Ok so I'm going to vent for a little bit... sorry. I get to my stand this morning an hour early in the pouring rain. I figured I could stand the 33 degree rain for an hour or so then the front is supposed to pass. Should be pretty good conditions for some deer movement.
My stand is sitting in a nice little funnelleading to a bedding area with a half cut corn field behind me. Around 7:15 the rain has all but stopped. 7:45I glass the field behind me and see a big wide tall 10 pointer making his way down the hedgerow in the cornfield heading right for the honey hole. He's still a little ways away but heading right for me. I'm already up so I grab my bow and get in position where I know he's coming. The wind is absolutely perfect and it's one of those deals where you KNOW it's going down.
He works his way all the way in to about 75 yards and still coming on a string. The heart starts going, the release is on, and I'm eyeballing a couple different quartering away shooting lane options ahead of time.
Next thing I see cresting the hill in the cornfield is 1...2...3...4...5...6 orange blobs!! To the right and behind me I see 4 more! Needless to say a flury like you've never heard of gunshots erupted at this buck. I don't know how many exactly. I lost count at about 20 [:@][:'(]. The group of 6 must have been at least 150 yards away with slug guns and I'm still not sure how they didn't kill the other 4 guys.
The buck goes tearing out of there like a bat out of hell and runs right by my stand going about mach 10. The orange army starts walking over to where they shot at the buck, see my orange hat and run the other way. This is private property that nobody has permission to be on but me and another guy [:@].
I scream to them to no avail. They were out of there as fast as the buck was. I got down to look for blood which I knew I wasn't going to find, but thought I should look anyway. No blood, no hair, no nothing excepta buck fleeing for it's life never to be seen again. I walked out, got in my truck and drove around looking for them. I had an idea where they entered from but couldn't find any vehicles or orange army anyplace. I'm so freaking livid I could puke. 3 zillion hours on stand this year for that moment and this is how it goes down???? WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate gun season. No offense to gun hunters that do it the right way, but I really hate gun season.
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Jimmy S: 1/8/09 " I can hardly wait for baseball season to start. I love my Yankees! "
That's a major bummer. I feel for you, but keep your head up and keep at it. That's precisely the reason that gun and bow seasons don't overlap in most states. Be glad you didn't eat lead.
I hear you NY, I hunt with the arrow slinger all gun season as well and I work hard to keep my areas low pressure and safe for the deer without disturbance and then along comes some yahoo walking through posted signs following a track in the snow and wanging at deer on land they don't have permission to be on, even worse are guys that sit on the line and shoot deer on the other property and then track them all through the other land like that makes it right. Really ticks me off too. Gives sportsman a bad rap.
I feel your pain buddy....I had a pheasant hunter that was trespassing do the same thing to me years ago on a 120" 10 pointer.
The only difference was I went and chased the guy down and told him if I ever saw him again he would have a game warden to talk to and not me. After the fact I got to thinking that maybe I shouldn't have chased a trespasser down that was carrying a gun with only binoculars in my hand...oops.
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In honor of hntngirl and 4pt...
As if it's not hard enough!!!
