and he's going on my wall even if he only scored 67 1/8. Here's why:
This year I took in a new bowhunter under my wings. This new bowhunter though, is no ordinary hunter. He is my ex-wife's baby brother. More importantly, I pretty much helped raise and watched him grow since he was 2yrs old. He is now a responsible young man at age 18.
Anyway, he's been my primary hunting partner this year and on Tuesday afternoon we decided to try some ratting with the Primos decoy. We went to probably one of the absolute most pressured public woods in all of Wisconsin and set up deep in the marsh about a mile from the truck. After the first and only grunt/rattling sequence, 2 deer came in. We were set-up 50yds apart with the decoy between us and facing into the wind. It just so happened that the buck I shot reached me before the other deer had a chance to make his way towards my baby brother-in-law.
I was only 7ft off the ground and this buck was gonna walkdirectly under me if he kept coming that direction. At 10yds from me it stopped and took notice to the decoy. At this point I just stood there with my right side turned towards the buck and my face halfway looking away. I did not wanthim to see my eyes as I was so low in the tree and he was so close to me. He stood there for a solid 2 minutes then decidedhe didn't feel like fighting the decoy andslanted to his left which was also sorta my left. I let him walk 20yds til my tree was blocking his direct view of me. I then slowly turned to my left as he had his head down and drew back. He was slightly quartering awayand had no idea what was going on when I hit the release. The ST tipped CX hit him so perfect I guess that he let out what sounded like a hacking smoker's cough on impact.After that he ran a half circle and crashed through thefallen downsback inthe direction he came from. At 30yds from the point of impact, he slowed down and I lost sound andsight of him.
As always when you don't hear a crash or see the deer go down you start to doubt your shot placement.(It turned out later during dressing that it was a double lunger.)So... I gave him 2hrs before even getting on him. When me and baby brother started looking for blood we couldn't find any within 40yds of the shot. The batteries in my headlamp were starting to dim and my stupid black light didn't do crap for trailing. At that point I decided we should back out and wait for the next day's light. And ironic as it was, we hadn't backed out 10yds when baby brother yells...
Hey! What's that?!!! Followed by jumping up and down, high fives, and hugs. And that, is why the Devil Deer's prodigal son is going on the wall.
Notice the litttle devil horns sticking straight out from the base of the brows. I've never seen anything like this in all the pictures I've seen of bucks.
I killed the Devil Deer's prodigal son
