2015 was one of the hardest seasons I had came across. This year had it's fair share of ups and downs. From falling out of a tree stands while hanging a ladder stand, now to harvesting my biggest buck to date. This year was a very slow year for me. The bucks were hard to locate, or else they were nocturnal. Then the rut started, this brought a lot of bucks to the area, but could never could get a deer come in to where I was comfortable in making a clean shot. On December 8th 2015, The weather was in the upper forty's (which is abnormal for North Dakota this time of the year). I Headed to a spot that I recently hung a few days before, this stand was on top of a ridge in middle of the timber. I got to the stand at about 3:00. The deer started moving as soon I got everything set up. In the first hour and half the deer total was up to 7 doe and fawns. At 5:00 I notice a smaller 4 by4 making his down the trail towards my stand. I grab my bow and was waiting for him to give me a clear shot. Lucky for me he never gave me a clear shot. As the 4by4 started browsing for shrubs. I noticed a bigger buck 40 yards behind him. This buck was one of my hit list buck. As he made his way into my stand he noticed the smaller buck and chased him off. The bigger buck ended up only twenty yards for my stand. I drew back and settled the pin right behind his shoulder. The squeezed the trigger and the arrow light up. The arrow punch him right where I was aiming. The buck did a great big kick and quickly ran off. As he was running I noticed blood just pouring out of him. I gave him about 2 hours to expire. We pick up the blood trail at the impact zone of arrow. There was a lot blood immediately. About 20 minutes into the recovery we noticed him lying about 5 yards to our right. The buck only made it about 250 yards before expiring. This buck is my largest one killed to date. The only way I ended up getting lucky and harvesting this buck, was because I noticed my stands weren't producing buck that I wanted, so I tried something way different then I normal do and hung a stand in this spot.
