Hello all,I'm really excited to share my successive evening bow hunt on 11-8-08 with everybody,so here it goes!
I have been archery hunting now for about 14-15 years with success on many doe and some spikes and a couple of 3-points.I have had a few opertunities at nice size bucks during that time period,but could never seem to seal the deal (Buck Fever I guess)!
On the evening of 11-8-08 the weather was really overcast,pretty breezy with temps in the low to mid 40's and it had rained that morning.I decided to hunt a API lock on that was in a small island of trees in the center of a high grass field between two patches of woods.The far patch is about 300yds away and is the bordering property,the other is about 30yds to the left of me which is our property.In the earlyer weeks of the season a buck was seen twice coming out of the far patch of woods towards evening out of the same stand by a buddy of mine and I seen him once out of the stand.He always stayed high on the field about 80 yds. though when transiting across to go to the other bordering property to feed.Last time he was seen he was chasing two does on the same route.I figured the rut should be in good swing and the weather being good deer moving weather,I decided to try to lure this buck one last time out of the bordering property!I had a good wind and lit some all season scent sticks before I got in the stand.Some where around 4pm I did a rattling sequence with some grunting,nothing moved.At about 5pm'ish I decided to do a another rattling sequence with out grunting since last light should be around 5:30-5:40pm.At this time I'm standing facing the tree I'm in with my head on the rt. side of the trunk(I'm expecting my deer to come from this general area!)the far patch of woods is more on the left side of the trunk which I just scoped out after I put down the rattling bag.about 5-8mins after rattling I heard this faint trotting sound in the leaves and it was getting louder in a hurry,so I froze since I could not pin point where exactly it was coming from and I'm kinda wide open.All of a sudden I see this beauty of a buck come into thepicture crossing 15yds across the back of my tree from the left where the far patch of woods is at!His lip was curled,fur and head standing tall looking for a fight! I quickly grabbed the bow off the hook,put the release on my loop and came back to full draw when he slowed to a walk,as he stepped into my 18yd shooting lane I bleeted with my mouth to stop him just slightly quartering away I centeredmy sight through the peep and put my top pin on his heart and sqeezed the trigger on the release!The arrow hit right behind the right shoulder(fletching was sticking out)He jumped clear off the ground and ran towards the near woods where I saw him starting to go into the nose plow and the arrow came flying out,he ran about 20yds in and piled up in some thorn bushes,done deal no movement at all! I was so excited I started shaking and breathing like a mad man,I had to sit down before I passed out and gather myself!I smoked him good,from the time I heard him trotting in to the point I shot was not even 30sec. it happened so fast,and after the shot he ran about a total of 40-45 yds and expired in less than 10 sec. from the time of shot impact! I'm extremely proud of this buck,how this hunt went down and finally sealing the deal on a good buck with the bow will live in my mindforever!Yes, I'm getting him mounted,I think he is plenty worthy of it both in looks and more importantly what he means to me emotionaly!The GoldTip arrow with 100 grain WASP Jak-Hammer SST 1-1/4 cutting dia. entered behind the right shoulder and broke through the left shoulder before being broken off,there was a tremendous amount of blood along the short blood trail.Sorry if the post is kinda long,but I'm very excited and wanted to share with everybody with a good painted picture!Here is my trophy!
http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn59/jmeyers27/8PT11-8-08.jpg
http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn59/jmeyers27/8pt11-8-08-closeup.jpg
http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn59/jmeyers27/8ptsideme.jpg