Grave Robber

11/25/12

Nick, Greg and I met up Sunday afternoon and burned some boot leather scouting the property we were selected for a MDC managed hunt on in mid-December. We found several good areas with a lot of deer sign as well as some areas to scout this weekend while hanging our stands.

After our scouting trip we headed up to north KC to hunt our urban hot-zone. This particular piece of property is surrounded by neighborhoods, but it's covered up with deer and the owner wants a lot of them thinned out....so we try to oblige him.

I hunted a stand on the top of the hill overlooking some of the nasty bedding cover on the east side of the property. At 4:45pm I spotted seven does and minis working through the cover and headed towards a small cemetery plot about 90yrds north of my setup. Several minutes later the entire group popped out up top and headed into the cemetery and started eating flowers off of headstones, which I took offense too.

After surveying the lay of the land I decided I could get down and sneak around the low side of the hill and up to the edge of the cemetery plot. There is a large cement monument on the left side of the plot entry gate and that was going to be my ambush point. I was able to get up to the monument undetected and the waiting game started. There is a decorative 3' fence around the cemetery and even though we have permission to hunt it, I wasn't going to shoot into the actual cemetery. After a couple minutes of watching the group devour flowers and grass in the plot one of the minis decided it was time to move on and started heading for the cemetery gate. The monument allowed me to get drawn without alerting the deer and when the mini exited the cemetery it was 3-4yrds from the tip of my arrow. He was walking at a casual pace and at that distance I wasn't going to try and stop him, so when his front leg stepped forward I touched off the shot and the little grave robber tore out across the asphalt parking area and into the thick cover. The shot was on the money and the little guy only held it for roughly 50-60yrds before giving up the ghost. It wasn't a textbook hunt by a long stretch, but when you're hunting an urban setting sometimes you have to improvise to get the job done.