My favorite and most memorable bowhunt was on Sept. 30th 1991, five days before my wedding. My soon to be wife was with me. She was sitting in a ground blind which used to be my late Uncle George's shotgun blind. He had passed away on April 14th 1990 from injuries in a truck accident. He had hunted there for many years and had only managed to shoot basket rack bucks.
I was perched in my loc-on stand, 40 yards away. It was about an hour after first light when a one horn 3 pointer and a doe come in from behind me and were standing practically under my stand. I was 20 ft. up the tree. As I was looking down at them, I heard a grunt to my right towards a grove of hemlock trees. All my attention quickly focused in that direction. About that time, another grunt but I couldn't see him...yet.
Just then, here he come up out of the hemlocks walking paralell to me. I can see his beautiful 8 point rack shining in the sun like it was yesterday. Then the one horn and doe walked in front of me and towards where the big guy was headed. They all met and the 2 bucks started staring at each other, steam coming out of their noses. I thought, here we go, that 8 pointer is going to kick his butt all over that ridge. But all that happened was a stare down for a minute or two then the one horn and doe continued on and the big 8 pointer just stood there. I thought for sure he would try to take that doe away. So he's standing there, still a little out of my range, and starts walking over to where my wife is!!! He walks towards the ground blind and stops 10 yards away looking directly at the blind. My wife is hunched over afraid to move a muscle, afraid she will spook him. We had covered the blind with fresh branches the day before.
He stands there atleast a couple of minutes then turns and walks between us. I had to wait till he was completely past the blind to even think about a shot. That put him about 25 yards away. Once he cleared the blind, I drew, put the pin behind his left shoulder and released. He didn't go 40 yards when I seen him fall. WHEW!!!
I was shaking so bad after the shot, I had to sit there 5 min. before climbing down. My wife came over and she was shaking just as bad.
My wife said that when he was in front of her, she was actually holding her breath because she didn't want him to see the steam coming out of her nose!!! Well, he's a symetrical 8 point with an 18" spread and dressed out 168 lbs. He is now hanging on our wall and we nicknamed him "George" after my late uncle. What a cool hunt <img src=icon_smile_cool.gif border=0 align=middle>