Get into my tree about 2;30 this afternoon at one of my fav. spots that has a few really good bucks and where I always see something, wind 10-15 from west, poured all last night, 50 deg. and sunny. Beautiful afternoon. About 3 I look down the hill and see a big bodied deer, and look again and its this typical 8ptr. that has eluded me for 2 years now. He's huge, probably 140" and really wide, I start shaking immediately, and he's still like 75yds. away, and walking away from me. I grunt, he looks, starts walking again. I grunt again he stops, looks around, and waqlks some more. He makes a ground scrape, I grunt again, and he starts scraping harder like he's getting pissed. Looks around for a minute and then proceeds to walk away. DAMNIT! I'm pissed but oh well at least he's still alive and bigger than last year. 4:15 comes around and here comes a doe about 40 yds away where I could shoot. I let her walk. Aminute later here comes a nice size 6 right on her trail step for step nose to the ground. I let him walk, but now I'm thinking,"if this doe is close to being ready, maybe that big guy has picked up on it." So I get ready. I range a tree near the trail all 3 took at 35yds. I then range a bunch of rocks behind the trail at 42yds. I'm ready. Wouldn't you know it a minute later here he comes holy crap! It starts to go down like you see on North American Whitetail. He's coming left to right, about 25 yards from my shooting lane slightly quartering away. I bring the bow up, come to full draw and set my sight in the shooting lane, perfect. On a steady walk nose to the ground he enters the lane. I let out a loud mmaaaaa. He stops on a dime exactly where I wanted him to, settle my 40yd. pin right behind the shoulder, and squeeze the trigger. There it goes, I'm watching the arrow as it approaches pay dirt, perfectly in line.............................................. .................................until it sails clean over his back by an inch. He trotts around the knoll he was in front of, I give a couple of muffled bleats and a grunt but he's gone. WTF just happened? How could this be, I was just the star of my own TV show in my head.After I talked myself out of tying my bow rope around my neck and jumping out of my stand, I got out the range finder. It turned out that the tree that I ranged first at 35yds. was in perfect line with where he was standing, not closer to me. So I basically used my 40 yd. pin for a 35 yd shot. Hopefully he didn't spook too bad, I'm going back tomorrow am. I'm still kicking myself though, this sucks. Sorry for the long read, just had to vent.
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A small buck that's dead will never be a big buck that's dead.
sick to my stomach
