Got one on Saturday
I filled my buck tag yesterday morning despite the minutes leading up to it being a catastrophe.
I parked my atv at about 5:40, sprayed myself down with scent away, and then reached into my pack to grab my flashlight for the walk to the stand. When I clicked the button to turn it on, the light died after 10 seconds. I should have known better since this happened to me once before, except the time before the light died halfway to the stand. I use a surefire e2e which takes 123A lithium batteries. If any of you guys have a light like this you know the flashlight gives you no indication of dying batteries. It simply shuts itself off, going from full brightness to dead with no fading light in between. With no light I decided to hang out for a while until I could see well enough to walk in.
Once it was light enough I started the walk in. When I got about 100 yards from my stand, I scattered a huge flock of turkeys out of the trees which made so much noise, I thought every deer within hundreds of yards would be spooked.
When I got to the stand it was just getting light enough to shoot. I started the ascent in my climber going slow to not make much sound. When I got about 10 feet up the tree which is half way to where I wanted to be, I heard the unmistakable sound of a deer. I looked around and saw one travelling about 80 yds below me on a shelf which sets on the edge of an old clear cut. With my bow on the ground, and grunt call in my pack, I thought to myself, there's no way this can work out. Regardless, I reached around searching for my grunt call, and somehow got it without making much noise. I then managed to pull my bow up to me and knocked an arrow without him spooking. Although I hate shooting with my quiver attached, I didn't risk taking it off.
I called with two quick grunts, and got his attention. He stared in my direction for a minute or two, then started on his way toward me. When he walked up over the slight hill toward me and didn't see another deer, he got a little nervous but slowly continued in my direction. When he got behind a downed tree I tried to draw, and realized the strap connecting me to the tree was in the way. I managed to move the strap down without him spooking but then realized he was walking away. When he got out to about 80 yds, I tried a snort-wheeze for the first time in my life. He turned and came toward me walking at an angle. When he got to what I believed was just over 30 yds, I put my 30yd pin halfway up his body, just behind the front shoulder and released. He ran about 15 yards and stopped. As he stood there for a second looking around, I started to wonder if I had missed, thinking a well hit deer would have ran 75 yds and crashed already. I soon realized I made a good shot when he start wobbling back and forth and finally tipped.
I don't have any pics to post today, since the pictures I took were on my fathers film camera and i'll have to wait for him to mail me the pics once their developed. The buck was a 2.5 year old 7 point. In fact it's the third 2.5 year old seven point i've killed from that same tree, the past 3 years in a row. It's the fourth buck I killed there in the last 4 years.
It's not my biggest buck, but was the most exciting hunt i've had to date. Anything that could have gone wrong did: my batteries died, I scattered turkeys making enough noise to spook anything around, I only got 10 ft in the tree before he came in, and then my harness getting in the way of my draw... It just didn't seem there was any way it would work out, but it did.
When I stepped off the yardage, I came up with about 37 yards. The arrow hit low on the lungs. I was really suprised to see the size of the hole the G5 tekan made. It was about 2" wide, which is a half inch bigger than the cutting diameter of the head.... cant figure that one out.
post edited by thedrake - 2009/11/08 16:28:41