HuntingNet.com Forums - My 2009 Missouri Rifle Buck

Hey everyone,

Well I decided to go for broke this year and pursue bow and rifle hunting even though my wife is crazy busy with grad school and my job is really busy too (not to mention we have 2 kids under 5). I was able to take a doe in the early season but I was not able to score during the first week of Nov but I during a little scouting deep in the woods on the plot of land I hunt, I find some nice rubs on some small trees and I managed to snap a few pics:

I decided to hang a stand near these rubs even though it would be an SOB trying to getting a deer out of the deep woods. I was able to rattle in a little 6 point on the last day I was bowhunting on this stand but no shooters :(. Anyway, on opening day of rifle season, I go back to the same stand and decide to sit there all day. I see jack squat all morning so I decide to get down and stretch my legs. The instant I get to the bottom of my stand, two of the biggest does I've ever seen bust me from the thicket 20 yards behind my stand :busted:. Disgusted, I still hunt through the creek the runs North to South on my property and see more cedar trees that look exactly like the ones above. I'm thinking that there has got to be a monster lurking about so I sneak out of the woods for lunch (and to check on my father-in-law) and get right back in my stand. At about 2:00 PM it starts to rain and I'm thinking man this is going to suck! Well the rain lets up and the deer really start moving! I see 2 does sneak into the thicket behind me (one of them busts me) and I'm busted 3 times by another doe, she just kept coming back to see what I was:confused0024:. The third time she comes by, I'm just about to take her out but she busts me before I could get a shot off :mad1:. At about 4:30 I see a doe running on the other side of the creek with a buck fast in pursuit!!!! :rock: Well he stops broadside at 70 yards and I get a good look at him. For a split second I almost didn't shoot because he wasn't the biggest guy in the world but I decided to take him because he was big enough that if he ran into the adjacent property, he would have been taken AND I was only going to be able to hunt on Sunday morning. I let go with my .30-06 and dropped him on the spot :fighting0007::woot:. My 180 grain corelock did its job perfectly and I actually found pieces of lung and liver 30 feet beyond him :jaw:. My initial assessment was correct about being an SOB pulling him out of the woods, it took my father-in-law and I a hour and a half dragging him out in the dark and it damn near killed us! Here he is, like I said, he isn't the biggest 11-pointer in the world, but he's decent enough.

I kinda wish I let him go cause he would have been a true giant next year (he was only a 2 1/2 year old). When I was cleaning him I found cedar shavings all of his brow-tines so I think I found one of the culprits that has been hacking up all of the trees. Do you all think that this buck could have rubbed that cedar tree in the 3rd pic of the rubs? I'm going back out for some late season bow hunting and if there is a bigger buck out there, I hope to catch him with an arrow ;).