Around 7:15 I heard a deer running behind me so I blew my grunt call and turned around. I could only see the deer's rear end through the brush. It wagged its tail and walked away. Nothing else happened for the next hour. I was sitting there and noticed movement straight to my left. I turned my head and saw this buck walking by at 40-50 yards. My first thought was to grunt at him but I scared a buck off a few weeks ago (I think it was him but I'm not positive) by grunting at him so I decided to wait and see what he would do. I had sprayed doe in heat urine on the ground in front of me and he turned and came right to it. He was walking behind some brush headed toward an opening where he would be broadside at 20 yards. I got on the open spot and waited for him to take a few more steps. When he got there I realized there were some twigs hanging down in the way so I waited. After a few more steps he cleared them and I gave him a "bah" to stop him but he kept walking so I took the shot. He bucked and took off. As he ran across the flooded ATV trail about 30 yards away I could see blood on his side. He crossed the trail, went into the woods on the other side, and started turning to the right before he went out of sight and I heard him go down.
I was a worried that all the water on the ground would make it hard to find blood. I climbed down, found my arrow, and started looking for blood. Sure enough, I couldn't find a single drop. I walked over the ATV trail and tried to find where he had crossed it. I found a running track by the water and started looking around it and finally found blood. I crossed the trail but didn't see any more blood or tracks. I looked into the woods in the direction I heard him go down. I saw something white so I looked at it through my scope. It was the deer, but his head was up! After taking a few seconds to recover from my near heart attack, I tried to figure out what to do. Take another shot from here? Try to get a little closer to shoot him again? Back off and wait? While standing there I thought it was strange that he had just sat there while I was walking around just 40 yards away. He was looking off into the woods, not at me, and wasn't moving. I realized something was amiss here. I raised my bow, aimed at him and shouted "Hey!". He didn't flinch. I realized he had to be dead and walked toward him. He was dead but had managed to get himself tangled in some trees when he went down.
He was my 3rd and biggest archery buck and I couldn't be happier with him. I shot him with my Matrix 380 and a BEE with an Excalibur X-Act broadhead. Here's a link to a little video I made after I shot him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtU1QgbpPBw
