Thanks YF, great looking bucks! Good luck sticking a hole in one this year.
Well boys. It was a short and sweet whitetail season this year. I shot my first whitetail with a bow! First animal with a bow for that matter.
I set up in a good alfalfa field that holds lots of animals but gets hunted hard by the elk hunting masses in Sept. There's always good buck sign but the deer get spooky pretty quick once the bullets start flying.
The first night (tues): I watched from 100yds as 11 bucks all entered the field with about 2 hours of light left. A few were nice but only one was a definate shooter. On the walk out that night I spotted number 12. He was a hog, should be close to B&C.
Day two (wed): I took the afternoon off and set up a treestand (first time i've ever been in one). Spend a while doing that, then went back to the truck and changed clothes. I probably shouldn't have hunted it that night but I couldn't resist. Only saw a nice 120ish 4x4 that walked by at 30 yrds.
Day 3 (yesterday): got in at about 7:30, by 8: there were bucks coming out into the far east end of the field. By 8:15, a spike bull elk was feeding 100 yds up from me and shortly after, the second biggest of the bucks (not the hog) fed out near the bull. for about 20 minutes the two of them fed towards me and were joined by two little peckerhead bucks. One of the little peckerheads worked his way past my stand and caught a whiff of my scent. As luck would have it, his antics actually drew the other deer towards my stand and pretty soon I had 3 bucks within 30 yrds. The little bugger with the good nose sniffed right up to the base of my stand then blew. When he did that, the big one turned and offered a nearly broaside shot (very slightly quartering too me). I picked a 1x1 foot gap in the branches (hadn't reached my lane yet) and let fly from 26yds. The release felt good but I learned the hard way to condsider the path of the arrow, not the sight line. My arrow deflected off the tiniest of sticks and veered about 3 inches forward of where I was aiming. [:@] It hit him just at the base of the neck and broke the far shoulder, missing the vitals but severing the veins and arteries in his neck. he took off snowplowing through the alfalfa. Right then it started to rain. Hard. I barreled out of the stand and went to find blood before it washed away. I found the arrow and there was good blood right off the bat. I made it 50 yrds and found him bedded at the edge of the bush. He stood up and I zinged another arrow at him which put him down for good. I have no doubt that the first shot would have been fatal but with the rain I didn't want to risk loosing my blood trail. Still I feel very lucky and quite relieved that the deflection wasn't worse.
Anyway, i forgot the camera so when I got home I grabbed it and went to take a "field picture" at the edge of town. I got one taken and the camera battery died.
Here's a few from when i got home. Not sure of the score but I'm guessing mid 140's Sorry for the long story but it's the only one i'll be writing for a while
The "field pic"
