haha great!! thats an amazing story. love the details lol I took a good length spike during bow season, i dont know if u have a bow kill or not but if its ur first one its like the first deer u ever shot as far as excitement and adrenaline go. i was set up inside the edge of a bean field...the strip of woods i was in had bean fields on both sides of it making it a bottleneck inbetween them. It was a great set up where i had seen a 150 class 9 point during bow season but it was bout 140 yards off and all i could do was watch. He had a 6 point and a 5 point wtih him fighting durin that time every time they walked past each other. And during muzzleloading season i took two button bucks....talk about bad luck. every time i go to shoot a doe to help out our poor doe to buck ratio i shoot a lil button and it pisses me off so bad lemme tell ya. but at like 150 yards whcih each shot was....its hard to see buttons even wtih good optics.
My setup is a thompson center .45 cal xtended range...its got a synthetic stock wtih stainless barrel. i gotta simmons 3-10x40mm scope to top it off. and i shoot 180 grain powerbelt bullet with 150 grains of pyrodex pellets. it shoots very well even at 200 it drops very little with that setup so im gonna stick with it. Let me know after u shoot some more bout how impressed u are with the Powerbelt bullets...and they really are the easiest to load and to push down bullet ever made mine seats itsself by just pushing the ramrod...no bulletstarted is needed.
I have 6 treestands....all are place in relatively good hotspots according to the property i hunt. the best of which is in a funnel connecting to larger patches of woods with a creek running right thru the small strip funnel. it is very thick in there an loaded with scrapes and rubs....particularly done at night or else id see em...i hardly see any deer travel thru there during the most part of the season but when i do its generally a good buck.
Another good setup i have is in a small holler that dips down in the woodlot at the edge of a field that the landowner has left grew up for the first time ever an theres another field left to do the same on the other side of the woods they come out ofthe fields after daylight and feed down past me and up on the hill in the thicket to bed. i have 100% success of seeing deer in that stand. its hard to say that about a setup so im gonna set up on that here in a few minutes and watch the does hoping that after this rain front that pushed thru this weekend will have the deer up and moving. The deer here are in the chase phase so hopefully if i watch the does...then i will eventually spot the monster i seen before season.