2015 started out really slow for me. Running trail cams on my property during the summer and early fall didn't produce a single shooter buck on camera. Seriously the biggest buck I had was a 2.5 year old basket rack. As the bucks shed their velvet and started to find their fall ranges, I started to get a few quality bucks on camera, but still nothing I would consider a shooter. October 20th was the first time I got a picture of my target buck. I decided he would be the buck I wanted to chase if he stuck around. Since then I've gotten about 30 to 40 trail cam pics of him and I saw him on the hoof on three occasions before Saturday evening. My brother was coming over on Sunday evening so I decided to hunt out of my tower blind so I could get back to the house quickly once I was done hunting. I decided to put my Boss Buck decoy out at about 22 yards from the blind. It wasn't long after I got settle in that deer started filling in to the soybean plot that my tower blind overlooks. There were at least 9 deer in the field, mostly doe fawns and button bucks. There was one doe that came out into the field that I was seriously thinking about taking a shot at. She was feeding in my direction, but out at about 40 yards. I picked up some movement coming towards me from under a hedge row. Immediately I recognize it as my target buck. He steps out on the edge of the hedge row at about 45-50 yards. He works a licking branch for a moment and scans the field, then starts to go back the direction he came. I grabbed the grunt call and gave him two aggressive grunts. Just a few seconds later he steps back out in the same spot and scans the field again. This time he looks in my direction and sees the decoy. Immediately he drops his head and lays his ears back. He starts stomp walking out into the beans and make a long sweeping circle staying sideways to the decoy the whole time. He makes it to about 10 yards from the decoy and opens of his front side by taking a step with his front left foot. He pauses and I feel like he's going to stop and stare down the decoy. I take aim and release my arrow. Unfortunately he didn't stop and slide forward as I was taking the shot. I also feel like I pulled the shot to the right and the results were terrible. I hit him too far back and I was devastated. I made two terrible mistakes on one shot and followed that mistake up by not listing to what happened after the shot. I decided to wait until dark before I got out of the blind to find my arrow since I couldn't see it from the blind. I packed up my gear, reviewed the footage and waited for it to get dark. As it's getting dark I look up and see another big buck standing in that same scrape. We get two archery tags here, so I put my release back on, knocked and arrow and grunted at him. He looked my way, but I guess he didn't see the decoy and eventually ended up moving on. I though for a moment I was going to get a chance to double up two great bucks. I got down and located the arrow, and it was way better than I could have imagined knowing where the shot was. Initially I thought I clipped the liver and possibly a lung as the arrow was coated in heavy think blood. I made the agonizing decision to let him sit overnight. One of the toughest nights of my live. Got up first thing in the morning and my wife and I headed out to trail blood. I'm color blind and really struggle finding even big spots of blood. The blood trail was tough. We were following little specs for about 40 yards to where I seen him jump the fence. I just happened to walk up to the fence and peak over to see him laying less than 40 yards from me. I was soooo lucky as I clipped a major artery and he only made it about 80 yards. I realize how lucky I was to be able to recover this buck. Buck fever got the best of me for the first time in several years.
Hell of a buck! Interesting he's 4 on the left and 2 on the right, minus the G1's. Still a great looking mature buck! Gongratulations!
That's awesome. Congrats on a dandy. Any cam pics before he broke off that G2? Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
No. The first pic I got was Oct 20th and he was already busted off. My taxidermist thinks he actually has some from the early season. He hunts about a mile away up the creek. He's going to try and locate them. Sent from my LG-D850 using Tapatalk
He was getting after it early then! Regardless, a heck of a deer. Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
