Alright as some of you may have seen in another thread already I was fortunate enough to harvest a great Michigan public land buck. I will try to sum it up the best I can but it’s still going to be long read since the hunt for this buck started in last December. If you want just skip through to the pictures. Some of you may or may not know but I lease out a farm about 15min from my house. I have had the lease for three years now and every year it has produced 2-3 what I consider mature bucks (3 year old or older). The only problem I run into with my lease is that once gun season and winter months come around the deer migrate off the property, do to us not have thick cover. After realizing this the first year I knew I needed to come up with some sort of game plan for the remainder of the season. Well I searched high and low looking for another place to hunt where odds of killing a mature buck where better than some of the other smaller properties I have permission for. Well One day on my drive home from work I was stuck in traffic just gazing out the window as traffic was moving at a crawl. I happened to notice a good size tree tore up not 50 yards off the highway. After seeing that I started to pay attention a little more and noticed that there was a fair amount of land there with a mixture of hardwoods and swamps. Well one day I was just talking with my dad about how I bet it would be some real good hunting there (his old work happened to be right by there). Well just so happens he was having small talk one day with an employee and they informed him the property was owned by a park but allowed Archery only hunting. Not going to lie I was a little skeptical about things because as most would know public land in Michigan isn’t the best hunting due to high pressure. Couple days later I figured what the heck do I have to loose; I will go take a walk out there and check things out. Well to my surprise I ended up finding a great amount of good buck sign. That following weekend I decided since it was late season the best thing for me to do was to put a few cameras out with some corn to try and get a quick inventory on what’s around. First camera pull I was blown away when I came across this picture. After getting that picture I was dedicated to try and figure out if that deer was killable or not. Well in the process of trying to get daylight pictures of this buck somewhere I came across a pretty decent 8pt that I would be more than happy to take on public land. After a few sits I was able to lay my eyes on the 8pt but as luck would have it he skirted me at about 100 yards. After that encounter though I kept a mental note on where he came from. I ended up getting pictures of both of those bucks all the way until the season came to a close. So during the winter I searched high and low trying to find there sheds but was never able to find them. Coming into this season I knew I needed to spend some time out there trying to locate some deer as I knew my lease would be shutting down. About mid October I decided to go for a walk and check out a few locations. Ended up finding an area with plenty of good rubs and a few scrapes. Seeing all that sign I decided to throw a camera on a scrape to try and get an inventory on what bucks where in the area. Again was blown away on the bucks that where visiting the scrape. One ended up showing up that I thought looked a lot like the one from last year but was unsure because both his antlers and body looked about the same size. I ended up sitting there a few times in October and had a couple encounters with a messed up rack 3.5 year old but was never able to get a clear shot. As the rut came in I was concentrating pretty much all my time out at the lease trying to capitalize on one of the bucks out there but still was coming up empty handed. On November 15th are gun season opened up and since I can’t hunt the lease due to the farmer wanting to fill his freezer, I decided to hunt the public land knowing that gun season wouldn’t affect the area since it is archery only. Well when I pulled the card on the camera I had these pictures and instantly knew who it was due to the scaring on his back (last winter he scratched off all the hair on his back). Well coming into this past weekend I knew I would be back out there hunting. I was with one of my buddies on Saturday and he said he would like to go with me so I decided to take him out there to try and shoot a doe. I didn’t want to give up my honey hole spot so decided what the heck we will go try where I seen the 8pt come from last winter. Ended up only seeing one doe that evening off in the distance though. Well on the way home I started thinking for a second and CRAP I forgot my camera arm base out there at the bottom of the tree. I was unsure about hunting Sunday because they were calling for rain. But now I had to because I needed to go back out and get my camera arm base. So Sunday evening I headed back out and figured what the heck Ill just hunt here tonight. Got all set up sitting there waiting not expecting much to happen. Well at about 4:30 it started to rain then it started to rain harder. Since I do not have a rain cover for my camera I just put it back in backpack to try and keep it dry. Well at about 5:10 I’m sitting there getting wet thinking this stinks I look and at about 40 yards away I notice a deer coming out of the thicket coming straight to me. Soon realize it’s a buck, then oh pretty good buck, then I am going to shoot this buck. He ended up coming by me at about 25 yards, Mah stopped him, settled the pin, THWACK, Spine shot . Quickly grabbed another arrow and put the finishing touch on him. At that point is when I realized that he was a really good buck. Made my BBD text and called a few buddies to come help me get him the 1.5 miles out. As I climbed down I couldn’t help but had to take a quick glimpse and then realized that I have shot the buck I have been after since last December. And this boys and girls is how you get deer out the woods when you’re a mile and half back
Bahahahahaha....love that photo of the bike...seriously priceless! I laughed so hard when you texted me that....oh my! If you could take a picture of dedication and how much work it takes sometimes that picture is it!
If only you would have done this last year. :p Congrats again!!! I have never seen anyone haul out a deer on a mountain bike like that! How well does this work?
Absolutely awesome write up and read dude! Congrats again on an amazing deer. 10 speed for a 10 point?!?!
Great story and buck! I'm stealing the bike idea, we usually cut down a small tree and carry them out on a pole but that looks even easier.
I think we max have reached maxx load capacity for that bike. I tried but he was being stubborn last year haha For yours and Hecklers, It actually worked really well!!! Only bad part with all that weight he carried some momentum, so we pretty much had to power walk to keep up with him. I dont think it would work to well in normal woods but there are walking trails out there for us to take so thats why it worked so well.
Awesome! Your trailcam photo also made it into the top 10 of this month's contest as well! Congratulations!
Great buck! But unless I'm missing something the brows don't look split Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
