Friday night, November 5, is a night that I will never forget. I left on Thursday after work to head down to my lease to hunt Friday and Saturday morning. I needed to be back in north Georgia for my dad's 50th birthday, so I was limited on my time. But I wanted to get down to the lease for some hunting, because it's prime time down there. Friday morning the hunt is a little slow because I did not have a good wind and could not get to the place I wanted to hunt, but the evening wind was suppose to be different. At 11am I climb down head back to camp grab a sandwich and head back out. Wind is perfect for me at this time so I head to the area that I have been dying to get into. I am set up off a creek. Around this creek is a lot of cane which makes it real think, some nice cover. I am setup just outside of the cane in an oak flat that is positioned between this cane and another thicket. I am set back up by 12:30 and going to be there until sun down. At 5:50 I look to my left and coming up the creek in the cane is the biggest buck I have seen from stand. Now by no means do I mean this deer was a monster, but I have only been hunting for 4 years, bowhunting for 3. To say I am still learning how to hunt would be an accurate statement. I am at the point where I feel that I have archery down, but still trying to connect the hunting dots by reading books, posts and talking with life long hunters. So anyway up to this point for me all I have ever seen buck wise are spikes, 4 pointers and 1 basket six. Let's just say that changed. So I have caught movement and see this buck coming from my left and I see antlers! My heart begins to beat just a little faster. He continues towards me and gets to about 30 yards, still in the thick cane, but I can make out his rack and he is a nice Georgia 8 pointer. Now if I was to guess a score and age on this guy I would say about an 85 inch 2.5 year old. Needless to say I would have been excited about this deer. He continues my way working a couple scrapes and feeding on acorns taking his sweet time. He is about 5 yards from my shooting lane which will put him at 25 yards. It's at this point he turns away form me and puts his head down to feed so I decide to take this moment to come to full draw. I get locked in and continue to watch. Not knowing how long he is going to take to move those next 5 yards, I have the "bright idea" to rest my bottom limb on the rail of my Summit Viper to aide me in holding at full draw. I'm at full draw for just a minute or so when he steps into my lane. He stops perfectly broadside in my lane and I hit the trigger when I hear "CLANK"!!!! Yep you guessed it, I forget to lift my bow up off the rail. The result is a loud noise, errant arrow flight and one disappointed bowhunter. This buck does not bolt out of the area but he goes about 20 yards deeper into the thick stuff and stays for about 20 more minutes feeding around me but never is calm again and never steps back out of the thick stuff. I have a feeling that this will be one of those moments that I will relive for a while. All that practice and I goofed up in another way. I couldn't believe it and it made me sick. That is one mistake that I bet I do not make again.
I did the same thing a couple years ago by mistake. Left a nice little gash on my Summit too. Btw...just be glad you didn't injur him. Now thats a sick feeling. Good luck man!
I never rested my bow on the side of my stand on purpose, but I missed an 8-yard chip shot at a doe several yards back because I banged the cam of my Black Ice off the side of my Summit Cobra. The following year, I hunted out of a Lone Wolf hand climber and never looked back.
Phillip, I know the feeling all too well bud. Banged my old hoyt off the stand on a chip shot back in the day. Clank, the bow almost flew out of my hands and I am wondering what happened. The nick in my cam finally told the story. When you headed back down?
Suck that it went down like that. There are a thousand lessons that we can only learn by making the mistakes ourselves... just sucks that it was such a nice buck
I inspected my bow afterwards and saw no dents or anything. I also shot it back at camp and everything was still dialed in, so i did get lucky in that aspect. Right now the next planned trip down there is the weekend after Thanksgiving. But I'll be taking my boys out with me and don't have a lot of hope for hunting that weekend. I may try to slip down there sooner by myself to get back in there, just not positive I'll be able to yet. Until then I'm actually going to be hunting a new (new to me anyway) place. It's a bow only WMA that's right beside another WMA I like to hunt. With the rifle season open I don't really care for hunting the public land and this solves that problem.
A little bit of irony I should mention about it is that it was only my 2nd hunt this season in my Summit. I have hunted out of lock-ons up until this point. I switched to the Summit, for the comfort, when I plan for longer or all day sits.
