After shooting my elk opening weekend of rifle hunting my focus has been getting my girlfriend her first archery kill. We have been hitting it hard on the weekends chasing whitetails. I set up a stand for her prior to this last weekend in an area that looked promising and she had some deer come in but unfortunately none of them ever presented a shot. I have been hunting along with her in the same area but since we don't have two stands I have been on the ground trying to spot and stalk any decent bucks. Well it was a tough go until this weekend when the rut hit. I watched a bunch of deer feeding out of the timber at last light Saturday and decided that's where I wanted to be Sunday morning. Well it wasn't even past sunrise when I spotted a buck and was watching him work his way slowly towards me. After a half hour he takes off running and in comes a big 5x5 running him off. He shacked up with a doe and I watched them for an hour or so when they seemed to disappear and I figured they had bedded down because I was sure they hadn't slipped out on me somehow. I got comfortable and was prepared to wait the rest of the day to see what their next move would be. At 9:40 I watched a doe and two yearlings work through a small opening in the timber about 400 yards away. 5 minutes later I spot deer on a trot straight towards me at about 150 yards. Got them in the binoculars and it's the doe and her yearlings but all 3 are looking behind them. Sure enough there is a buck coming on a trot. Long story short about a minute later they are running past me at 40 yards and the buck is grunting nonstop on his way in. I had one small opening to shoot through and I was able to stop him when he got into it. Sent an arrow and knew I had hit him but I thought it may have been a little low. Turned out it was a double lung pass through and he was dead 100 yards later. My girlfriend came to help quarter him up and then I started packing him out while she started hunting the area I had shot this buck in. We saw several more bucks that evening but couldn't get a shot. It was a great weekend. Here are a couple photos.
