HuntingNet.com Forums - Buck had me shaking

Traveled to Illinois on a bowhunting trip last week and had a blast watching all the deer and hunting the hilly land. I'd never been hunting out of state (Louisiana) so hunting mainly corn soybean fields was a change for me. You guys up North have it made when it comes to the defined rut - we got to watch the begginings of the chasing phases and whatnot. It's amazing how deer can blend in with a cut cornfield - they can be hard to see.

Anyways, I tried, unsuccessfully, to grab the attention of a few bucks with the Can at the beggining of the trip - it appeared they were scared of it. Friends of mine even tried the snort-wheez and had the same thing happen - the deer ran off.

But the last evening of our trip, I had a nice 8 point come down a hill 70 yds from me. He started walking away and I used the Can as a last ditch effort to get his attention. He stared in my direction for a couple of minutes and then commenced to bashing a little tree with his antlers. Is this normal? His aggressiveness surprised me and when he finished bashing the tree, he looked up in my direction and stared for a couple of minutes. Needless to say, I was a little taken aback and felt a little tremble set in. :)

He circled and came up wind, but never came close enough for the shot. Didn't matter though, the experience was enough for me.

On a side note, my friend shot a massive 14 point at 45 yds. Said he would have likely scored between 180 - 190. We searched for that deer from 10:00 am the Thursday morning through the evening and later on that night after we obtained permission from Hadley Creek to access their land. We even searched the Friday morning for 3 hours (we had to leave to come home). But we could not find him - my friend was sick to his stomach and so were we. We seem to think it was a liver shot.

One other thing - for those of you who say "The North is a different kind of cold than the South" - I say BS! Cold is cold! Got down to 21 deg one morning with 25 mph winds.....brrr - though I was prepared with warm clothes, I froze my tail off. I don't know how you guys hunt in the single digit temperatures.

Last but not least, is it ALWAYS that windy in Illinois? The wind roared every day we were there. But the deer moved and I couldn't have had a better time.