HuntingNet.com Forums - 4pt gets a 5pt

Nothing huge, a scrub rack 5pt.

It came down to the wire for me. I had spent 4 days at bowcamp and had only seen 3 deer, two does both busted me and a spike which is not legal here in AR.

Day 4 and I am in my favorite stand. I was going to get down at 10 am to go break camp. At 9:15 I looked at my watch and conceeded that I was going to get skunked for the first time in a looooonng time at bowcamp. About then I heard the cracking of leaves. When I first saw him I thought it was a doe, which would have been just fine. Then I saw the rack and thought it was a 4pt, which would NOT have been fine because we have the 3pt rule. He came directly under my stand and looked up at me. That's when I saw the small sticker off of his right beam and decided I would try to shoot him. He spooked and jumped sideways and started to walk directly away from me. There was a large treetop on the ground and once he got around that he would've been gone. I drew back still not sure what to do.
As he was walking away, now at even a faster pace, I made the split-second decision to shoot him between the shoulder blades. I know, not a shot I would recommend but I was comfortable with my decision as well as my ability to make the shot. I shot and the arrow found the mark just to the left side of the middle of the back. The buck kicked and bolted up the hill about 80 yds and stopped for what seemed like an hour (ok, 2 minutes). As I looked away and looked back, he was gone. I just assumed he had layed down. Still not 100% sure where I hit, I decided to pack up my stand and go to my 4-wheeler to drink some coffee for an hour or so. When I got down I found my arrow covered in lung blood and a tremendous bloodtrail leading away. Now I was feeling better about the situation. As I got to my 4-wheeler, my buddy (who was hunting just 200 yds up the hill in the direction my buck ran) radioed me and said he had one down. I rode up to his stand and sure enough, there lay my 5pt. The sucker had spine-shot it, ruining about 1/2 of the backstrap. Upon further inspection I found that I did hit left of the spine and exited between the front shoulders. The bloodtrail was just as good at my buddies stand as it was leading away from mine. The deer definately was not going much further.

I let Randy have the deer although we both agree that the deer was dead on his feet when he shot it. He needs a few more notches on his bow anyway..;)

I would post a pic but there pretty bloody. We didn't clean it up well plus the only pic we got was it hanging from it's neck and the dumbass that took it didn't get the deers head. Wouldn't want ol' Matt on my arse....:D