Gentleman, there may he a giant down. Has only half of his rack but it's a heck of a half. Going in after him in a couple hours.
I'm still hunting. Wish it were a buck but I was given a clean shot on a good doe and took it last night. More meat in the freezer.
Heading in with a dog this morning, real good blood for quite a while, got liver and stomach. We bumped him from his bed and then tracked a bit farther as the bed didn't appear to be too fresh but with the cold dry temps I'm guessing it made the bed and blood dry more quickly giving it the appearance of not being fresh. I'll keep ya guys updated!
The track came up empty. Going back out tomorrow hopefully as long as I get the go ahead from my better half. Idk if he got pushed by yotes or what. I should have backed out and I knew better than to track when there's stomach contents but with the amount of blood I was over confident. This year has been a year of lessons.
Dang that sucks hopefully you’ll be able to look again tomorrow Sent from my iPhone using ]][emoji[emoji6]]]Bowhunting.com Forums
These are the ones we learn the most from. Makes you a better tracker moving forward. No two are the same. Side note. I took the bow out last evening. Saw 6 doe but, could not get in shot range.
I haven't submitted the score yet but on that one beam he was 60 inches with many tines busted. He broke off a large part of his brow that would have been split, tips of his g2, g3 and g4, as well as an inside tine by his g4 as well as parts of his extra points at the end of his main beam and also his entire right side which I'm guessing would have been gnarly just from the base. I went back out to the piece of public that I went out on in early season where I dang near sweated out all my water. I got back to where I was initially going to set up and it didn't look good so I went to where the public and private meet and I know the deer bed in this 11 acres of pines and other junk. My wind was not favorable so it'd be God's grace if it worked out. I had a button buck come out at about 330 and he was eating in the cut beans with my wind going right to him (too young to know the difference) and then at about 4 deer just started piling out onto the private eating some grass. I started glassing and watched this guy come out about 150 yards away and he was eating then chasing a doe and headed back into the pines. A nice 8 pointer followed the big buck into the pines and after a while the single antlered buck came back out and was eating at about 45 yards, still on private. The 8pt then comes out into the beans which is public and wants to eat but smells me but just stands at attention trying to figure out what's going on, i get a range of 35 yards and i grab my bow and am just waiting for him to turn broadside but finally just bounds back to the private. At this point all the deer are staring my way trying to figure out what's going on so I think I'm busted, then their attention goes to the woods behind me and they get spooked and start to just trot over onto public. The big one follows and I know he's going to enter the field about where the 8pt did and so i figure he'll be at about 35 yards so I grab my bow and get drawn. He comes across and I stop him and let the arrow fly. The diaphragm pops and he runs like a son of a gun down the edge of the field and back onto private. I get down and find good blood but there's also stomach contents so I back out and go to a buddies. We head out to go look with another buddy at which point it's been about 4 hours. We fond real good blood and eventually my arrow which is caked in frozen blood. We follow blood to a small island and find 4 beds and a bunch of frothy blood so I think he's probably dead. We track some more but blood becomes sparse and we finally get to the point where there's no blood so we back out. Dog comes to help look on Saturday and after 4 hours I gotta head to a birthday so we leave. The tracker asks if she can go back in the morning and if I want to as well but I tell her we have church so I can't get there at 730. I receive a call this morning at 820 letting me know she found the buck and as it turns out I was about 49 yards from him at one point and the dog tried to cross a fence but it didn't make sense the deer would go over a fence with the shot (stomach, liver and one lung) but he went to where he had elevation in crp. The unfortunate part was that the meat was all spoiled...I thought I might be able to salvage some of it but the front quarters and neck even smelt atrocious so I'm bummed about that.
