This past weekend we had a hunting trip to the Adirondacks with family and friends. Due to the low deer density the number 1 strategy is to cover a lot of ground. A few times over the years my dad has had bucks walk right up to him when he was walking through crunchy snow because they thought he was another deer. More recently we have tweaked this a bit to actually trying to make our steps sound like a walking deer and when you mix a few grunts in it makes a deadly cocktail that actually produces a true Adirondack trophy every few years.
My older brother Justin is a bushwacker and I'm pretty sure he doesn't worry too much about the details as much as some of the rest of us. He is 31 and has shot 2 bucks in his life. I also think this might have been the first year he carried a grunt call. He usually is trying to stomp up grouse and has been known to carry slugs and birdshot thinking he will have enough time to unload the birdshot a load a slug if he actually saw a buck. I tell him to pick one or the other. This year my dad gave him a 308 for his birthday and he couldn't find a upland bird loads in this caliber, so he was stuck hunting deer.
On Saturday he had a good start to the morning by spotting a coyote rising from its bed and set it right back to that same bed with one well placed shot. After covering a lot of territory throughout the day he found himself a 1/2 mile from his car, but with 45 minutes of legal shooting time left he decided to stand where he was in the woods, overlooking the gravel access road by a couple hundred yards. He remembered his grunt call and gave it a couple toots.
He was unprepared for what happened next: the way it sounded he was sure there was another hunter crashing down the mountain towards him, but when it came out in the open it was a big, mature buck coming straight at him at about 30 yards.
Not having had a lot of experience with having a big buck charging his position he lost a bit of composure and had trouble finding the deer in his scope. When he saw hair he pulled the trigger and the deer just kept coming. As the buck went by at 10 feet he could tell he had hit him but at the same time was so rattled he couldn't even manage to pull the bolt all the way back to cycle a new round, much less get another shot off. The buck was quickly swallowed by the spruce, leaving my brother wondering what just happened.
Justin managed to find a lot of blood right away and followed it for about 100 yards before losing it at about 4:30 pm and deciding to head back to camp. When I found him he had a hard time completing his sentences but kept on pointing at some of the bigger racks that are hanging on the walls and saying, "It was just like that."
I along with my dad, cousins, and friends started to extract details from him and attempted to figure out just what we were dealing with.
Bright red blood that quickly petered out: not good, likely a muscle hit
Leg dangling: worse, likely a leg hit
Went downhill towards the lake: maybe good
Justin sure had a lot of questions about what I thought we were going to find in the morning and the main one in particular was if we would find the deer or not.
Before we went to bed had a tentative plan: Justin, my Dad, and I would go back to where he shot the buck. I would get on the blood trail, while they eased along either side of just close enough to see my blaze orange in case the buck tried to sneak out the side. One of my Dad's friends- Howie would take a kayak across the lake and take a stand to try to block the buck from escaping down the lake shore. Just before we all headed to bed my younger brother Owen also showed up. He volunteered to take a second kayak across as the area Howie was to cover was a couple hundred yards wide.
The only thing I was really optimistic about was the buck was headed towards the lake which meant he would have the lake on one side and a steep mountain on the other.
Sunday morning we were out there at first light and my Dad, Justin, and me waited for the kayakers to get across the lake. We then went back to the site of the shot and my dad found a piece of bone; front leg hit. Crap. We spread out like planned and the blood was easy to follow at first, but then started to get watery and sparse, then nothing but tracks in the leaves. These weren't too hard to follow because the deer was putting a lot of weight on his one good front leg. After the tracks worked down to the flatter area near the lake they suddenly mixed with a lot of other tracks. I got that sinking feeling when you really start to doubt you are going to recover a deer. At this point we had no choice but to continue towards the standers, all the while looking for a piled up deer tucked under a spruce. We really hadn't gone far when we suddenly heard BLAM!...BLAM!BLAM! Justin got all excited but I told him to continue on because it could have been another deer. At this point I said to myself, “Please let that be Justin's deer and please let be dead."
We eased along another couple hundred yards and could finally see orange up ahead.
Justin reached them first and all I could hear was, "We got him!"
The kayakers had waited for a bit while we sorted out the track, but suddenly heard something coming their way. Owen saw a little bit of brown hair first and then a little bit of antler. He considered shooting at it through the brush, but could tell he was headed straight for Howie, who saw him as he came over a rise at about 20 yards, but stopped behind some trees. He took one more step, exposing his neck and Howie wasn't going to wait for a better shot. After the buck fell, Howie fired 2 more shots into a tree which was some signal that he and my dad had worked out to say that they had the buck.
Lots of backslapping, etc. ensued, but the biggest emotion was relief that it was over, the buck was in our hands, but mostly the buck was no longer suffering. Justin did indeed break the leg above the knee and below the elbow, but it was no longer bleeding and the buck was not going to die very quickly from the shot itself.
This is the biggest buck Justin has ever gotten, but there is something extra special about getting a mature big woods buck. Farmland bucks just don't compare.
(In the first picture from L to R: myself, Owen, Justin, my dad Tim)
J buck 1.bmp
J buck 2.bmp
