On Friday both of my kids decided to skip due to the wind so I went by myself and took my compound bow. I saw nothing until about five minutes after sunset. I saw a deer about 75 yards away slipping down the hill toward my son's stand, only he wasn't in it. After about five minutes it turned around and started slipping across the ridge above me. He would cross at about 40 yards. As he started closing, I could tell he was a small buck. Then another that I hadn't seen started following him. It was a much larger deer. As they reached 50 yards I could tell the back one was a mature buck. It was a nice bonehead with plenty of tine length. It was getting very dusky, so I couldn't see well enough to count points through my rangefinder but I could read the distance. The first buck passed at 39 yards, then he did. As he stopped in my shooting lane between two saplings I could see his front half. I settled the pin just below center mass behind the shoulder and tipped the release.
The bow was whisper quiet and fast as lightning. With the rustle of the leaves, you heard nothing but a crack of the arrow making impact. I've heard the sound many times over. The fold-back deployment of the blades makes a distinct sound. The buck jumped and took about 10 steps further away from me and stopped looking back. He just stood there for more than two minutes. I kept hoping he would just tip over right there. I wasn't using a Lumenok and with the low light, I had no idea where the arrow impacted. After a couple minutes, the buck slowly turned and gradually walked up the hill out of sight. Since I didn't know where I hit, I waited until dark and slipped out down the hill. I figured it would be best to take up the trail after the morning hunt. I checked my trail camera archive when I got home and I think I found one brief glimpse of the buck I shot at. You can't see much, but it does give you a glimpse of the G2 and G3 length. Note the stand in the background.
With both of my kids going on Saturday morning, I moved to a different stand. I saw nothing, but both of my kids had bucks just out of comfortable bow range. About 9:45am we decided to take up the trail of the buck I shot at. I took them to what I thought was the impact point and we began searching. There was plenty of brush and briars behind the deer so we had a time looking for the arrow. After five minutes we had found no blood or arrow. I decided to go crawl up in the stand to make sure we were on the right line. We weren't. Once I lined us up about five yards over we restarted the search. I picked out a shiny tree just beyond the impact point and started walking straight that direction from the stand. At the 30 yards point there is a log that we use as a range marker. As I started to step up over the log, I don't know why, but I looked up.
Nailed it!
It's not my first time, or fourth. That's one of the drawbacks of hunting late. After sunset the saplings have a higher tendency of stepping in the way.
At least the search was over. Hopefully we see that buck again since muzzleloading season starts next Saturday.DuckHunt
