Hello fellas. I hope hunting is good where you all are. It's been pretty good in MO so far. It was youth season here in MO this past weekend. Me and my 7 year old boy were out to try and get his first deer. At first light on Saturday morning, we noticed two deer about 40 yards in front of us in the food plot. He decided he wanted to take one of them. He put the gun on it's rest. One of them was offering a perfect broadside shot but he just could't find it in the scope. Then it turned, so we moved to the other one. Couldn't find it either. Back to the other one. No luck. Then the two deer started moving back into the woods. Now one of them is 30 yards to our right so we readjust. Couldn't find it in the scope. It moved on and here come the other deer. It's about 20 yards from us. He found it! I told him to squeeze it off. He did and made a perfect shot with his .223. We saw his deer go down about 20 yards from where he shot it but I wanted him to find the position where he shot it at and follow the blood trail to the deer. We got to where he shot it, I looked down and there was the bottom half of the heart laying on the ground. I've never seen that before. I've seen lung splatter, but never a chunk of the heart laying where a deer had been shot. Here's Drew and his button buck. Notice the chunk of the heart laying by the deer's front hoof.
Now that Drew got his first deer, that gives me the opportunity to hunt on Sunday morning. At 8:00, I saw a doe and a couple fawns move through about 70 yards from me. It was quiet for the next couple hours. At 10:00, reluctantly, I decided to get down because my in-laws were visiting from out of town. I packed my stuff into my backpack, put it on, lowered my bow and as I was undoing my saftey strap from the tree, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. A doe. I quickly pulled my bow back up and nocked an arrow just in case. I still had my backpack on. Sure enough, here comes "Kickback" chasing the doe. Within 20 yards, they ran past me and back again. Every time the buck would stop there would be something blocking my shot. Finally, as they passed me for the third time, I was able to get the buck to stop. He was 4 paces off the base of my tree. There was a limb partially blocking my shot. I had to lean way to the left to just miss the limb and still get into the lungs. I pulled it off. The arrow hit high on the right side and exited low on the left side. As he ran away, I could see blood pouring out of his left side. He ran about 60 yards and fell over. I was a little disappointed when I got up to him. He broke off a 4 or 5 inch kicker coming off the base of his right main beam that went back over his neck. That's where the name "Kickback" came from. He ended up grossing 128-1/8". With the kickback point and the other half of one browtine that he also broke off, he would have been in the mid-130's. I thought he would have been close to 140" based on the pics I had of him. Oh well, I'm still happy. Here's a few pics of him and me.
Kickback in velvet in August.
A closeup of the Kickback point
Kickback coming across a small food plot and the same area where I shot him.
Kickback and another buck I call Hoss sparring.
The field shot of Kickback where he went down.
Me and Kickback.
Still some good bucks in the area. I hope I can lay one down during firearms season here in a couple weeks. Good luck to everyone.