence, threw the decoy over and jumped it. Now I’m kind of pissed and quickly running out of pre dawn darkness to get into a stand. I head back towards the house to figure out what I’m going to do, go back to bed or hurry to a stand that’s only about 300 yards from the house and easy to sneak into. I decided on the latter and went towards that stand, and as luck would have it I blew 4 deer out of the field I have to cross to get there. Now I really don’t expect to see anything, but given the time of year and the full moon the deer may stay on their feet cruising later in the morning than normal. The stand I was in is one draw over from the one I sat in saturday night and is situated to serve me for two purposes. First and foremost it’s back in the woods from an inside corner of the woods and ag fields and there is a trail the deer use to skirt this corner while staying hidden in the woods and not in the open. Secondly on calm days it does make for a location where sounds like rattling can really carry to a large area, in particular the area I know deer use on the far side of the draw (about 150 yards away) as a day bedding location.
The first half hour in the stand was pretty uneventful, the morning frost in combination with the previous days rain did make the ground wet enough that sounds were a bit more muffled than normal, but around 730 or so I could hear something in the general area of an old logging road about 70 yards to my right, and then I could swear I hear a grunt. I couldn’t see anything (I’m looking into the rising sun in this direction also) but I could swear I hear a second grunt. So I try a couple softer short grunts. Nothing. I wait a little and then try a more aggressive grunt. Still nothing. OK I figure, just my mind making stuff up, I’ll sit hear another 15 minutes or so and try rattling. After about 10 minutes I hear a pretty loud snap of a tree limb breaking behind me. Squirrels don’t snap limbs that make that loud of a snap. I slowly turn my head and look for what caused that noise. I see the form of a deer moving through the brush, it’s a good sized body. Then I can see the head. . . HORNS! Holy crap, it’s the buck from last night. At that point I go into shoot mode and just start concentrating on what I need to do so as not to get too excited. Slowly take my bow off the hook, he’s 30 yards from a shooting lane. Hook my realease, 25 yards out. He’s directly downwind, of what light puffs of wind there is. (Which as a side note, I think he was the grunts I heard and he circled round to come in from downwind). 20 yards. . . Concentrate on what you need to do. At about 5 yards from the shooting lane I had cleared I purposefully left a bunch of brush and tree limbs to help cover the movement of me drawing my bow. Draw, pin guard centered in the peep, first pin as he is only 18 yards away. He stops and looks in my direction. Please don’t pick me out. He starts moving again, into the opening, stops right in my lane. Pin right behind should and, release! Well, my shot was high by about 4 inches, but he goes down and starts flopping. Crap, spine shot, I quickly nock a second arrow and draw. I have to wait what felt like an eternity but was probably just a few seconds to get the shot I want and put a second one in his heart. The first shot probably would have done the job but I didn’t want him suffering because I was a bit off. My post mordum inspection revealed my arrow was about 4″ above where I wanted, but the angle still would have been a solid double lung. But the arrow glanced off a rib and drove it up into the spine as the arrow was angled upward through the body even though I was shooting down at the deer. Second one was a heart center punch.
So now a thanks to the deer and the Almighty and then a little celebration before the work begins. My first call was to my wife so she would come out to the farm with my son who turns 3 next month. This was my first deer since before he was born and he knows I’ve been going ‘away’ to go deer hunting and has fun pretending he is hunting at home (we have had several deer hunts at the house with our ‘bows’ (whatever stick he finds to pretend is a bow)). I was a little nervous that having him around an actual dead deer could backfire, the ‘deer’ he shoots in pretend we just put bandaids on and the are fine. He took it pretty well though and seemed to understand that it was shot so we could have food, at least as much as a 3 year old can understand that. He did really get a kick out of making ham-a-booger tonight, and did understand that was the meat from the deer.
On the deer, he was a 9 point, a level i still havent been able to cross it seams, the genetics around our place just dont seem to want to grow anything other than 8 and 9 points. The deer dressed out and 190 pounds and was the fattest deer I have ever seen. I’ve shot 2 other bucks in mid to late october, but this guy was something else. He clearly never missed a meal. That was part of what took so long in processing the deer, there was just so much fat to get cleaned off.
All in all it was a fun weekend and a really cool storyline to go along with the deer. And to think, sitting in that stand was my back up plan, almost like it was meant to be.
Now on to prepared for the nov. 7th minnesota gun opener, first time hunting the first gun season on that side of the ‘sippi.
October 26, 2015 at 10:51 pm
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