Come on now. We've all got one, or several. Fishing stories. We're hunters, we've got 'em. It's just how it is. I want to hear the story of the one that got away. I'll tell you mine. This was.......6 years ago now I guess. I was hunting an inside corner of a bean field during the rut. Great little spot. I've seen lots of deer here, and killed quite a few. I hunted the morning and had some errands I just had to get done so around 10 I got out of the tree. I was back in my stand at straight up noon. No sooner did I step onto the platform of the stand I hear running in the leaves to my left. I see a doe running for all she's worth with a HUGE buck hot on her tail. Yeah, headed right to me. The doe barrels by and the buck, which I'm tellin ya was AT LEAST a 200" 14 pointer ( :d ) hot on her tail. He stopped at a mere 12 yards, and I then realized my bow was still on the ground. He stood there for several moments before rejoining the chase. Well, it's mostly true anyway.
Ouch Don!! The one that really eats me up wasn't even a buck, It was a very nice high scoring P&Y Black Bear. He was close to B&C material I think. After this bear finally got down from the tree I was In he gave me a perfect shot with his ass slightly at me. I shot low under his tummy and hit him In the front left foot. Pissed I was when I found the arrow!! :mad1: I had no Idea I had hit him In the foot until 2 hours later when my family and I started tracking him, I was sure I had heart shot him being It was a low hit. I was 16 years old at the time and learned a valuable lesson about bear that year, their hair Is longer then I thought. I also did drop my bow arm though and peak, that was the big culprit and reason for where the arrow went.
Yeah I'd have to go with this past year's arrow flinging meltdown. Something about a buck running right at ya that just unnerves me. I guess that's why we do it.
Many of you may remember this story from a few years ago...........but I'll post it again for those of you that didn't see it. Keep in mind, this isn't a huge buck in many parts of the country, but in Southern Tier, NY.....this guy is a buck of a lifetime. November 6th, 2006 - 8:30am. I was sitting in my favorite rut stand at Dan's camp, and my freezer was empty. I finally decided to shoot a doe if presented with the opportunity. A group finally came through that morning all together and on a mission. I knew something had bumped them by their body language, but I had seen small bucks all morning, and I figured they had one of the dinks pushing them around. She stopped in the stream crossing pinch point I was watching at 18 yards, and I let her have it. After she ran off, seconds later I saw him sneaking away through the timber, he had watched me shoot her from less than 50 yards away and I was so focused on shooting her, that I never saw him until it was too late. Out of the same tree exactly one year earlier (to the day), I had passed him as a 2.5 y/o 8 pointer. We found both of his sheds as well from the year I had passed him. 3 weeks after I shot his girl and he got away, we found him gut shot by a gun and dead next to another stream about a 1/4 mile away. No one in our camp shot at him, and none of the neighbors had either, we don't know what happened to him to be honest. First two pics are of his rack and his sheds from the year I before when I passed him. Then a few pics of him as we found him that sad morning. Last pic is of him mounted using the cape of another buck I shot later that year. He is in the top 5 largest bucks I've personally seen in NY. We taped him at 127" if I remember correctly.
I've got more than a few stories of the one that got away, but two are most notable for me. Early November 2003 (or maybe 2002?). I was set up on the ground at the top of a finger that jutted into a CRP field and created a nice travel route for bucks leaving one large block of timber headed to the next block. 'Twas a foggy morning when I first spotted him making his way across the field below me. I grabbed my trusty Monster Buck Adjustable grunt tube, slid the o-ring up high, and let out a few doe bleats. The buck stopped, looked, turned, and made his way up the draw on a string. As he passed my first shooting lane I got greedy and decided to wait on him to get a bit closer. He closed in on my position and realized there was no love sick doe in the immediate vacinity, so he got nervous and began the slow walk back the way he came. Before he entered my lane for the 2nd time I drew back and readied for the shot. My dad's last words of advice from that morning echoed in my mind. "It looks further than it is because you're shooting across a ravine, but I'm telling you it's only 20 yards, maybe less". My own mind, clearly superior and not diluted by age and parenthood, trumped the advice and shouted "You're stupid! That's 25, maybe 30 yards! I will show you old man!" The buck stopped at the sound of my ultra-realistic mouth bleat and I let a 2315 sail roughly 17 feet over his back, into the foggy field, and out of my life forever. As the buck took his untouched hide and 150 inches of antler with him, I wished death up on my bow and that I had never taken up this cursed sport we call bowhunting. My second story comes from October 10th, 2007. The first good cold front of the year had moved in and temps dropped from the mid-70's into the 40's. I decided to sit in one of my old trusty locations known as the "swamp stand". To be honest, I'm not really sure why I went there as it's never produced anything other than does for me but with the crops still up surrounding this location and a brisk NW wind I had a feeling it would be a good night. Not 30 minutes into my hunt I spotted a nice buck roughly 100 yards in front of me. He must have been bedded within 200 yards when I got into my stand. He was on alert because of the high winds, and in no hurry to go anywhere. For the next hour I watched him make some rubs, make a scrape, and eventually work his way within 25 yards of my stand. At one point I watched this buck stand in the same spot and not move more than his ears for nearly 30 minutes. He simply stood there, looking off into the distance no doubt scanning for danger. As darkness began to fall the buck was within 5 yards of a clearning that would've given me a perfect 18 yard broadside shot. Not wanting to step into that clearing he too turned around and walked back the way he came. He passed through my last shooting lane at roughly 27 yards and I tried stop him. My first bleats went unheard in the winds so, already at full draw, I continued to bleat. The buck took a few more steps and stopped. It was now or never! Unfortunately he had gone just a bit too far and his chest was behind a small tree. I had to lean out from my stand to get around the tree, settle in, and shoot. From that point forward I have no idea what happened. I lost track of my arrow in flight, heard the impact, and saw the buck dash off. I waited until dark to get out of my stand and head back to the truck. Roughly 2 hours later I returned with Mike and my dad to take up the trail. We found blood, and good blood, but no deer within the first 100 yards so we decided to wait until morning. Mike and I returned the next morning with high hopes, but after more than 1 mile of tracking this deer, who never bedded down once, we finally lost the trail, and the buck. I looked and looked for hours and hours but never found him. The following spring we scoured the countryside where we lost the trail and came up emptyhanded. The buck was a good 4 1/2 year old deer I knew fairly well, and probably would've gone in the 140's. N
I found a big.. high 160s to low 170s grossing buck feeding in an alfalfa field in the summer of 2005. I had never seen him before until that late evening scout in August. I watched him a couple more times that summer, set up two stands to try to intercept him in that early season and shot a lot of footage of him from a summer observation stand I threw up about 200 yards down wind of the top end of that field. I hunted "for" this buck in the 05-06-07 seasons. I have not seen hide nor hair of him since those summer evenings in 05 and then one one more time in the summer of 06 both of them filmed. I have probably been hunting a dead buck but who knows maybe hes still around out there; if nothing else I hope he spred his seed around, because he was probably the second best buck I have ever hunted in my life here. I shed hunt the heck out of that area, always hoping to find some evidence of him being alive or even of him being dead, lots of times when I am out in his area I get the feeling I may walk up on his dead head someday. He did happen live/hangout pretty close to a 400 acre piece that NO one can hunt but the owners. Maybe they have him hanging on their wall, who knows.
Dang where do I start... Most recent was last season, I got to hunt a piece of property I'd never been on. Catch was, I could only hunt for 3 days. First afternoon I set out scouting and can't find a nice tree so I sit on a creek bank by a clump of trees overlooking a "deery" looking spot in the bottom. By 4:00 I'm seeing does in an adjacent wheat field. Soon after I spot a shooter in the creek bottom below me but can't get a shot. He makes his way to the field and starts chasing the does. I lose sight of them but then he and the does reappears right in front of me about 20 yds away. I come to full draw and he sees me but then starts walking towards the does. Right as he's going past some trees I settle my 20 yd pin and let her fly. The arrow just nicked the bottom of his brisket. In all the excitement, I didn't realize he was actually at 30 yds not 20. I never had a chance to range him. I tracked him the next morning but I knew it wasn't a fatal hit. I was sick to my stomach, I had practiced all year for that one shot and I blew it. I never saw another shooter the rest of the weekend or season for that matter.
After going 4 years without a shot at a mature buck I finnally see the biggest buck I have ever seen on my land. He is behind a doe about 80 yards away from me. All of a sudden I hear my atv coming and the deer headed the other way. I knew where he was going so I ran around to where I thought he was going to be coming out and there he stood at 7 yards with the same look I must have had on my face . That's not the end one of my buddies saw him in the gun season but couldn't get a shot.Then the biggest heart break of all time.It was the last weekend of bow season I was in a morning funnel that leads back to a bedding area. At 7:30 I see antlers, he is walking right at me. He gets to be about 25 yards away and I'm like crap he's has to turn soon or I'm in trouble. Like on que he turned broadside and I let the arrow fly. I missed just low and he turned and took off. Later next Spring I found out he was shot about 45 minutes later across the street from me. 168" gross is what he scored main frame 10 with 2 kickers and heavy mass.
This past season....... I had already filled 3 of my 6 tags and it was getting late in the season (early January if I remember correctly). I was just coasting to the end of the season and hunting mostly on perfect days or when I caught the urge. I had been practicing pretty heavily with my recurve for the past couple weeks, so I decided to take it out the next morning to see if I could get a doe to walk by close to my tree. Right after the sun came up I spot a deer walking through some thin timber toward me. Buck. It was a 9pt that I had gotten several pictures of during the rut but had never seen while hunting. I grabbed my recurve as he worked my way thinking this was a once in a lifetime chance with the stickbow. But...as fate would have it, he skirted around me at around 25 yards and kept on his merry way. If I had the compound with me that morning I would have had multiple broadside shots . Easy come, easy go I guess. He's still alive (as far as I know), and I'll be pursuing him again this fall. Here is a pic of him.
