I love waking up on a beautiful late October morning to head out into the woods with my best friend and hunting buddy behind the camera. Opie and I had a feeling that today was the day and we knew that something was going to die. We grabbed our lone wolf tree stands and headed out into the dark woods in search of a trophy buck or a mature doe if the opportunity presented itself.
The woods were pretty quiet other than several squirrels racing around underneath of us until we noticed a 8 point buck working his way in our direction on the same path we had used. He walked right in and underneath of our stands with not a care in the world and didn’t even seem to notice we were there. Opie was on him with the camera and I started to draw the Mathews back for a shot when he spooked and bounded off about 30 yards. He stopped and looked back in our direction not really sure what he heard but didn’t seem to care much. I got my bow pulled back, waited for my opportunity and put a really good shot on him with a T3. He ran off about 100 yards after the shot and stopped out of sight and we never heard another sound from him.
We continued to sit quietly as we were just absolutely covered up with deer the rest of the morning. I took the opportunity later in the morning to harvest a nice mature doe on video at about 15 yards after she presented me with several nice shots. I sent a T3 right through her pump station with the Mathews Z7 and she didn’t make it far, piling into a bunch of brush. We climbed down, packed up our stands and begin tracking both deer. Finding the doe was no problem at all as she only went about 80 yards with a giant red blood trail. We located the arrow from the buck second and noticed that it hadn’t passed completely through the deer based on the blood left on the shaft. The blood trail was pretty easy to follow for about 100 yards but that’s when it changed drastically to an occasional drip or larger spots in the areas he had stopped. I didn’t want to track any farther until we gave him more time based on what we were seeing as I wanted him to lay down and not get back up. We decided to get the doe gutted out and head into town for some breakfast while we allowed him more time to lie there and die, hopefully without pushing him back up onto his feet.
After about 4 hours and reviewing the shot on the camera several times, we headed back out and got on the blood trail once again to hopefully find this buck dead not far from where we had left off. That wasn’t the case as we spent the next 2 hours tracking him about 100 yards due to the lack of blood on the ground. We eventually ended up jumping him out of a corn field that he had circled around into, we were able to get a good look at him standing broadside at about 100 yards. He stood there and looked at us for a minute and then bounded across a field and into the woods on the other side of the road. We tracked him another 200 yards on the other side of the field before realizing that it wasn’t a fatal shot and this deer is obviously going to live to fight another day. After reviewing the shot over and over again on the computer, we think I may have hit him a little bit forward for the slightly quartering away angle he was standing at.
I am certainly bummed that we were not able to get our hands on that buck but I am also glad we confirmed it wasn’t a fatal shot and he will live. I am a blessed man to be able to enjoy this sport and spend a gorgeous day in the woods with my best hunting bud, chasing whitetails and making memories. Things are really starting to heat up and the rut will be in full swing here in Michigan very soon!
Shoot Straight,
Tex