Hey guys, I finally made it back from my trip to Kansas after 3 weeks of hard hunting. The trip was good, but not without some ups and downs.
In the beginning, I was seeing some awesome buck movement and passing up some pretty good bucks, some were in the 140's. Then, after about a week and a half in, I thought I made a good shot on a high 150's 10 point and thought my trip was done. I gave him an hour and went back and searched and could not find one drop of blood. I grid searched and spent the rest of the day looking and finally found my arrow, but only had about 6" of penetration. It looked like it may have been a shoulder hit.
Then, after that, the mature buck movement all but quit. It was lockdown. I wasn't seeing any more mature bucks while on stand. I was seeing plenty of young bucks searching for does but no mature bucks. Then, one afternoon, I was watching a doe cross an opening with a pretty good buck about 70 yards behind her. The buck was a 10 pointer with a slight limp. It was the same buck that I hit, and a good mile and a half from where I shot him. After looking at him through binoculars I could see the hair on his shoulder matted which confirmed my thoughts on a shoulder hit and knew he'd be fine.
My trip was finally coming to an end and had one more morning to hunt. I had an uneventful sit and pulled my stand after my hunt was over and decided to walk down and pull my blind which was about 300 yards away. I set my stand down but grabbed my bow and started walking down to get my blind. As I was walking down, a doe popped out of the cedars to my left with a mature buck right behind her. The doe spotted me and stopped about 25 yards in front of me but the buck didn't see me but stopped right behind the doe. I drew back, made a good shot, and had an unbelievable ending to my Kansas hunt.
