Well where do I begin... This will probably be decently long, so a TLDR version will be at the bottom for your convenience :D I guess this all started years ago when I was in 7th grade, as I started working out where I now hunt. Fast forward to 4 years ago, I started hunting this property (640 acres of pasture and wooded draws and creek bottoms). The very first deer I got pics of with my old POS Primos camera was a 10 point, but he had 7 points on his left side and 3 on his right side. I thought this was odd, so I named him 3rd and 7, because we all know its cool to name "your" deer these days. I got quite a few pictures of him that summer, and I even passed him one time that season. It was hard to do, because I hadn't been hunting that long and I just plain liked killing deer with my bow But he made it through the whole season and winter, and I got pics of him the next summer. He looked almost identical to the previous year, except for one more point he added onto his right side. As with the season before, I was getting tons of pictures of 3rd and 7 all summer in velvet. Along comes season again, but he is still not what I wanted to take for my one buck of the year. Just my luck, he comes by my stand and I am forced to pass him even though I almost couldn't talk myself out of it. I never saw him in the stand again that year, but continued to get plenty of pics of him nearly every night. Last year, the deer became a little more "normal" in the rack department. He grew 6 points on one side and 5 points on the other, but it was definitely the same deer. He was looking slightly more impressive that year, but I still decided that I was not going to take him even if given the opportunity to. I ended up passing this deer twice last year, each time at less than 15 yards perfectly broadside without a care in the world. It was very hard to do because I already had so much history with him, but that's what makes this story awesome for me. Now we come to this year... I was getting many many pictures of this deer all summer hitting the Monster Raxx sites I had established. The season gets here, and I am now completely focused on taking 3rd and 7 this year. I did not know where this deer was bedding, but I knew where he was heading every evening for the most part. I always planned on sitting this stand with a north wind, but apparently he was coming from the south. I actually saw this deer in late September while bowhunting the early season, but he was downwind of me. He threw his nose up, and took off like a coyote getting shot at with an AR15 I was pretty down on myself after that. But he kept coming to the same area during the evenings and at night, so I kept my hopes up. One month ago this coming tuesday, I had my first true encounter with this deer for the 2013 season. 3rd and 7 came in to my mineral site and corn pile right before dark. He walked in and started eating corn, but he was angling hard away from me (pretty much at 11:00). I tried forcing the shot, which was a terrible decision, and I hit him slightly forward and slightly high. I didn't know exactly how I hit the deer, so I backed out and came back in the morning just to be safe. There was absolutely NO blood around the impact site, not even a pin drop. Me, my dad, and 4 of my buddies looked everywhere in this draw for 3 hours, and never found the deer or the blood. My buddies had to leave for class, but I stayed to look longer. We stumbled onto blood 200 yards from the point of impact, but I couldn't track the blood back towards the shot, only forward. I followed pretty good blood for another 200 yards or so, finding softball sized pools of blood about ever 25 yards. The trail dipped down a hill, and just vanished, not another drop. I spent another 2 hours in a 10 yard radius of last blood trying to find more, but no luck. I finally had to give up. I was dragging *** for another week, thinking I had killed this deer and just couldn't find him, but I was out there every day looking for birds or listening for coyotes while hunting. A week after I shot 3rd and 7, I was walking to another stand in the morning and saw some eyes glowing back at me. I brought up my binos while my mag lite was on the eyes, and sure enough it was him! He was alive and well, with only a slight limp it looked like. Another week after that sighting, I started getting pics of him again on my fleet of Covert cameras. I knew it was game on again. He kept to a pretty regular schedule of coming in about an hour after dark, but he would come in every now and then right at last light. 2 nights ago, he came in while I was still in the stand, the only problem was it was 10 minutes after dark. I watched him and waited for him to leave on his own, which took about 45 minutes. I woke up this morning, and something just felt different. Normally I wake up at 4:00 in the morning and beat the snooze button until about 4:30 or so, but today I hopped right out of bed at 4:00 sharp. I headed to my spot about 20 minutes away from the house, changed in the shop in record time, and slipped down the hill into my stand. I got settled in 45 minutes before light, and things just felt different than normal. I had two does come in right after first light, but they walked off with no action following. At 7:40 I had a doe come from the south, and I could hear a buck grunting behind her. I grabbed my bow and got ready, and just in time too. 3rd and 7 was walking behind her, nose to the ground and grunting, and he walked right in front of my stand. 25 yards, perfectly broadside, my Black Eagle and Killzone zipped right through him. He made it 50 yards and started teetering and fell over right in front of me. TLDR: 4 years of pics, passed a couple times, shot once and didn't find, more pics, 25 yard shot and 50 yard recovery. And now the only thing people care about, pictures He ended up scoring 177 6/8" (Shut up Pat )
That seems a little low for the score considering the source Great buck....I'm jealous....you suck.....Congratulations....that sums it up about right
Congrats cole, kind of brutal getting that text while I'm at work and not out hunting. Awesome buck, glad you got another shot at him.
Oh and ihunt, do you still have any pictures from previous years? I would really like to see what he looked like in the past.
They are all on my laptop, which is nothing but a large paperweight now. I'll see if I can fire it up long enough to get some pics off, but don't hold me to it.
Cole Once again you get the job done and yet on another great buck,hats off to you, congrat's . Rocky
Goodness gracious! Some of the bucks you guys kill are absolutely unreal. I would fall out of my treestand if I had one of those bad boys coming my way.
