Been a slow year, lost the property I’ve been hunting for a few years. Hunted WMA land a few times but I’m getting older and hopefully smarter about shooting deer too far off the road. The WMA land I hunt is rough and you have to get off the beaten path.
Anyway, have a few acres here and put out corn behind the house, trail cam shows that deer rarely come on our property during shooting hours. A couple weeks before Christmas we had a little snow so I thought that evening I would go sit in the ladder stand behind the house. Had 5 does come in but we’re all facing my direction and couldn’t move. Then had a spike and 4 pt come in. They started harassing the does so The does ran off. The 2 bucks followed them.
I can see a field across the road, looked that way to see if any deer were in the field, saw six deer trotting across the field, while watching them I hear something and the 7 deer that were here earlier come trotting in. I have to get turned around so I see around and the does leave again. The 4 pt is facing me and the spike is behind some branches. Finally the spike steps out into the open and the 4 looks across the woods away from me. How’s my chance, I draw the Bear TD fail to pick a spot and shoot. I loose sight of the arrow but hear a satisfying “thunk”.
The 4 runs into the woods and the spike takes a few jumps and stops. Now I’m happy just shot a deer on my property and have a good tracking snow to boot. As he is standing there I’m thinking I should be seeing blood on the snow, but no blood. He leaves so I quietly get down to check my arrow. There it is stuck in a root, ended up pulling the insert out of the head ( pretty good penetration) , no sign of a hit, go over to where my deer was standing, nothing. Oh well thank goodness for a clean miss. I ally got around to cutting the root yesterday to retrieve the Zwickey Delta, was going to RH to remove it but decided it’s a pretty cool reminder to PICK A Spot.