About three years ago my dad and I got permission on a nice 150 acre farm close to our homes. A large chunk of it is mostly hay fields, but there is an old over grown apple orchard on the west side of the property. We new the property was holding some good bucks, but most of the camera activity was during the night. After hunting the first year with sighting of smaller bucks and does we decided to give the property a break the following year and not hunt but only run cameras on it. A few nice bucks showed up on camera that had great potential which got us excited for the upcoming 2013 season. We started running cameras again late September and after a few weeks we checked the cards. There were a couple really nice bucks as usual, but one buck really stood out from the rest. He was a 10pt mainframe with split G3's on both sides. He was hitting the hay field early mornings before sunrise and coming in right after shooting light like most mature bucks do, no surprise there . We new we couldn't hunt this buck right away and had to wait until he started showing himself during shooting hours. He was using the old apple orchard as his bedding area and there wasn't a tree big enough to hang a stand, so we brushed in a ground blind 40yds from the trail he was using to enter the field. Finally on 10/13 he showed himself 30 minutes earlier than normal which gave us the green light to move in. Waiting for the right wind was critical and dad was first up to bat. On Friday 10/18 we checked the wind for Saturday one last time and it was perfect for an evening sit. Dad decided to use his Xbow since he was into his 3rd year hunting with his compound and wasn't confident hunting out of a ground blind with it. I got the call around 7:30p.m. and the first words out of his mouth were "I hit'em back". He was sick and could barely talk on the phone. He felt the shot was good at first but after retrieving the bolt, it had the gut smell with little blood. I told him the only thing we could do is back out and go after him in the morning. After a sleepless night for him and myself and a call to one of our buddies for help, we started the search around 9 a.m. the following morning. There wasn't a drop of blood anywhere, but there was only three trails he could have used to exit that side of the field so we each took one and slowly started walking. After a short 10min 50yd search I seen a large grayish brown lump laying in the waist high weeds to my right. There he was, the biggest bodied deer I personally have ever seen. After my very loud "WoooooHoooooo" my dad and buddy Jason made there way over and we were exchanging high fives. The shot was low and back hitting the liver and exiting out right in front of the rear leg. The coyotes found him during the night and tore up the rear end pretty bad eating most of the back hams, but still the buck dressed out at 215lbs. Congrats dad on another great buck!
Wow now that is a great buck!! Big time congratulations to your dad!! Goes to show that even a crossbow isn't a guarantee to a perfect shot. Glad you were able to find it even though the yotes did a number on him.
I'm getting tired of congrats I need some! Lol, nice mature deer, congrats to your dad! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
Awesome Buck! Congrats to you and your Dad. On a side note, good job with the pics also, that really represents that animal well, especially with the yote damage. I would have never known if you hadn't said anything.