I am about half done, was exhausted afterwards and had to fly out of town, will be back tomorrow so it will get posted by Sat for sure. Sent from my iPad using Bowhunting.com Forums
Well things just got super interesting at one of my scouted spots. I guess a planned robbery gone bad at a state game land parking lots... https://www.google.com/amp/wkbn.com/2017/10/26/mercer-police-investigating-fatal-shooting/amp/ Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
Posted this in the live from the stand thread. This was early this morning. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Well boys this sickness has gotten the worst of me. Don’t know if I’m making it out in the am Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
Looks like I have the immune system of a child. They think it is hand foot mouth and it has to run it’s natural course over the next few days. Feels like I stuck my hands and feet in boiling water Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
Alright boys all posted up scored 87 3/4 , the 50 point doe is next. Someone said last year that if we average each man 100 points total on the team it puts you at or very near the top to win. Keep at it weather is perfect, headed to ky Ranch in two weeks. Ready to see if any beans survived. . Sent from my iPad using Bowhunting.com Forums
Blackbear, you need time and date of kill on your entry. Also, noticed you were missing an H4 measurement on one of the beams. Didn’t take the time to add your score up to see if you just omitted it on the post or when you did the actual scoring as well. Might be over 90 with that so every point is worth it!
The Story of Cocoa So not nearly as exciting of a tail as my son’s buck, but I’ll give a quick run down on my Thursday morning harvest of my buck. Really wanted to get out Wednesday night, but I had committed to helping a friend move. It was a perfect night and it was killing me to not be out. To make matters worse, my father in law was out and saw 6 different bucks including Cocoa and 2 other shooters. He missed an opportunity because he was watching another nice buck and got caught by surprise. Well, I bargained with the good Lord to reward me for my selflessness the night before on my Thursday morning hunt. Winds were light out of SE which isn’t ideal but you just never know where they are going to come from so I got into my stand about 30 minutes before shooting hours. I left the side of the property that all the bucks had been on the night before to my father in law and went to hunt my favorite stand. I’m fiddling around with my backpack to get stuff ready when a doe blows from my food plot about 10 minutes before light. She snorted quick and just trotted off. No idea where she came from, but she was upwind so didn’t act too rattled. Right at shooting light two doe make their way into my food plot and mill around for a few minutes. They make their way to me and exit into the woods on a trail right under my stand, but just to the east. Another doe and fawn come out about 50 yards west of me and move to the south. Deer movement was really good already. I get a text from my wife. She was supposed to be taking my son to a morning doctor appt and my two year old daughter was going with them. She said I might need to get down and come home since my daughter wasn’t awake. This is the one disadvantage of hunting across the road from your house! My daughter is almost always up by 6:30 so of course on the day I want to hunt, she sleeps in. It’s now 7:20 and as I’m texting my wife, a doe walks out of the woods right next to me on a trail about 7 yards away from my stand. I thought it was one of the doe that walked in before, but it was quickly evident that it was a different one. She was huge! A really old doe. She continues walking to the south up one of my mown trails heading to the saplings and CRP. I catch movement out of the corner of my eye through the thicket on the same trail that the doe just came from. Out steps a nice buck into my plot following a ways behind the doe. In about two seconds, I attempt to identify him as a shooter and figure out which buck he is. I think it’s a buck we called Cocoa, but the rack with the side that had velvet is facing away from me as he isn’t walking into the plot. He stops in an opening at about 12 yards quartering away from me. I drew back, settled the pin, and touched my release to send the arrow on its way! I see the entry and the buck charges forward into the brush and is struggling. I can see a lot of my arrow sticking out so that concerned me a bit, but I was pretty sure my shot was true. He’s plowing right through thick brush and small saplings. He runs about 50 yards and disappears. The adrenaline rush kicks in and I start the usual post shot shaking. Send some texts to the usual people and my wife (my daughter was up!) to pass some time as well as my post here to our team. My father in law decided to sleep in a bit so he was just coming down our lane on the far side of the property. I decided to walk out to meet him and give the deer some more time. I was 99% sure the buck had crashed, but everything happened so quickly that I was second guessing my shot, which buck it was, if it was big, etc. My father in law and I returned to the shot sight and quickly found good blood on the edge of my plot where he entered into the brush. The blood trail was easy to follow and it was evident very quickly that there would likely be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Found my arrow. About 18” penetration and coated with blood. Walked another 20 paces or so and there he was! It was Cocoa. He was even more massive than I thought. He had gone about 50 yards. He was my #1 target buck because I felt he was the oldest buck on the property that I had on camera. The fun part was dragging him across our flooded marsh bottom. The ATV definitely came in handy, but it was still a long ordeal. He weighed in at 194.2 lbs dressed almost 24 hours later. The mass and velvet left on his antlers just make him really unique and I couldn’t be happier. Everyone who sees him in person comments how he looks bigger in person than he does in pictures and I agree. He definitely got bigger as I walked up to him. So there’s the story! Now I sit on my butt for a while and live vicariously through everyone else. Good luck teammates. I’ll still try and add a doe, but don’t want to stir up our property for my father in law just to shoot a doe and I really don’t need the meat at this point with almost 150 lbs of venison in the freezer from our two bucks shot this year. Added a few pics to the story.
Hey guys I have pretty bad internet up here but I got a doe last night and am headed back out for the morning hunt. Let’s keep this hot streak going
