For the Saturday evening hunt I sent Greg to The Gash set and Nick to The Bowl...both of them got skunked on deer sightings. I headed up and hunted the North River set intending to do more scouting with my binos and looking for deer coming off the hills or out of the river treeline. Instead I ended up being cover up with deer coming to the cut corn. The first four deer came off the hillside about 80yrds in front of the stand and angled into 45yrds, but there is no way to get a clean shot off in that part of the field. A few minutes later I spotted two more does following the same path as the first group. While glassing the approaching deer I spotted another couple of does working in from the north behind the set. They came right down the main trail and entered the field 16yards to my right. I let the lead doe feed out a little ways into the corn and when the second doe popped into the field I was already at full draw. I quietly grunted to get her stopped and touched off the shot. It was getting pretty dark, but I saw my arrow tracking perfectly and heard the tell-tale popping of the lungs. She bolted back towards the hill and the rest of the deer just stood there; having zero idea what just happened.
I met up with Nick and Greg back at truck and we headed back down to track the doe. It had been about 45 minutes since I shot her and we located the arrow and blood trail immediately in the corn field, all signs indicated that it was a great hit. We trialed her about 60yrds up the hill with great blood the entire time, but then we heard a deer jump up and run just ahead of us. It didn't move off very far and it sounded like it wasn't moving very well. We quietly tracked the blood another 15 yards and found her first bed pooled in blood, so we immediately backed out. I was extremely surprised she wasn't dead yet since we gave her plenty of time to expire. We decided to just head into town clean up and grab some dinner to give her time to give up the ghost on her terms. Around 10:45pm we headed back to the farm to continue the search. The temps were going to be in the upper 50's and I didn't want to chance having the meat go bad on a deer I knew was dead. We quickly got on the last blood and trailed in another 60-70 yards up the hill right to a very dead and stiff legged nanny. She had been dead for a good while, but we made the right call backing out and giving her plenty of time to die. The shot was a perfect double lung hit, so that was one tough girl to hold it for almost an hour before giving up the ghost.
Sunday morning was pretty slow on all fronts. I had a few coons walk through and I located a huge scrape in front of The Beach set. I set up Scott's trial camera he sent down overlooking the scrape and main trail in front; hopefully it's still there next time I check! Sunday evening was slow for Greg and I with nothing but coon sightings again. Nick hunted the north meadow and had 6 does and nice 2 1/2 year old ten point come out. The buck made several scrapes along the north edge of the meadow and the does stayed out of bow range.
It was a great weekend with good friends; to bad some A-hole was trespassing on the south end of the property and decided to steal my Cuddy....
1 comment:
Thanks for the invite Pete. I had a great time and hope the rut brings one of those elusive big boys under whatever set you're sitting in.
Greg
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