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Got my best buck, Rifle or Bow

ApexerER

By ApexerER,
in Bow Hunting

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ApexerER

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Saturday morning I was in such a bad mood. The wind was whipping and all week it had been perfect hunting days until I could finally get in the woods. I pull up to my parking spot and head into my stand. Somehow I got turned around going in (this is a stand I have been into a dozen or more times) and somehow wound up on another ridge. I couldn't believe I had done this. I was so mad at myself. I was so turned around I looked at my scoutlook app to find what direction I had to head. So I am past my stand and have to walk through where I believe the deer bed down to get to my stand but if I don't walk through there I will be late. I never bring a flashlight, my hunting buddies think I am crazy but I feel like my eyes adjust very well if there isn't any light around and I have never had an issue in 20 years. I go as quietly and quickly as possible to my stand and get there as it is getting light out. As far as I could tell I, somehow I didn't bump any deer. I didn't know whether to be happy about this or assume there was no deer around. I climb up sweating my ass off from taking the extra extra long way. I make it about an hour before that sweat makes me cold even though I have on good base layers. The tree is swaying back and forth and it starts sleeting/snowing/ raining and it is hitting me right in the face. I am cold, getting wet and really pissed off. At this point I decide this is stupid. It is about 7:45 am and I decide I am going to try to make it until 8:30 which would be very early for me to leave. I decide I am going to try grunting and rattling which has never ever done anything for me in the past. So I hit the grunt tube a few times and do my best rattle routine I can come up with that sounds about right to my ears and put the stuff down assuming like always nothing is going to happen. Less than a minute later I hear a noise behind me and I look over my shoulder and all I can see is the white antlers. Holy Crap! I actually called in a deer. He is less than ten yards from my stand and almost directly behind me. ( I like to tell myself I called him in, for all I know he was coming anyways) So I stand up and try to quietly turn around. I am shaking and trying to get my bow off the bow hook which is now right in the way of course. The arrows on my quiver are scraping on the treestand...(note to self, remove quiver from now on)...I get the bow hook out of the way and my release on the bow and he needs to take about 5 more steps to come around where I can get a shot I feel comfortable making. I am peaking around the tree trying to see him without him seeing me. He stops and does a 180 and goes back the other way. No way he smells me the way the wind is blowing. I get myself turned 180 degrees with my knees shaking like a leaf and he works his way around the other side of the stand. I pick a lane and I wait. I draw back as he is a few steps away and as he steps in my lane I let it fly at 22yds. Looks like a good shot as I watch the arrow capped with a NAP mechanical and lighted nock blow right through him. He doesn't move, jump, kick, nothing. He slowly kept walking away as I am trying to nock another arrow. I drop the arrow on the ground and grab another and by this time he is at least 40 yds out and walking slowly away without a care in the world. I sit down and try to calm my nerves. I know it was a good shot but I am going to wait. I tell myself I will climb down at 10am. At 9.45 I can't take it anymore and I climb down. I go and look for my arrow. I can't find it anywhere. I follow where it looked to me the deer had gone and I find blood. Quite a bit of it. So I start tracking. I track the deer down a game trail following a blood trail that I could jog if I wanted to. He comes to an overgrown area with thick weeks and an old fence. The game trail goes left and right at the fence. I follow it both ways and find no blood. At this point I call my other buddies figuring I won't be disturbing them they should be finishing their morning sits. Three of them come  and I meet them out at my truck. We go back to the crime scene where my buddy Gary finds my arrow. It is blood from top to vanes and I show them the blood trail. We follow it quickly to where I had lost it. The deer didn't go left or right but cut back at a 45 degree angle into the thickest nastiest stuff I have ever seen. Garry and I climb in while my other two buddies went around to see if he would come out. I assumed he was going to be dead in this thicket. Nope he came out the other side. Never even laid down. We follow him out through some hard woods and he crossed the railroad track off the property we lease. We are friendly with the guys that hunt this side and know they will not mind us tracking a deer just like we wouldn't mind them tracking one on ours. We keep following. This deer went up and down ridges, over streams, the whole time dropping enough blood that we could easily follow the trail however fast we wanted to walk. We kept saying we can't believe how far this deer has gone. Nobody could believe it. My Buddy Jimmy kept saying we are going to come out on Route 9J soon. At this point by buddy Jimmy and Brian doubled back to get the truck and meet us on route 9J. Garry and I continued following the blood. We came to a swamp (none of us had ever been down here) and figured he has to be in the cattails. I go around while Garry pushes through. We were right he bounded out of there away from me and toward the road now only about 250 yds away. I watch him bound off and I am like, how can this deer be running like that.  Then I hear a car slam its brakes on and tire squeal. Yup he crossed the road. We go out to the road all dressed in camo and me holding my bow. I feel a little weird but I don't have an arrow nocked or anything. We find where he jumped the guard rail, still bleeding, find where he jumped the guard rail on the other side with blood on the rail. Now we don't have permission to be on this side of the road. There aren't any posted signs and there are no houses around to ask permission from. I stand up on the rail to see if I can see him anywhere and he isn't 10yds off the road and jumps up and bounds away like nothing is wrong. I can see him maybe 40 yds in and his tail is flickering. I said to Gary look he is waving at us. At this point Jimmy and Brian pull up in the truck and we are deciding what to do. Brian is a county police officer so we let him decide because I don't want to get in trouble. We decide we are going to go in and try and push him back across the road where we have permission to be. Gary and I go in, Brian stays on the road so if someone asks what we are doing he can tell them he gave us permission to go in. We go in without my bow. I walk in to where I last saw him and he is laying there dead. That deer went a long ways for how it was bleeding and the shot I put on him. In hindsight we should have stopped and waited but the amount of blood that we followed we assumed for a long time we would find him in the next few steps. I am glad Brian was there because otherwise, I don't know if I would have entered that property....I learned a few things, it is great to hunt with a police officer and I will never complain about the weather again (maybe)

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ApexerER Mentor

ApexerER

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Congratulations! Great buck and story! Best of luck to you for the rest of the season!

Thank you, its a weird feeling being tagged out....Got my first deer with the Bow a few weeks ago and now my first buck/best buck with the bow....Now I am hoping to get a big daddy like all the pics on here....

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ApexerER Mentor

ApexerER

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so, where was the hit? this may have been one of the cases where it was better to push him as opposed to letting him go.....good job either way.....and just as an aside, and not to be a jerk, but I don't think an LEO can grant permission to a hunter to go onto private property to follow a deer.

The hit was a little low....I have pics of the hit on my phone, I will try to post one later but I was having a terrible time posting from phone. I honestly don't see why a county police officer can't grant permission to someone in their county but I honestly have no idea. He assured me it would be fine and I chose to listen to him right or wrong....I would not have done it if he was not there......I would have found another way....

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jjb4900 Newbie

jjb4900

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The hit was a little low....I have pics of the hit on my phone, I will try to post one later but I was having a terrible time posting from phone. I honestly don't see why a county police officer can't grant permission to someone in their county but I honestly have no idea. He assured me it would be fine and I chose to listen to him right or wrong....I would not have done it if he was not there......I would have found another way....

either way, you probably made a good choice pushing him...sometimes that is a better option then letting them lay.

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BellR Newbie

BellR

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so, where was the hit? this may have been one of the cases where it was better to push him as opposed to letting him go.....good job either way.....and just as an aside, and not to be a jerk, but I don't think an LEO can grant permission to a hunter to go onto private property to follow a deer.

 

If the land wasn't posted or fenced he didn't need permission anyways. 

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ApexerER Mentor

ApexerER

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exit or entry? and what vitals where hit?.....that could very well be a lung hit or bottom of the heart, did you check them out when you gutted?

That is the exit....entrance was a little farther back (maybe two inches) and higher on the deer...right at mid section.....It did not hit the heart....I didn't check the lungs....This deer literally went about 3 miles with that shot......My buddies said 5 miles....that is an exaggeration but I would say an honest 2.5-3 miles....I don't know what was wrong with the shot. When I hit him I figured he was going a few hundred yards at the most......

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ApexerER Mentor

ApexerER

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I edited my post to remove my closing comment.....sorry if it was out of line, just thought it was one of those "better off not said" things....congrat's on the deer.

I don't care, when I read them I was like really. I literally have a police officer with me and you are going to bust my balls....I am not a rule breaker! What is said on the internet doesn't bother me...its all good...

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jjb4900 Newbie

jjb4900

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I don't care, when I read them I was like really. I literally have a police officer with me and you are going to bust my balls....I am not a rule breaker! What is said on the internet doesn't bother me...its all good...

nah, I shouldn't have said that....but either way, I'm gonna say low lung hit.

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buckmaster88 Newbie

buckmaster88

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Congrats on your buck!  I would say that you hit liver with that shot and that is why he went that far and was alive that long.  It also is probably why he walked off slowly like nothing happened.  They are tough animals for sure...either way you got him and that is all that matters!

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