I left camp around 5:00 to check a few of my new bear baits and grabbed the video camera to get some summer footage of bucks in the new clear cuts. I sat for about 3 hours and only saw a couple dinks and a bunch of does. Well, after the 16 mile ride back to camp on the 4-wheeler, one of my guests tells me about the big 10 400 yards from camp feeding in the water. I believe its the same buck thats been hanging around here the fast few years. Tomorrow I think I'll save my ass and jump in the boat for a short ride instead.
Here's the kicker. My buddy Johnny was hunting about 800 yrds from camp 2 falls ago. With about 3 nights left in the hunt he tells me about this big 10 he had at 8 yards and couldn't get drawn on. Oh yeah, he tells me it has a sticker on one of its G2s. On our last day in camp, just before dark, I remembered I had left a trail cam out about 1 mile from camp. I jump on the quad and take off down the road. Just as I'm about to cross the bridge about 200 yrds from camp I see this buck standing in the road. I hit the brakes, start sliding on the ice and damn near hit this buck.....the big 10 with the sticker on the G2. So, I get back to camp just after dark as Johnny gets in from hunting. I start telling him about my encounter with the buck he nearly shot. Of course, he's calling me a liar. Half way through the story this deer runs past us at about 10-12 yards. I turned the headlights on in the truck.....yep its him, waving the proverbial finger at us.
Dont it figure! He needs a little payback for shooting you all the hoof. When I lived in Kansas I had about a 40 minute drive to my hunting spot, One night ruttnutt comes in, walks straight into the living room and starts looking back and forth at the deer heads, looks at me and says, Dad why aint you hunting down here on the corner, there are 2 down there right now that makes these look like Bambi. I had filmed quite a few bucks that would go in the 130/40 range but had never see anything like he was talking about in that general area. Couple days later the Wife and I were going to town right at prime time and sure enough, a 10 with some stickers that would go 170 and a slick 12 that would crack 190" eating in a field less than a mile from the house.
Both sheds were found within 3/4s of a mile from where we live. I did see the buck once the summer before he shed in the same area. Tried hunting him a couple times but never seen him. No one got him as far as I know but we never seen him again or found his sheds again. Tim
Now thats a set of sheds. I got some video of the 2 we seen in Kansas but its gritty from being zoomed out so far, alls you can tell is the height, width, and mass on them,could never get permission to hunt there. They were comming into the field from a draw that led out into nowhere. When I lived in Kentucky I hunted a deer my family and one close friend (I have found over the years its not such a good idea to let to many friends know what your hunting) called Club Foot from the tips of his hooves being rounded off. He was a typical 12 and the biggest bodied, widest rack deer I have ever seen to date, although he would not have scored that well due to short tine length. Never could find a shed, no one ever killed him and after 4 seasons of hunting him it was like he droped off the face of the earth. It amazes me where some of these big deer can live and go undetected, then just seam to pop up at times. Have a friend here in Michigan whos father in law told him of a giant of a buck that had just appeard behind the house, he just wrote it off as the father in law being a non hunter till they were over paying a visit one day and the buck came out. He killed that buck the first day he hunted it after spending 2 1/2 hours in the stand and said it like to drove him crazy listning to people talking, doors opening and closing, TV's, Radios, and cars going up and down the road. It was one square mile of AG land with a 20 acre pothole of a cattail swamp with very few trees in the middle of it completly surronded with paved roads and houses just outside of a major city. It scored just under 170 and was 6 1/2 years old, No one had ever seen it befor and had no Idea where it had come from.
Yep, its crazy how close they can live to you. My buddy found a set this spring about 1/2 mile from camp. It was a typical 13 with 3 or 4 stickers. The tines weren't overly long, wasn't real wide, had shorter beams ,but was probably pusing 150.....typical big woods buck. Not to mention, around the edge of camp, I'm talking in our yard, it gets ripped up every fall. Three years ago, my dad pulled in for the late October hunt with a couple other guys. They notice this buck with 2 does about 150 yards away in the camp. Well, dad grabs his binos and sees probably the biggest buck he's ever seen up here. All three of them said it was massive and tall, but narrow. Yep, they can live right under our noses and we may never know it.
They can also live right under our noses all year and then vanish for exactly a season to the day and then be back. If if was easy everyone would do it.
