My buddy shot the biggest buck of his life this morning in some really heavy cover.
He said that every tine was at least 10 inches with a 2-3 inch kicker off of its G2, and what looked like a double brow tine. The buck dropped and then jumped up and ran off into heavy cover. He had trouble tracking it because of the thick cover and rain and snow mix that was falling off and on. He eventually picked up the trail a few hours later, and tracked it through a huge rock bank. The buck had went through the rocks and rolled down the bank. When he got to the bottom, he found a gut pile and drag marks going out of the woods. He followed the trail to the road where a few trucks had set earlier. He is really mad, said he almost cried, because this was the biggest buck that he had ever seen or shot and someone took it. He got a look at the vehicles that were setting there where the buck was drug too and is now searching checking stations and camp sites. I pitty them when he finds who stole it.


Dave

that sucks! good luck with that

did he hear any shots? they could have finished it off for him and thought it was thiers...

and i dont wanna cause any problems but he cant prove anything...sorrry! i still hate to think someone did that, definetaly not hunters!

why i ask?

If his shot didn't put the deer down(a fatal placement)and someone else's did, guess what, it's thier deer. What's the rest of the story here.

MD is right,, "Brown its down",, BUT.. wouldent you kindly give the deer back if you were in the guy shoes that took the deer???i mean now its eep,, big buck,, or being a good guy?? who would you be???

From where he had shot it to the rocks it had went through were only about 50-60 yards apart. The buck was within 20 yards when he shot it, using a 7mm rem. mag with 140 grain core lokt. He said that the rocks that the deer went through were pretty steep and the deer fell and rolled about 20-25 feet down over the rock bank. He told me there was blood and hair all over the rocks where you could see that the buck had took a nasty fall down through them. So someone may have finished it off, but there couldnt have been too much left in it after, being hit from a high powered rifle and rolling off a steep ledge of rocks. He also said that there werent any other shots. After he shot it he wasnt more than 70 yards from the deer the whole time. But due to the thickness of the brush it was hard to pick up a blood trail. If someone would have shot it and finished it off that close to him he would have definetly heard the shot. I truely believe it was dead by the time the other guys got to it. He is a really great shot and one of the best hunters, trackers i know, so i know he put a good shot and did everything he could to get to it as soon as posssible.
I guess it is part of the game, just like hitting an animal and getting to it to find that a bear or coyote has already been there eating. It would just be heart breaking to shoot the buck of your lifetime only to find out someone came along and took it before you could get to it.
I understand what you are saying about fininshing a buck off and it being yours. It just seems that there couldnt have been much life left in it when the found it and they had to have known that it was just recently shot and that the person who shot it was definelty on their way to recover it. I mean who would just give up looking and go home after they shot a monster buck and found seen it go down and run off and found blood. Its just like finding a wallet on the street, the respectable person would try to find the owner instead of just grabbing it and running.

Dave

right!,, give a holler! " YOUR DEER IS HERE!",, better yet,, leave a note,, good job! and then your buddy relized hefound his lostwallet with a "i coulda stole this deer" meaning.

I may have come close to having it happen this year with my bow buck. I shot him about 50 yards from the edge of a steep hill that has a busy road at the bottom. He got to the edge of the hill and I heard him crash as he disappeared over the edge. I almost jumped out of the tree fearing he would make it to the road. As I got to the edge of the hill I could see cars stopped and as I scrambled down the hill I saw that the buck hadslid all the way down the hill tothe berm and a guy was already out of his car and had his hands on the deer. I'm sure he thought it was a roadkill. The good news is that as soon as I hollered, he looked up and yelled back NICE BUCK! He was then nice enough to help me get it up off the road and even helped me hide it so I could climb up the hill and bring my truck around.

If I had been just a little slower though, I'm surehe would have been gone!

First off, If your buddy shot a HUGE BUCK at 20 yards with a 7mm Mag and it took more than 2 steps he needs to go back to the range to sight that gun in a bit better.


Or just hunt sober