Great Season Ends with a Nice Buck Let me preface this story with some background from last season. I started hunting a piece of property near my home part time in 2013 and decided to get serious about it and quit driving 2.5 hours up north. I put in a lot of time on the new property scouting and taking out water weekly to a barrel I had out there (since there isn't much water near there). I put in a ton of hours hunting last year and just missed on a couple of opportunities on a couple of nice bucks. I came up empty last year and was wondering if I made the right decision on hunting this property. This year I didn't put water out all summer and just did it a few weeks before my 1st hunt. I did move my stand but not too far from where it was. My first sit I shot a doe (turned out to be a nubbin buck) and put a heart shot on it at 27 yards. I was felling better about things. My 3rd sit was yesterday morning and in the first hour this nice 2.5 year old 7 pointer came limping in right at me. He had no clue I was there and was able to make a good double lung shot at 8 yards. I watched him go about 40-50 yards and lay down. I was pumped. Unfortunately he got up a few minutes later and started walking. I waited about an hour and a half and went looking for him. I had a nice blood trail and then it just stopped. I was confident in my shot and that he was dead but I went and got my 2 sons to help me track it. We looked for about 45 minutes and never found another drop of blood. We just started covering the woods in a grid pattern an I found him. He had gone about another 40 yards from the last blood. He is the biggest buck I have gotten with a bow and I am very happy to have had the chance to harvest this nice deer. He isn't large enough to do a shoulder mount but I do plan on doing a European skull mount.
Thanks! I love this quote! Pope And Young do not consider does as deer or crossbows as archery equipment.
Well it is true, Pope and Young had some interesting comments in a book. Their thoughts on shooting does and fawns was that only a starving man shoot a doe or fawn.
Nice job! Assuming that's the entrance hole in the pic, where did the arrow exit? If he was broadside he's dead within seconds. Just curious if the shot was quatering-to and it took out one lung & liver, which may explain him getting up and moving again. Either way congrats on a fine animal.
He was broadside and it wasn't a pass through shot. I never found my arrow. The liver was perfectly intact so depending on the penetration it either got one or two lungs (my guess). The liver theory is logical though.
