Woke up Wed morning to a SSE Wind which I was not happy with, but made the best of it by heading to a stand on the north side of a green field. I got in stand at about 5:30 and had sat through about half an hour of daylight without any movement. I pulled out my can and gave it a couple turns followed by a couple grunts. I don't think 15 minutes passed before I saw movement through the tall grass on the opposite side of the field. The buck never hesitated at the edge and was taking a path that would bring him to within 40 yards to my right. About half way across, he stopped and looked to my left, his ears perked up and he fixated on something in that direction. He then started in that direction with a purpose. Well, he never got there. When he got to my lane I stopped him andtouched off the release and watched the arrow enter about half-way back as he was quartered slightly. He tucked tail and I watched him make a right turn at an oak and disappear into the timber. I made a mental note of where he entered and took a deep breath. Then I saw what he was fixated on - another 8 pointer came in from my left at a slow pace and followed his footsteps into the woods. Oh for another buck tag!
I sat back and replayed the events for about 15-20 minutes when two dogs came into the field. Crap! I tried to stop them, even climbed down out of my stand but they went into the timber in the same direction as my buck[:@]Went back to the trailer and sent Brett the text and talked with him a bit about what happened.
About 2 hours later I started the tracking. The trail was fairly easy to follow for about 100 yards where he turned up-hill and it stopped. I circled and circled, checked ravines and brushpiles and creekbottoms. Nothing. Grid searched the area, nothing. More texts to Brett and set up for the evening in the area I lost the trail to watch and listen for tell tale signs to no avail.
Rained like cats and dogs Wed night/Thurs morning and I wasn't very optimistic. After a couple hours on stand, began searching further along the ridge and more ravines. Next were a couple more water holes that turned up nothing. I'm thinking there are two more places to check, a bedding area in the bottoms and one last pond. I took the 4-wheeler down to the bottom and took a slow ride for 100 yards back in the direction of the last sign.It got a little thick so I set out on foot, following the dry creek bed. About 50 yards along I spotted white to my right at about 40 yards and the closer I got , the bigger it got. There he was, probably a good half mile from where I arrowed him - untouched. I have never been so relieved. The shot placement was just a little back from what I wanted, resulting in a liver & opposite lung hit.
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[/align]I'll finish scoring him tonight.
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