My Late Season Hunt in Missouri....

[DonBo]

I'm really enjoying your story and photos. Thanks for sharing.

Nels

Yep, I remember your write up from last springs turkey hunt and knew you had a knack for story telling, but this is awesome.

[pumper317]

Great stuff. Thank you for sharing!

[nbadger23]

Day 5 Afternoon...

We figured the deer movement would be good that night after the snowstorm the previous night so we planned on being in our stands by 3:00 just in case. After a nice lunch and a little shut eye away we went. It wasn’t cold, cold… just kind of cold… i.e. it was around 5 degrees but at least the sun was up and the wind chill was only near 0

We walked across the field together and parted ways near the woods, telling each other good luck. I walked into the new stand and my heart sank…. I had forgotten to tell him to bring the prussic knot down so although the safety rope was hooked up it did me no good on my climb up as the knot wasn’t there. I almost thought about not trying it and heading to 4 because I wasn’t completely confident in my ability to climb it as my body was starting to tire a bit. I decided to take it slow and give it a try. I've developed quite a reliance on those safety ropes and would have never guessed I'd be hesitant to climb up w/o one but maybe I'm starting to get smarter :-)

It was a bit dicey as I kind of had to lean back a ways to get my boots into the steps. They were enclosed steps and with the big boots on it was interesting. I was able to get hooked in before having to make my move into the stand so that made me feel better but when I went to pull my bow up I faced another adventure. The bow rope was tangled between the climbing steps so I wasn’t able to pull it up without some serious re-adjustment. All in all I think it took me almost 15 minutes to get up into the tree and settled …. Ugh.

This location was interesting in that you could see quite a ways to the west as this is a gradual slope down to a gulley, not a ton to the North as that was an incline in elevation, and off your left shoulder, to the south/sw, you couldn’t see more than about 100 yards because it was again an incline up to the pine stand. The nice part was that as you sat, you could pretty much just swivel your head and watch all the needed areas, and then check the field every now and then in case one came down the edge.

As I always do when I get into a new stand, I drew my bow at different angles to make sure the safety strap wouldn’t hinder me or get any other unpleasant surprise by limbs and such. Every shot angle looked good so down I sat and the wait began. At 3:45 nothing had been seen but I drew my bow to make sure I still could. It was tough but on the second effort I did it. At 4:15 there had still been nothing so I drew again and this time it took 3 tries.. yikes! At 4:45 I had still yet to see a deer so I drew again and it went a little better this time. At 5:00 I was starting to feel a bit down but I knew we’d seen a lot of deer activity between 5 and 5:30 and I kept saying to myself “it only takes 30 seconds to happen.”

At 5:05 I spotted the back half of a deer moving about 100 yards to the west. I immediately stood up to see what it was and 30 seconds later spotted another deer, within 75 yards, coming from the N/NW. The immediate reaction was ‘shooter!!!’

I grabbed my bow and started going through all the scenarios in my head. With where he was coming from, in another 25 yards or so he was going to likely make a decision and that would either take him in front of me or he would head south and then take the trail out to the field that was behind me. Because of that, I couldn’t commit to getting fully turned to the north as I may have to swivel to my left it he went south, then took the trail to the west.

Here's my 3rd grade level artwork to give you an idea of where he was coming from and what I was thinking...

My bigger concern at the time was the fact that there were 2 does and a one horned spike behind him. I really, really didn’t want to deal with 6 other eyes behind him when I would need to draw on a deer at 15 yards. We had not planned for this situation because since when do you see the big buck lead the other deer out to the field! This is when having the stand in the original tree we had wanted would have been helpful as we were further away from the stand, higher in elevation, and in better cover.

He stood at the “decision point” in the trail for quite a while and at this time I started taking a better look at him. He was a really tall 9 or 10 point, with a g3 that was split on the left hand side. The mass looked pretty good as well but no matter what I knew he was a shooter.

He finally decided to come down the trail to the north of me so I started to inch around to get myself in a position to be square to draw if he got broadside in front of me. At first he was walking at a consistent pace but as they do, he stopped to survey things. I was now really getting concerned about those 3 other deer as they had closed the gap on him and were only about 10 yards behind him. Given the layout of things, I had made a decision that I was going to draw whenever he got into position, no matter what those other deer were doing. I didn’t think I’d have much hope of getting a shot at him in the field if he got past me so I was going all in on taking a shot at him when he got in front of me.

Call it luck or call it what you want, but the one doe got feisty and got up on her hind legs and kicked at the spike buck. This caused the 3 of them to scamper off a bit and gave me some separation between the deer. At this point, he was standing only 15 yards away but severely quartering to. I needed him to take about 3 more steps and his head would be behind a tree where I could draw and then hope he cleared the tree within a reasonable time to give me a shot. He sat there and surveyed the field forever and even looked directly up at me a few times but never with what seemed liked any concern.

Here's an approximation of where he was. My plans were to draw once he got behind that tree that's just in front of him, with hopes of either having a shot at him at the green star if he heard me draw and stopped, or the orange star if he kept walking and I needed to grunt to stop him.

He finally took the 3 steps I needed to get his head behind the tree (he’s now at 12 yards) and I started to draw but as I did that, I noticed that he had stopped completely so I stopped my draw. I was really worried that in this cold weather I wouldn’t be able to hold very long and I knew I did have two more trees/shooting lanes to draw if I needed to. The other deer were still 40 yards or so back milling around so they weren’t a concern at this point. He stood there for what seemed like hours and I remember thinking… “no matter what happens, this has been a really cool encounter.”

His next move surprised me. Instead of moving forward he turned around, as if to go back where he came from. W/o thinking I drew as he turned. I figured the jig was up but he didn't seem spooked. He seemed to simply want to turn around for a bit.

We had a discussion in camp the night before about bringing your pin from the bottom of the deer up, as opposed to top down, as this may help stay away from the high shots. The thought process being that you release instinctively and if you’re coming from the bottom up and you release early, you’re still in the kill zone, as opposed to coming from the top down and releasing early. That was new to me and it made sense, so I made a conscious effort to do that in this situation.

I can’t say that I really remember thinking “go ahead and shoot.” I do remember not quite having the pin squarely in the kill zone and re-adjusting to an aiming point that would be at the off shoulder as he was now quartering away. It was likely an adjustment that only took a half second or so but to be able to actually remember doing it was encouraging for me. I've missed some deer in that situation because I've felt that they are on their way out and I have to 'shoot fast." Shooting fast is fine but I need to take my time in aiming and I was glad that I slowed my self down to allow for that.

I let drive and I watched the pink and white fletching bury into him at what seemed like a perfect location! I could tell that the arrow did not pass through but that didn’t surprise me. It wasn’t dangling out or anything like that but instead seemed to be buried in the off shoulder. He took off with a mule kick and headed out of sight.

Then the best part of bow hunting happened, the shakes set in. You know, that rush of adrenaline that you get after an encounter like that. I hung my bow and sat down to regain my composure. It was now 5:15. The whole thing had taken 10 minutes to unfold and it had seemed like forever.

I now had to wait 15 minutes to get down so as not to ruin my buddy’s hunt so I called my parents. My dad is the one who taught me how to hunt and for a time my mom bow hunted as well. Talking to them helps give me some focus on what just happened and helps me calm down, not to mention the good wishes they always give me.

I had also texted Paul almost immediately after the shot. I think he may have thought I was going to go running after it but I assured him I knew better. I didn't see him go down so I wasn't going anywhere in that direction.

As I sat there waiting for the time to pass to get down I had some regret in my thoughts. My buddy was the reason I was on this hunt, it was his stand, and he had hung it for us. I have a lot more opportunity to hunt than him as he’s got two little guys running around and I have had the good fortune of shooting two nice bucks in the past 3 years. In other words, I would have been REALLY happy if he would have shot a buck and wouldn’t have had a regret in the world if I hadn’t. I was hoping upon hoping that he had a good encounter on his stand as well.

I waited until 5:30, got down, and slowly made my way through the field to him, being careful to use the terrain and field edge to shield myself from any deer that might be out there as I didn’t want to spook anything. He hadn’t come out of #3 yet which to me meant he had a lot of activity going on because it gets dark in those pines 5-10 minutes earlier.

I could hear him getting down and as he walked out I walked up to him. I was going to play a bit of a joke on him and tell him I’d seen anything but as I walked up he said “Did you shoot something?” He caught me off guard as I thought there’s no way he heard me. I said “yeah, I shot a nice buck.” He’s like “that’s awesome!!” He later told me that he could “just tell” by the way I walked up to him that I had shot something… I guess I must have had a swagger

It turns out that he had a pretty awesome night himself but didn’t drop the hammer on anything. He said that at 3:00, when we walked into his stand, 3 bucks were walking right underneath it. He said “all he saw was horns” walk by. They never spooked so he got up in the stand and from there he said he never went more than 15 minutes w/o seeing a deer. When I asked how many he saw he gave one of those “I have no clue, they just kept coming” sort of answers.

He had that same 8 pt from Monday night come in around 5:15 and he had the same dilemma I had. He said he drew on him once, waiting for him to get to a 20 yard lane but when he walked into it he decided not to shoot and went to let down. The problem with that was that as he let down he somehow touched his trigger and the arrow went flying… into a tree about 5 yards away!

He said it made a loud SMACK and the deer jumped off a bit. Then he started walking right back towards him and my buddy decided “this guy has a death wish, I’m going to shoot him.” Well, he had to get another arrow out of his quiver, which in those temps, was not an easy maneuver, especially since he’d had his bow in his hands most of the hunt due to all the deer he saw. He just about had the arrow out and it made a slight noise, which the buck locked in on. He said he was able to get the arrow in but the deer never presented a shot.

I asked him about the arrow and if we could get it and he just laughed. He said it was a good 15 feet up in the air so there was no way. We laughed at the thought of how other hunters would react when they hunted that stand when they saw that…. “what sort of a fool misses that badly????”

As we walked back to the truck he asked me how good I thought I hit him. My gut reaction, which I’ve learned to go with on shot placement, is that I had hit him hard, but you always have that teeny bit of doubt that you didn't see it correctly.

We got back to camp and we have a very pleasant surprise… the 15 year old shot a really nice doe and they had already recovered it and had it back to camp. If you remember, he’d been busted the two nights before when he tried to stand up so he got smart this time, he simply drew while he was sitting and shot it from a sitting position. We were all really happy for him as it’s exciting to see a young hunter get their first deer and to put such a good shot on it.

I was wound up pretty tight when we got back to camp. I grabbed a cold one to help relax but realized I couldn’t sit and wait so I started some dinner. We all sat down to eat and Paul asked me about the shot placement. I gave the same story I had before, my gut reaction was that it was good but I had no problem waiting a few hours. We agreed to go back out at 8 which would give him 3 hours once we got there.

At 8:00 we pulled out, with my buddy and me in one truck, and Paul, and the father and son in another one. I was grateful for all the help, considering it was now -7 outside!

We walked into the woods and I showed Paul where he was when I shot him as you could see the leaves kicked up in the snow. I was a little concerned in that we didn’t see blood right away in the snow but as we walked forward a few feet they saw blood. A few more yards and there was my arrow in the snow. It was covered in blood with about 2-3 inches of it broken off, still in him

I breathed a very big sigh of relief when I saw that and Paul said “ oh yeah, he’s hit hard.” From there it was a pretty easy exercise. My flashlight had quit working so I kind of stayed off to the side, following Paul. I remember saying to my buddy “how’s the blood” as I couldn’t see it and he said ‘you don’t need to worry, it’s spraying out a couple of feet.”

When we found him I was glad to see it didn’t have any ground shrinkage. He was as tall as I had remembered and had a much bigger body than I thought. It's always fun to put your hands on them!

We gave some congratulatory high 5’s and hugs and now the work began although it was much easier with 5 of us. Paul had brought a molded sled that we loaded him into that and started the pull out. We were very cautious of the horns in case he had been close to dropping them. I will say I got the easiest part of the drag as all I had to do was keep the head up and out of the way of hitting trees on the way out.

They don’t gut anything out in the woods because they won’t want to attract the coyotes so we had the full 200 lb+ of it on the way out. We got him out to the field and prepared to take some pictures. Paul asked me to go get my bow and of course I had forgotten it… my head obviously wasn’t quite right when we left

We still took a bunch of pics and then loaded him up to get him back home. Here's a few of them...

Here's another from when we got back to camp and I could grab my bow to include. My arm was almost jelly by the time we got done with pictures as holding that head up with one hand was tough.

We hung him up and the 3 of us went about getting him caped out and quartered up. It was about 10:00 when we got back inside and we were pretty tired. I didn't argue much when my buddy said he didn't want to hunt in the morning because of how cold it would be. Peaceful sleep came pretty easy that night

[perchking]

Great story and pics...

Congrats

[sticknstring]

Congratulations - that's a dandy! While reading I figured the buck was going to head the opposite direction, but that clearly wasn't the case.

[DonBo]

Nice buck, congrats! Hope we still get to hear how your partner's hunt turns out.

[Scoot]

Bravo! Well done!!!

[pumper317]

Awesome buck! Great story. Thanks for putting it all together.

[muskiemanAD]

Cool story and great buck.....

[NoWiser]

That is awesome!! Congratulations!!

[frogtosser]

wow, thats sweet

[minky]

That is one nice buck! Congrats, great story too.

[triggertrav]

Great story and awesome deer!

Thanks for sharing!

[paceman]

Great story and awesome deer!

Thanks for sharing!

+1

[certified jumbo]

Badger!! Sweet story, sweet deer!!!

[HooknHorns]

Great buck and congrats on sticking it out through the cold temps. Just curious about the shot placement. Where did you hit him?

[monstermoose78]

Great story and great deer Congrats!

[MNpurple]

Thanks for sharing that and a big congrats to you.

[nbadger23]

Thanks everyone.. I was very excited to have shot this buck, especially in the late season.

HNH - I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't really verify the shot placement closely. I know the entry wound was right behind the crook of the leg but I never looked at the internal organs. Normally I investigate that pretty closely but I was working on getting tenderloins taken care of while Paul handled caping it out so I didn't take the time to check it. It might have been because I could barely feel my hands at that point :-)

[NELS-BELLS]

Great story and great ending! That's a very nice buck! Thanks for sharing.

Nels

[Bear55]

Congrats!

[HNTNBUX]

Very nice deer and a great story.

[nbadger23]

The last day....

We decided to sleep in Friday morning as it was just too cold. I don't think anyone in camp went out that morning. We drove around with Paul a bit to see if anything was on it's feet and didn't have much luck.

I spent the rest of the morning cutting up my buck and getting things organized a bit for our departure on Saturday. I also asked Paul to score the buck for me as I wanted to see if I was being fairly accurate when I tried it myself on other bucks. He asked me what I guessed on him and I said 145. He came out to 143 3/8 so I wasn't too far off.

I really wanted to get a chance at a turkey on Friday night and decided to go hunt stand 9 as Paul had been seeing turkeys in that area. You get two turkey tags with your archery license and I think I was the only one in camp who hadn't seen one while on stand.

Stand 9 used to be a good morning stand for them as the fields around it were CRP and you'd catch deer funneling through on their way to bed. With it being surrounded by crop fields now the dynamics have changed a bit but it was still a good looking spot.

You can see the tracks in the pinch point between the two fields..

My buddy debated between stand 3 and his stand but in the end, decided on 3 because of the action we'd seen on that one. Unfortunately the wind decided to wreak havoc on us that afternoon, blowing upwards of 25 MPH. I had really hoped for a good night for him but that wind was just too much. I saw two does and that's all he saw as well. He said the deer walked to the edge of the field, poked their head out, and say "no way am I going out in that wind!" I couldn't disagree with them, it was punishing.

I actually left the stand at 5:00 and drove around to see if there were any deer out and about in the fields and didn't see a thing. Here are a couple of sunset pictures I got that night:

At 5:30 I headed over to his stand and we took that down and started our last drive back to camp.

We had a great week, even with the weather and the lack of deer movement in the morning. My buddy figured he saw around 90 deer during the week and I saw around 50. I can't imagine what it would be like during the rut there but I'd be glad to get back there anytime.

[triggertrav]

Nice finish to your story - the last sunset of the hunt is a good touch.

any chance you weighed that beast? it looks to be pretty massive.

[paceman]

Great story and pictures! Thanks for sharing!