Congrats, way to stick with it. Now that I see him, maybe buck fever had a little to do with the shot missing the target. That is one heck of a buck. You never mentioned how big/cool looking he is. Lets see some different angles.
Way to go! Great ending to this type of thread. You did the right thing and if a lot others would follow your lead they would have happy endings as well. Congrats!
Finally one of these has went the hunters' way. I applaud your handling of it, too many times people go in and push them way too soon when caught up in the rollercoaster of emotions. Myself included. It just goes to show that the methods set out by many who have been there work, and when the hand is played out the recovery efforts are minimal. Congrats on a great buck, I'm not sure what I was envisioning but wow, didn't expect him! Even if he was a spike or button, we owe it to all of them to go about it this way.
Went onto google maps and used the distance measuring tool, and the best I can figure out (the map is about 4 years old so alot of the landmarks have changed, it was logged shortly after the photo was taken) the buck initially went about 140 yards from where I hit him. When we went back about 4 hours later and kicked him out of his bed he ran about 40 yards, then an additional 25-30 yards, we found him this afternoon (about 24 hours after the shot) about 30 yards from where we saw him last. Dinked around with pictures and other looking at the shot area, phone calls, etc.... for about 2 hours, so gutted him out around 3pm, he was still warm on the inside, legs and neck were still pretty flexible, so I would bet he probably saw the sun come up before he expired.
I knew he was interesting, only got to look at him about for about a couple seconds through the binoculars, before he started moving and I had to decide if I was going to shoot or watch him go by through the binocs, you can probably guess what I picked. Interesting thing happened, guy I know in the neighborhood showed me a trail cam picture he had of this buck that was taken October 31st of this buck, no doubt it is the same buck, the camera was slightly over a mile away if you draw a straight line between where I shot him and where the camera was. Talking to another guy that lives in town, and he had seen this buck at his bird feeder several times and that is 1.75 miles in a straight line. So this buck was covering almost 3 miles from the extremes, you know bucks move, but this goes to show how much ground they do cover this time of the year.....
For those that are intersted: Shot was at the blue dot in the lower right of the map, Point of the shot looking back at the stand: The buck ran about 40 yards to the red dot, and I flung an arrow at him (as bad as I was shaking at the time, flung is being generous) he then ran about 30-40 yards then walked to the green dot, bedded up there and I snuck out of the stand, this is where we kicked him up 4 hours later. (at 120 yards traveled at the green dot) After we kicked him up, he went to the light blue dot, and as we were trying to back out quietly (we were 85-100 yards away at the time) he walked over to the yellow dot, and bedded up. Came back 24 hours later and had the guy that saw where he bedded up direct me in by radio (and earphone) to where he saw him last, got to the spot and couldn't see anything (total distance traveled now is about 210 yards) Now the area between the green dot and the light blue dot is all blackberry bushes about shoulder height and other assorted brush, and they all have thorns, I wasn't looking forward to gridding all that out, so I started wandering over to where my dad posted to make sure the buck didn't attempt to sneak out away from us. Just as I got to my dad (who was about 15 yards from the buck at that time) I look up and see this (by the purple dot) zoomed in Shed hunting pays off sometimes, I saw the horn sticking out like a sore thumb. All told, closest I can figure, the buck traveled about 246 yards, ended up expiring in site of the stand.....(little brown blob under the red arrow, picture taken from in the stand) Happy day.....
