Hunting with Mike

This is the second P&Y buck I took, a year after I shot the 10 pointer. The way I came about putting this one on the wall was quite different from any of the other deer I’ve taken with a bow. I was hunting a friends property who owned some farm land in Clinton Mi. The first day I scouted I found a great scrape, and put a tree stand up downwind. I decided to hunt it that evening, and this nice 9-pointer came into my grunt call. I was shooting a Kohana recurve, but wondered why, as this beautiful buck approached. I had yet to score with any recurve, and I began to think this was a dumb time to try and shoot number one! Anyway he gave me the broadside shot I wanted, and I instinctively put the aluminium shaft in his bloated neck. I didn’t get very good penetration, but did see blood immediately upon impact. The deer ran across an open field, and I watched him lay down in a thick fence row not far from a small thicket. I backed off, and figured I’d let him alone till morning, when I would come back and find a dead deer.

I put in a miserable night thinking about my weak attempt to put this “bad boy” down. I had a 1 hour drive to my friends place, and had made the decision to take my compound with me just in case. I waited till the first rays of sun were starting to show on the horizon, and then started my stalk through the little thicket. About half way through I scanned the fence row with my binoculars, and sure enough there he was! He was alert and facing away from me. I had to move at least 40 more yards before I could hope for a shot, and that was going to be very tricky. I did have one thing in my favor-a light rain was muffling the noise my stalk was making. Several times he looked my way, but I always kept a good sized tree between me and him. Just when I thought I couldn’t get any closer without spooking him; a farmer appeared on the gravel road walking his dog. They were about 200 yards from the bedded deer, and had no idea the buck was intently watching them. Because the deer was looking in the opposite direction I now made my final move. At 18 yards I drew back my bow and promptly sent a 125 thunderhead into his boiler room! He jumped up and ran about 30 yards before crashing to the ground.

As I checked the spot he had been laying there was a pretty good pool of blood, but upon inspecting the deer it looked like the wound had closed up. He may very well have survived his encounter with my recurve, but thanks to the unnamed farmer and his dog, he couldn’t survive my compounds double lung shot.

This deer grossed 129-1/2 as an 8-pointer, as I had to deduct for that ninth point. The picture shows my recurve, but I can only take credit for getting half the job done. This was a rutting whitetail who came into a grunt call around 5:00 in the evening.

My nephew Derek Ansel shot a 6-point last evening, and 20 minutes later shot a beautiful 10-pointer. He had his son Tristan in the stand with him, and is sending me some pictures. I went over this morning and took a measurement for him, and I have it at around 130 inches before deductions. He may very well of shot him a “book buck” while his son watched! I’ll be writing about this when I get the pictures.

Mike

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.