hey some great posts!!!
We all have those moments in hunting that we'll never forget, one of my all time favorites happened when hunting from the ground.
I have 5 boys, had taken the older two out deer and bear hunting, the 3 remaining boys had been out but not as much, they were buggin me one Saturday morning that i never take them...I told them to gather up some gear to sit for a few hours, they grabbed some hockey magazines, I grabbed a pop up blind, a heater and some stools and off we went. I decided to head to my archery spot, didn't have a clue how it would all play out but decided to put them in a pop up blind, close to the river so that they wouldn't be winded, got them set up with thier heater and magazines and told them not to poke thier heads out of the windows and try to be as quiet as possible...a tough job for an 8year old and two 10 year olds!!
now the problem was, where i had to put them didn't allow me to sit in one of the 3 stands i have at that location, if i wanted them to possibly see anything, i had to find a place to hunker down along the river, my only choice was to find somewhere with a bit of cover. I settled on sitting beside a big tree on the ground, I could see the boys about 60 yards to the south of me. It started to snow and blow from the north, lucky they had a heater. I had no hopes that we were going to have success but oh well they were very happy to be out. about an hour in, a doe runs past them and takes a trail about 3 yards away from me...wow i thought, maybe we will see something! about 10 minutes later another doe followed by a small forkhorn make their way by me at about 5 yards, now I am really pumped!! I look over to the ground blind and am pleased to not see 3 heads poking out the window...oh man, 50 yards behind the blind right under one of my stands is a decent buck! I grab my grunt and give it a couple of blows, then use my bleat can a couple of times...the buck spins around and starts sprinting in my direction, he passes by the boys at about 20 yards. He's coming straight at me and at about 60 yards i realize that i am going to have to draw very slowly as he's looking in my direction. I slowly pull back and at about 35 yards he stops and turns broadside, I let fly and make a great hit on him, he turns and heads into a shallow coulee. here's the best part, I turn back towards the blind and i see the three boys out of the blind doing as they called it, a happy dance...they had seen the whole thing but even better, this is how thet described it to me...we saw the buck behind us, we heard you grunt and then we saw it run right by us, we watched you draw back the bow and we saw the arrow fly at the deer and we saw it come out the other side...we knew it was a dead deer! The 4 of us tracked it and found it a short ways from where i shot it, they helped me gut it and drag it to the truck....does it get any better than that, they about that story often!!
