Sorry for not posting sooner I've been having trouble with certain sites here at work but without further delay here is the scoop on my Fri, Oct 30 hunt:
Friday morning started out with quite a bit of frustration. There were 4 of us bowhunting that morning so there was a lot of planning and dropping off to get squared away. So when my buddy went to drop my son and I off I realized I had transferred everything from my vehicle to his, everything except my bow case that is. So we dropped my buddy off and went back to get my bow. Needless to say we got a little bit of a late start.
Compounding the problem was the fact that I really needed the time to get set up as the stand we were hunting was just a single and I had to get to it, climb it, and put my climber on the tree directly beside it. After a less than stealthy approach and an early morning work out getting the stands right and our gear pulled up and situated I wasn't exactly "feeling it" but I told Zachary we'll just sit tight and be quiet and let everything calm down. It was still dark in the woods with just barely enough light to shoot so our timing wasn't too bad(all things considered).
I had barely finished talking to Zack about letting things calm down when we heard something coming quickly. I couldnt see through the branches under my stand but I could see Zack looking straight down and behind us and then I saw her, a doe was coming right down our entry path and stopped right by the base of our tree. I sware I thought she was going to climb the ladder, but she flicks her tail and starts browsing out in front of us. She ended up just cruising away but I was excited about the early action.
So I get settled back in on the climber sitting on the front rail facing the tree. After a few minutes of quiet around 0700 I did some grunting and light rattling. I told Zack to sit tight and listen good. Within 5 minutes we heard something moving through the thicket to our left so I slowly stood up and got my bow in hand giving Zack a reminder to relax and don't move. When the deer hit the break line I could tell he had a decent sized body and as he got closer I could see it was a buck. He walked broadside right in front of Zack angling towards the front of our location. I stopped him at sixteen yards with the standard issue huning DVD "meeee" bleat. He politely stopped and posed almost broadside but slightly quartering to. The Grizz Trick was already on the way, I was about 24' up so it went in high and came out low passing through both lungs and some other important looking stuff on the way. He mule kicked and took off like he was shot out of a cannon. After a few seconds we heard him crash and we were PUMPED!
We stayed in the stand for another hour goofing off and texting and when we climbed down Zack found my arrow which had broken right in front of the fletchings and he found the start of the blood trail. He followed the blood trail with me behind him and he did a great job leading us right to the buck. All in all I think we were in the stand for about an hour and 45 minutes(that includes the sit after the shot) and I told him "don't get spoiled it rarely works out that good".
Anyway, a great weekend hunting. We ended up passing on two does that evening because I was beat and didn't want to do anymore dragging, skinning, etc and then Saturday morning we bp hunted. We saw some does and passed on a young buck with an antler that curled under his jaw. I was rewarded for passing by seeing a monster 10 cross my opening at 75 yards and I proceeded to blow the bark off of the tree behind him. MONSTER is an understatement, lets just say that all in all it was a GREAT weekend but the replay of that buck slipping away has not stopped playing in my mind and to be quite honest.... it stings........a lot.
Here he is, I'll score him as soon as I can but I am working 16 hour days this M-Wed so it might not be until Thursday p.m.
