Earlier this week my buddy Hunter called me up and asked me if I wanted to head up to Scott county with him and deer hunt this weekend. Well I'm not one to pass up the opportunity to kill somebody else's deer so Hunter, our friend Damon (Rigderunner on here), and I loaded up early Saturday morning and drove on up there to see what we could do.
After a walmart stop, a Mcdonalds stop, and a bathroom break we found ourselves running about an hour late. Hunter dropped me off at a woodlot around 8:45 and sent me on my way with a climber stand. Now this is the first time I've ever been up here so I'm just trying to find me a decent tree to shimmy up. I worked my way down the edge of the hill looking for a tree but couldn't find any do at 9:10 I just found me a log, kicked away the leaves, and sat down behind it.
A few minutes after I sat down I decided to hit my grunt call and see what would happen and well...something happened. I catch a glimpse of a deer working through the cane to my left and she pops out at 8 yards and locks right on to me. She does that old head bobbing deal for a minute or two but she couldn't quite figure out what the big brown shape was so she just went about her business. I knew I would have a shot so I got ready to shoot, brought my bow up, picked a spot, and in typical Matthew fashion got busted drawing. She took off running for about 30 yards, looked back at me, stomped, walked back to about 15 yards, blows, then runs back to her original spot. She does this THREE SEPARATE TIMES before she decides to head up the hill.
This very well may be the dumbest deer I have ever seen because she walks up to about 25 yards up the hill, stomps and blows, the comes parallel to me feeding. I was struggling to find a shooting lane until I saw one little gap in the saplings that was about 15 yards away. I knew she was headed that way so I pulled up and waited for her to enter the lane. That deer walked perfectly into the lane and stopped so picked a tuft of fur, drew, and released before I hit my anchor.
At the shot I knew I was in trouble and that was confirmed when I saw my white fletchings disappear mid-drift on the deer which took off in a very sickly manner. I found this at the scene of the crime. Turns out the deer was further than I thought originally, something a bit over 20 yards.
(http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i433/matthewbolton1/null_zpse14d8885.jpg) (http://s1093.photobucket.com/user/matthewbolton1/media/null_zpse14d8885.jpg.html)
(http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i433/matthewbolton1/null_zps06f049bc.jpg) (http://s1093.photobucket.com/user/matthewbolton1/media/null_zps06f049bc.jpg.html)
I didn't even need to see the arrow to know what had happened. I decided to give her 8 hours and take up the trail.
QuoteI decided to give her 8 hours and take up the trail.
Wise decision; good luck on the recovery
I hope this turns out well :pray:
I spent several hours sitting with Damon and Hunter giving her time to expire. At around 4:30 I headed out to go find her. From past experiences with gut shot deer I didn't expect to find much blood so I was looking for small things like scuffed up leaves or hair inside of this huge cane thicket that followed Black Wolf Creek. I spent almost an hour and a half getting the fire beaten out of me before I reached where the thicket dead ended into the creek. Now i moved to option 2...follow the fence and see if she crossed. After several minutes of fence checking I found some fresh hair on the barbed wire...Game on.
I hopped the fence and started to parallel the trail that she was on just body searching. After a hundred yards or so the trail cut uphill so I went down by the creek and followed it to a small overflow area that was dry but separated, when full, a small island from the main ridge.
When I crossed onto the island I just so happened to look down and saw a single drop of blood on a leaf. At that point I knew she would be up on there so I took to beating through that cane and all the blowdowns looking for her. I figured she would lay up under a tree and that's just what she did. I dang near walked on her before I seen her. No time to celebrate I gotta get her down to the creek and gut her. Turns out the deer was waaaaaaaay bigger than I thought. She dang near killed me getting her off that island. Once I got her cleaned up I drug her up the bank and went for some help.
I sat in the old farm house Damon and Hunter had been hunting to see if Hunter could get one with his crossbow but he missed the deer so we headed to go get my deer out. The next hour consisted of lots of "ow", "dadgum" "How big is this thing?!" along with other stuff haha. It took all three of us to get that rascal out of the woods by dadgumit we did.
Once we had her at the truck Hunter wanted to see how old she was. He sticks his finger in her mouth and says she ain't got any teeth. I went over to check and sure enough the old girl didn't have but 4 front teeth on the top and bottom so we guessed her at 5+ years old. She ended up dressing around 130 which is far larger than any other deer I've killed with anything. Not a bad deer for my first off the ground without a blind. Also what you see in the pictures is what I was wearing while hunting minus face paint on my face and hands. Still using the Zipper SXT 61@30 with Traditional Only Shafts and a 250 grain VPA Terminator.
She's my second one of the season and 4th trad deer. I'd have been happier with less but I'll take what the good Lord give me.
(http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i433/matthewbolton1/null_zpse02335d8.jpg) (http://s1093.photobucket.com/user/matthewbolton1/media/null_zpse02335d8.jpg.html)
(http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i433/matthewbolton1/null_zps309804c0.jpg) (http://s1093.photobucket.com/user/matthewbolton1/media/null_zps309804c0.jpg.html)
Great story and recovery! Way to stay in there. She is definitely a big doe. Congratulations! :thumbsup:
Good stuff. Great tracking job! Congrats.
good job.
Way to go!
Congrats,
Bisch
good tracking. nice Doe good to see ya found her :clapper: :clapper:
goodjob on trailing ...CONGRATS!!
Great recovery! That's a good looking doe that you can feel very proud of! Congratulations!
Bernie Bjorklund
NC Iowa/SW Wisconsin
good for you , congrats
Congrats!!!
Way to stick with it!
great job!
Good job! way to stay with it!!!
great recovery and what a doe.
Good one Brother and great call on waiting!
Congrats!
Good job twice! :clapper: :clapper:
Way to go Matt. Hope u come up soon and maybe we can go some together.
You beat an old Longnose... on the ground... in her home territory! On top of that, you followed through and found her in spite of a difficult hit.
That, Sir, is a good job of hunting!
:clapper: great result.
Great story!
Love the details about the follow up. The great thing about Trad Gang hunting stories is that you learn a little bit while be entertained at the same time. :clapper:
Lots of tracking tips mixed in with a great story there! Way to follow that one up!
Great story and congratulations on the doe.