The early part of our bow season started off pretty slow in Illinois. We pretty much didn’t have any of the mature bucks running around that we knew had been there. We later found out that they were actually feeding on a neighboring properties food plot, so at-least we realized we weren’t doing anything “wrong”.
Continuing our early season in Iowa, my cameraman and I have probably walked 50 miles in the last two weeks. We’ve been hiking in deep on some secondary farms, running and gunning set-up’s on fresh sign on a nearly daily basis. We’ve found some AWESOME sign along the way, but the deer just haven’t been moving much. We’ve had an occasional encounter with a doe or two, small buck, or just plain nothing.
Finally, on October 16th, we walked into a set-up that I had trimmed out in August. Only problem was that the trees I had chosen to set-up in had completely shed all the leaves; at 10 feet off the ground, we didn’t stand a chance. On-camera, after hanging the sets I made the decision to move; and packed everything back up. Moved to tree number 2, which wasn’t good. Saw another tree that may work on the edge of a small cliff adjacent to the bottom that we were setting up in. It was the only option for the wind and where I believed the deer would be traveling based on the sign in the area. We climbed up to the top of the cliff, and immediately found a big buck bed right under the tree I was looking at. I sniffed the bed and sure-enough, it was definitely a stinky buck, and the bed was HUGE. I didn’t believe we had bumped him going into the set, so I could only hope we would get a glimpse of the buck that had used that bed within 24 hours. I quickly set our stands and the wait was on.
Here is a picture of the big buck bed. It’s hard to tell by the picture, but it the single bed was approximately 5 ft. in diameter, which is the sure sign that it is a lone, big buck.
About 45 minutes before dark, a doe came across directly in-front of us. About 15 minutes later, as evening was approaching dark, I decided to rattle a real light sequence to see if we may entice a buck out of his bed a little early. About the time I figured the night was shot, I heard movement coming from the tip of the draw that extended into the corn field on our adjacent side. I could immediately tell it was a buck working a scrape, but didn’t know if it was a shooter or not. After working the scrape and licking branch for a couple minutes, the buck turned and came right along the standing corn in-front of the stand. He was straight up-wind, and didn’t have a clue we were there. He passed directly in-front of us, stopping at 25 yards to rub his rack on a tall weed, all caught on-camera. The buck worked his way as close as 20 yards before disappearing into the thick brush about 50 yards from out set-up.
He was roughly a 140 class 4-1/2 year old buck that we have never seen, and I let him walk. He’s a target for the late season, but with a long Iowa season ahead of us, I’m not quite ready to end it yet! It was an awesome encounter, and just fun to know we had him! The best feeling when you have had a slow early season, which is to be expected when temperatures are in the upper 70’s for most of the first couple weeks!
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Hope everyone is having a great season; the best is yet to come! Be safe and good luck this fall!
On his way out, we realized this buck is missing his tail! It must have been nipped off by a yote when he was a little guy! First time I've ever seen a tail-less buck! You will have to wait to see the footage to get a good luck at this. The encounter will be featured in our next video, which at this point remains nameless.
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