OK, I've had a busy couple of days but I'm finally ready to write up my weekend hunting adventure. It was a pretty good Sunday.
I was out on a stand that I got my buck out of last year. It is a stand put up by a friend of my dad's and I was pretty sure that he and his son in law would be out hunting in some other stands somewhere in the neighborhood. But I wasn't really sure where.
Sun came up and there was a lot of rustling in the leaves, might have been squirrels or possums or something. I couldn't really see, and by the time the sun was up enough to see the rustling stopped. Right at sunrise I looked to the west and saw a doe coming my way from up out of a draw that I think is where they often bed down. At that point she was still about 100-150 yards away, but I stood up and grabbed my bow. She was moving along pretty directly, but about 50 yards out she curved north and stalled out.
About that time I noticed a buck trailing her. I didn't get a great look at him. He was too often screened by trees, but I was writing a script that involved him broadside at 20 yards or less. This is a picture that shows the path of the deer. Doe in red, buck in blue.
Sadly, the Doe got to about 30 yards (behind the big tree) and then she alerted on something out in the beans to the south. She ran forward about 15 yards and stood behind the little tree. Meanwhile the buck was hanging out behind the big tree, I couldn't see him. Abruptly the doe turned back west and headed right back the way she came from at a trot. She didn't wind me and the wind was from the south.
Sadly, If I had pulled back on the bow while this was happening I would have been perfectly set up for a 30 yard shot when the buck stepped out into the open, but he didn't stay there long. There's a lesson to be learned here and that is that I need to stop scripting hunts as it keeps me from being able to improvise when the deer don't follow the script. So I watched this nice buck trot out of my life. I was able to spend the next several hours worrying that I had let the best opportunity of the day get away from me...
As a side note, I found out later that my host's son in law shot that buck right around sunset.
There is a picture of him, nice looking buck. Would have been nice to have connected on that early opportunity, but I no he didn't get a deer last year so it is neat that he took such a nice one.
I stayed up in the stand until about 11, with a fresh breeze in my face the whole time 5-15 mph. No more deer sightings. I got down, hoping to take a little walk to the north side of the property about 200 yards away, which would be down hill and hopefully out of the wind. Plus it would give me a view down to the creek where I had heard some turkeys earlier in the day. I sat down and ate my lunch under a big tree and did warm up a bit. I didn't see anything to the north and never heard the turkeys again. At about noon I packed my stuff back up and hiked back up the hill to my stand. I took my time to make sure that I didn't walk in a bump any deer that might have come in while I was away. No deer, but I felt refreshed enough to be able to sit in the stand until sundown.
Well it didn't take long. right about 1 pm I looked to the west and saw a doe coming on nearly that same path the earlier one took. I saw two more coming along behind her. Once more I stood up and grabbed my bow. They were coming in much more directly and honestly they were right in my lap before I could even write a script. At about 10 yards I picked out the one with the best shot. She was slightly quartered away and it zipped right right through her ands she went running off behind me and down the hill to the north. This picture shows where I was in the tree and where the deer was.
The other two ran back west, but stopped at about 50 yards. But then they stopped and came back. They spent about 30 minutes walking around under my stand. It was actually a lot of fun to just watch them and not have to worry about making a shot.
I didn't want to scare them off as I didn't want them to bump the doe I had shot. I felt like I had made a good shot, but I was a little afraid that the shot was a little back and I wanted to wait to go after her until I had a chance to see my arrow and the blood trail. So I waited until the other two moved off on their own. I should note that while I was observing them I noticed that one of them had little nubbin horns. And that led me to believe that they were both fawns or yearlings or young of the year. Whatever you call them. I'm still pretty new to deer hunting and observing deer so this was an education for me. I wasn't sure if that meant the deer I shot was their mother or just another fawn who had been hanging around with them.
When I found my arrow It was covered in blood, but there was only 6-7 drops of blood spread over about 10 feet and then no blood, which was very confusing to me. I knew that she had run down along the fence line so I walked over there hoping to pick up the blood trail somewhere along the way, but there was nothing. Of course now I'm thinking that it was a bad hit and that I need to back out so I don't bump her and all sorts of bad things about how I messed this up.
I spent a long time worrying over this and very slowly easing my way down the fence line looking for blood and checking to make sure I wasn't walking up on a wounded deer. Finally about 40 yards form the last blood I picked up some more. I kept moving slowly but surely and then I found her, expired at the bottom of the hill just around a corner in the game trail.
It turned out I had made a good shot, double lung and probably some heart. The problem was caused by the exit wound being plugged by one of her collapsed lungs. All that worry ended up not being worth much, but I guess it comes with trying to teach yourself how to be a hunter. Until you have gone through the experience it is hard to know what to expect.
Last year when I got my buck, my host brought his truck around to the field edge, but the soybeans weren't picked yet so that wasn't an option, plus as it turns out he was on a stand somewhere. As a side note, he got a buck that night as well. Not one I had seen earlier in the day, though.
Luckily I called my dad and he came out to help me drag my deer out of the woods.
He's 73 years old and he handled the half mile drag way better than I did. To be honest, I think this is the best picture I got from deer hunting that day.
I'm super excited to have punched my tag. Yes it is a fawn and I am not sure I would shoot a fawn again in the future. But at this point in my hunting career, I have taken two deer and I'm still kind of disbelieving the fact that I can really do this. So I will treasure this harvest just as much as if it had been that buck from earlier in the day.
I still have a buck tag and I might try to get back out later in the season, but I will be pivoting towards ducks, geese and turkeys. You bet I'll be posting updates as I get out there hunting.
