HuntingNet.com Forums - Great 8 (10) buck down in Pa

Got in my tree stand at 6 am, the wind looks good. I’ve only hunted this spot one time previously this year. I know this is a good spot and try not to over hunt it until the rut starts. It’s overcast and it doesn’t get light enough to shot until about 720 am. At 8 am I pull out my grunt call and give 2 doe bleats followed by a couple of grunts. I figured this was a go strategy because if the rut is close a buck just might say hey I need to check this out. About five minutes pass, and I see movement out the ridge. I can see horns on the deer but it doesn’t look really big. The buck starts to move towards me along the ridge. He keeps looking in my direction trying to figure were the sound came from. He drops below me about 30 yards away and then walks right under my tree. He is about 13” wide and he has 5 points on one side and 4 on the other. When I first saw him I knew I was going to let him pass but as he got closer I was surprised by how any points be had. His tines were only about 3” tall and his brow tine were about an inch or two. I could have jumped on his back. I was so quiet when he got to y boot tracks he stopped and started sniffing the ground like a vacuum. It was pretty cool. I was surprised that he didn’t get startled. After about five minutes be was out the ridge and up the mountain. I waited for about ½ hour and tried the same calling sequence. After a couple of minutes I noticed movement below me down the ridge about 100 yards away. At this point I could see he was a good buck but didn’t really know how good. I grunted him three times and noticed his head look up the mountain. He started moving up the ridge straight in my direction. I stood up, grabbed my bow and tried to stay calm. He was moving straight at me and as he came closer I new he was a great buck. When he was 30 yards away he was angled straight at me. He turn below me and started to walk to my right. At 20 yards he moved behind two trees and I drew. At this point I’m in my tree 20’ up and he is down the ridge maybe 20 yards. I was virtually shooting straight down on him. He was slightly quarter towards me but I felt as soon as he clears the tree I’m going to take this shot. I was worried about the wind direction and if he went any further the tree I was in was going to give me problems. This meant, I would have to wait until he was behind me and at that point I thought he might pick me up because of the wind direction. When he cleared the tree and stopped I let the arrow fly. I heard a crack and watch him go right down. The arrow went straight down through his spine and was sticking out about a foot. He pulled himself down the mountain about 60 yards and stopped. I thought I might have taken out the artery that runs along the spine, so I waited and called my buddy. After 20 minutes he still had his head up so I decided to get out of the tree and stick another arrow in him. I circled below him so he could not move down hill and stuck him with another arrow. What a great hunt. It took me about 1 hour of dragging to get him out of the woods. It was well worth the sweat. Sorry for the length of it but I could probably still go on with more details. By the way, he gross scored at 144 4/8. What a great day!!!!!!!!