First deer of the year. I went out yesterday morning to hunt this ridge that I have been getting a lot of pictures of deer on my trail camera. I stepped into the woods and within 30 yards of the road, a whole heard of deer took off running and snorting and stomping! I was really disappointed since the area I wanted to hunt was right by there and all the comotion would have spooked em. So I backed out and walked about 400 yards down the road and figured I would try it on the other end of the oak ridge. I walked in and started looking for a tree to hang my climber from for a few minutes and all of a sudden I hear some noise in the valley. Holy crap it's more deer! I have my stand on my back and just sit there for a minute trying to figure out what to do. I had my backpack (a really big one) strapped to the climber and decided to use the climber and back pack as a field expedient ground blind.

One of the deer heard me move to get into shooting position and thought he would come to check out what made the sound. He got about 30 yards of me, downwind, and just did the head bob thing and was moving side to side around this tree trying to figure out what I was. I will tell you what, that new silver lined clothing works better than my scent lock does! And it was only 25 bucks for the top and bottoms! I had this cover scent on called 'deer dander' by dan fitzgerald and I think thats what they were interested in. I don't believe even at 18 yards that the little buck smelled my human scent or he would have bolted. Any ways, the doe had come up to see what he was checking out and she decided she didn't like the head bob game and started trotting away. The little buck decided he was bored, so he turned to go too. I came to full draw, figured he was close to 20 yards away, put the 20 yd pin on his chest and let 'er fly. I saw the arrow hit and it hit him right in the middle of the ribs, and hit the off side shoulder (quartering away shot). He ran about 40 yards, started to slow down and got wobbly and I said to myself "he's going down right in those pines". I lost sight of him in the pines but it looked good.

After waiting about 20 minutes for things to settle down, I went and looked for blood. Couldn't find much. At that point I knew what direction the deer had gone and the tree I last saw him by, and I found blood about 20 yards later. The trail kept getting heavier and heavier for about 40 yards and then started to peter out. I went another 20 yards and there, by the pines was my deer. A small spike horned deer but my first deer I have shot on the ground, with a bow, on state land, in 20 years. I have takenaround 30 deerin the 20 years I have been bowhunting,but this was one of the coolest hunts I have had. Now if I can just that monster 8 pointer I got on the trail camera!