I wasn’t panicking – after all, I took my last two bucks going into the fourth week of November – but I was getting slightly nervous, mainly because I accepted a position starting on Halloween that’s a major step up for me in prestige, responsibility and technical knowledge needed. This would be the first year in almost a decade I haven’t had November 3 – 12 off for vacation; I would be relegated to only weekend hunting, adding to my self-induced pressure. The texts rolling in from all my buddies depicting monster after monster wasn’t helping. One of my local buddies shot me a text mid-morning yesterday saying he was hunting within about 30 minutes of where I was. I invited him to meet me for lunch and we’d hunt together that evening. A lot of walking after lunch and a little game-planning put us on the opposite side of a six-foot wide creek on public land that would serve to keep the majority of others away from us. At 2:20 p.m., I heard footsteps nearby – clearly enough to cause me to reach for my bow. I slowly stood and scanned the ridge I was on searching for the source of those footfalls; I was never able to locate them. Ten minutes later, something crashed into the same area coming out of the cut corn field to my right. I stood and immediately saw a huge body entering the woods and beginning to angle away behind me paralleling the woodline. I grabbed my grunt call and began a series of contact grunts, which were ignored. I stepped up the volume and finally got his attention – but he looked the wrong way back into the corn field. One more loud grunt snapped his neck my direction. I waited until he finally swung his massive neck away and gave one more brief grunt and he started trotting my direction. I turned to my right expecting him to circle and head toward the base of my tree. When I realized that he was going to continue on straight behind my tree, I had to perform a quick little dance as I turned all the way back around to my left to be able to draw on the opposite side of the tree. Just as I maneuvered into position, he came to a stop at 20 yards – broadside. It’s the first of five deer I’ve shot this year (first four being does) that actually gave me the much-relished perfect broadside shot. I didn’t hesitate, snapping my bow to full draw and settling the pin just behind the shoulder mid-body before letting autopilot take over. I watched my fletching disappear exactly where my pin was a moment before, and the old monarch trotted 40 yards away before coming to his final resting place. I texted my buddy “I just shot a buck” and a second later received one from him: “Buck coming your way” and “Wow” was in the same text; he had seen the buck running through the cut corn field coming toward my ridge, and was going to send me a heads-up. While he was still typing “buck coming your way”, my text made it to him before he could even hit the “send” button, hence his warning and surprise in the same text. I waited for him to get down and make it over to me before even going and pulling the arrow out of the dirt and we admired what a 125-grain Muzzy MX-3 can do when you center-punch both lungs on a big animal. We walked over and both just stood for several minutes talking about how huge his body was, and after inspecting him for several minutes both agreed that it was very possible he was on the decline after a majestic reign in these woods. He has huge, gnarly bases with stickers coming from all around, but his beams and tine length are extremely short. This area produces frames that will make for 160 bucks at 4 ½ years old (in fact, I had a 2 ½ year-old 125 in front of me yesterday morning at six steps), so I’m really inclined to think that given his body size and bases that he’s seen better days. No matter, I’m extremely happy with him and he’s on his way to my taxi later today. This view gives you a glimpse at how gnarly his bases are:
How'd his teeth look that'll give a better statement to age than body size and bases...not questioning your gut because our gut instincts are pretty accurate when it comes deer I know. Congrats on a superb buck man!!! Love thick rough bases for sure!
I'll be looking at those later today at the taxi's place... I was exhausted when I finally got this boy home last night, and my processor stayed open to let me get him in the cooler that same night. We caped him out on the spot, and I had to run across town to get one of my 90-gallon coolers out of storage from my Dad's place; then, I had to go get 5 bags of ice to cool his cape down with. I'll definitely be examining him closer later today (already on a conference call for my new job right now...) but as I alluded to here or maybe somewhere else, I've hunted this area for 16 years and know the frames these genetics produce... even the 2 1/2-year-olds produce awesome frames; it just takes a couple years to flesh out the mass on them. But thanks for the congrats; really appreciate it.
Congrats on the gnarly buck Greg. Did you happen to get a dressed weight on that guy? I didn't see any buck movement in the Clinton MO area this weekend.
