I spent most of the weekend helping my brother Brady, track & butcher up his buck. Unfortunately, he hit the buck at a bad angle and a little back, in the liver which made for a long tracking job. Here is the story as told by my brother. ----------------------------------------------- "I was super excited to go hunting last weekend. It was my first weekend of bow hunting this year after a few unsuccessful black powder hunts. I was anticipating seeing some pre-rut activity. Both Friday night and Sat morning hunts yielded no bucks. I saw more coyotes than I did deer during these two hunts. I decided to put up a new stand on Friday afternoon near some areas that I scouted that showed lots of ground scrapes along a fence row. On Sat night, I entered the stand around 4:15 with high hopes. I saw a couple does right away and a small 2-year-old buck. I did some soft rattling several times hoping to peak some curiosity. about 6:30, I had a decent 8-point come out onto the field. After about 15 minutes of eating, he winded me and jumped away. My hopes slowly faded away as sunset neared. I started packing up right around 7 with no deer in sight. After I had all my gear bundled up and put away, I started to stand up and climb down the tree. Just as was about to take a step down, I noticed a big deer about 80 yards away coming towards me. I placed my pack down on the platform and started to dig my release out. Normally I always keep my release on me until I get back to the truck, but I had lost it Sat morning only to find it again and I didn?t want to lose it for the 2nd time. The buck kept on coming closer and closer as I tried to put my release on. I accidently pulled the loop out of the handle of the release. I was now panicked and thinking that it was going to take me forever to thread it back through. I decided in a split second that I could hold the release for a short while tightly gripping the handle. I then knocked an arrow and took aim. I held the release only long enough to get a bead on the buck and I let the arrow fly. I made solid contact at about 25 yards and the buck ran away. It all happened so fast. I knew the buck was a shooter from a general glance at it, but I had no idea of how many points it had. I felt like I made a good shot. We waited several hours before we started tracking him. We found the arrow where I initially shot the deer at because it had done a complete pass-through. The blood trail was pretty decent at first with lots of sign. Over the next several hours, my dad, brother, sister-in-law, and I tracked the deer. There were many times where we couldn?t find any more blood for over 20 minutes of looking. Eventually we would find a small speck on a leaf and keep the tracking going. My hopes started to dwindle as the hours passed and the blood trail almost vanished. We ended up tracking the deer to a corn field in which we lost the blood trail for good. We searched everywhere but had no luck. We decided to call it a night at 1AM. Dad and I came out early Sun morning to see if we could find anything else in the light. After getting to the property, my dad spotted some fresh tracks in the road. We jumped out to check the tracks and spotted some blood on the rock road. My hopes immediately skyrocketed as we were on the trail again. We trailed him for another 500 yards of field until he came to another wooded area. Just as we popped over a little knoll in the woods, I saw him. We scored him at 163 with a 21-inch spread. He is a 5x6, with a split-brow tine. The angle that I shot him just missed both lungs, but still got the liver."
Is this the same brother who shoots a big buck his first sit of the year every year? Congrats to him!
