Well it started off earlier this summer when I got moved back from West Texas to back down to East Texas for work. I took a job working in Crockett for an oil company, which would allow me to drive back home to Beaumont on the weekends, which in return gave me access to the family property I have had little access to from being in school in Lubbock for 5 years and then working there for another year, I was ecstatic to get back to my roots to say the least. First thing I did was go back down to some of our wetlands property of Whites Ranch Road to check out to see what the duck situation was going to look like for this year. When I got there I was less than enthused, to say the least with almost no water in existance. So I decided to take some back roads back into Beaumont and go cruise by some good family friends property in China and see what their fields were looking like. I ran past those and they looked good, so I pepped up a bit knowing I would be able to get in some hunts there at least. I was already in that general area so I decided to swing by some of our property about 10-15 minutes from Beaumont, that I constantly would see deer when I drove by, and had even attempted to "hunt" when I was in high school, but lack of effort kept me from ever actually taking anything. Well when I cruised by the property, not even pulling into it, I saw 4 does and decided if I wasn't going to have the ducks this year I would put forth my effort into shooting a couple deer on the family property.
I have always loved to duck hunt but ever since I picked up a bow when I was 12 years old and shot that raccoon 12 years ago, I knew that I would be a bowhunter for life. Well I went back to work and Friday when I made it back to Beaumont me and my buddy went out to the property and decided to walk around the property and see if we found any sign. We found an open area that had been clear cut in the middle of a patch of woods and decided to walks it edges. Immediately we found a 2 year old shed that was 5 on one side, so we were excited to see what he might be like now 2 years after the shed had dropped. We walk about 15 more yards and come up to a pine tree that is absolutely shredded from top to bottom and about another thirty yards we find another rub. Perfect! We have found a rub line and from the looks of it, it's a good deer too. We find a canal line that is adjacent to the rub line we found and there were 3-4 more rubs and on top of that we found a few scrapes that were so fresh they still had urine in them. I setup a camera on the line and decided to wait until the third week in September to check and see what was on the camera. When I pulled the card and checked it, I saw that in about 16 days I had gotten about 215 pictures and I was ecstatic. But as I scrolled thru the pics I saw that all the deer were does, with the exception of one basket rack 7 and a longhorned spike. That is until this guy started showing up in the last 50 pictures that had been captured.
I had about 15 pictures of him and was now on a mission, to not only take my first 10 point, but do it with my bow, on some of the property I grew up hunting rabbits on when I was a kid, and to my belief, be my first pope and young class deer.
That Sunday, with the help of my buddy we setup a 15 foot ladder stand in a pine tree over the pipeline, the rubline was on, I was ready for the following weekend. Worked seemed to drag by the entire week and finally it was Friday, and I was headed back to Beaumont. Unfortunately I was also sick as a dog, but I was not going to let that stop me. We went out and setup two of my Friends climbers off in some deep woods in hopes they could take a one of the dozens of does we were seeing or maybe a cull. Saturday morning came and went with nothing much to speak of. Everyone saw does, my friends weren't presented with shots and I wasn't loosing an arrow unless it was at "my" buck. Saturday afternoon started slow without seeing much of anything, but at about 6:15 I see movement to my left and out steps one of the biggest bobcats I have ever seen. Now I can make an exception for him. He is at 12 yards and about 2 steps from being in the open in my shooting lane, but those 2 steps werent in his agenda and he turns and makes his way into the brush off the side of the pipeline, oh well It was cool seeing him anyway. About 5 minutes later I get a text from one of my buddies saying he missed a 20 yard chip shot at a doe, oh well it happens to all of us. About 10 minutes before dark, I have 2 young does come out followed by a basket seven point, They mess around in front of me but keep looking back up the pipeline from where they came from when all the sudden the 7 decides to run the two does off the pipeline. My buddy sees them come out about 5 minutes later across the canal from him and for the first time one of us sees "the" buck come out from behind those 3 youngins. As we are driving out my we look across the canal and there is a HUGE bobcat sitting across the canal from us. My buddy jumps out, draws and asks me a yardage I tell him 25 and he absolutely drills him and he doesn't make it 10 feet.
Sorry about the pic, but it was all we could get. I have killed quite a few bobcats and I guarantee this cat weighed every bit of 40 pounds.
Well Sunday morning comes and I am feeling really under the weather but I get up knowing its my last day to hunt this particular property for at least another 2 weeks. We were running late and I don't end up getting up into my stand until 6:30 that morning after dropping my buddies off. I had already spooked a deer off in the process of walking in, so combined with feeling like death and now I think my hunt is already done for I grab my phone to text one of my buddies who was out there, about how we have to start showing up there on time, no sooner had I received the respond text saying it wasn't his fault when I looked at the time and it was now 6:41, 1 minute after shooting time. I set my phone behind me and look up and notice a deer about 40 yards out in front of me working its way down the pipeline nose in the air sniffing the air for the buck bomb I had sprayed coming in. I could tell he was big-bodied, and when he got to 20-25 yards, I saw his head turn and could tell he had pretty good antlers so I figured it was the ten I was hunting and I saw he had a big Roman nose as well, so I prepared to draw. I quickly drew back as he was making his way from left to right dead broadside. When I get to full draw he looks right up at me and is at full alert. I try to look thru my peep but it has turn and I can't see thru it, so I roll it over with my nose. Find his shoulder and let it rip. At impact it flips him over and knocks him on his side, he tries to run off on all 4 but is just pushing with his back legs as he plows the ground with his chest. I think deer dead. Well to shorten this part of the story, the deer wasnt dead. we tracked him for about 650 yards, and stayed on solid blood the entire way. I was able to get another arrow in him after 650 yards and nearly 5 hours of tracking. The intial shot hit about 3 inches lower than I had aimed and went through the bottom of the right shoulder cutting it nearly in half, through the bottom of the brisket and cut the left leg in 2. If it was not for the rage 2 blade I can honestly say we would not have found the deer. When I went back to the point of the initial shot I had misjudged the distance thinking it was 20 but it was more like 23-24 yards. We were all extremely tired and parched so we stopped to get a drink when I walked out there was a man admiring the deer in the bed of the truck, I introduced myself and he did as well(can't remember his name for the life of me) but he told me he was a taxidermist and asked if I would mind if he scored my deer, I said heck no, go ahead. He asked what I thought it would score and I said 134, he said he thought it might go high 130's so I was pretty excited to say the least, so he got out his gear and went to work right there in the parking lot. After it was all said and done he came out with a gross score of 148 and 6/8, and net of 141. I still didn't believe it so we went back home and did it ourselves filling in the info off the B&C website and we came up with 147 and 3/8 and net of 139 and some change. Also if by this time you have not noticed, the deer I shot and the deer in the game cam pics are 2 different deer! I had never seen this deer or had a pic of it, it was quite a surprise and we still have another deer out there to hunt. We aged him at 6.5 years old, and when we were skinning him I found a .22 bullet lodged in his neck, which is why we probably don't get to see that many deer grow to this size down here.
I have always loved to duck hunt but ever since I picked up a bow when I was 12 years old and shot that raccoon 12 years ago, I knew that I would be a bowhunter for life. Well I went back to work and Friday when I made it back to Beaumont me and my buddy went out to the property and decided to walk around the property and see if we found any sign. We found an open area that had been clear cut in the middle of a patch of woods and decided to walks it edges. Immediately we found a 2 year old shed that was 5 on one side, so we were excited to see what he might be like now 2 years after the shed had dropped. We walk about 15 more yards and come up to a pine tree that is absolutely shredded from top to bottom and about another thirty yards we find another rub. Perfect! We have found a rub line and from the looks of it, it's a good deer too. We find a canal line that is adjacent to the rub line we found and there were 3-4 more rubs and on top of that we found a few scrapes that were so fresh they still had urine in them. I setup a camera on the line and decided to wait until the third week in September to check and see what was on the camera. When I pulled the card and checked it, I saw that in about 16 days I had gotten about 215 pictures and I was ecstatic. But as I scrolled thru the pics I saw that all the deer were does, with the exception of one basket rack 7 and a longhorned spike. That is until this guy started showing up in the last 50 pictures that had been captured.
I had about 15 pictures of him and was now on a mission, to not only take my first 10 point, but do it with my bow, on some of the property I grew up hunting rabbits on when I was a kid, and to my belief, be my first pope and young class deer.
That Sunday, with the help of my buddy we setup a 15 foot ladder stand in a pine tree over the pipeline, the rubline was on, I was ready for the following weekend. Worked seemed to drag by the entire week and finally it was Friday, and I was headed back to Beaumont. Unfortunately I was also sick as a dog, but I was not going to let that stop me. We went out and setup two of my Friends climbers off in some deep woods in hopes they could take a one of the dozens of does we were seeing or maybe a cull. Saturday morning came and went with nothing much to speak of. Everyone saw does, my friends weren't presented with shots and I wasn't loosing an arrow unless it was at "my" buck. Saturday afternoon started slow without seeing much of anything, but at about 6:15 I see movement to my left and out steps one of the biggest bobcats I have ever seen. Now I can make an exception for him. He is at 12 yards and about 2 steps from being in the open in my shooting lane, but those 2 steps werent in his agenda and he turns and makes his way into the brush off the side of the pipeline, oh well It was cool seeing him anyway. About 5 minutes later I get a text from one of my buddies saying he missed a 20 yard chip shot at a doe, oh well it happens to all of us. About 10 minutes before dark, I have 2 young does come out followed by a basket seven point, They mess around in front of me but keep looking back up the pipeline from where they came from when all the sudden the 7 decides to run the two does off the pipeline. My buddy sees them come out about 5 minutes later across the canal from him and for the first time one of us sees "the" buck come out from behind those 3 youngins. As we are driving out my we look across the canal and there is a HUGE bobcat sitting across the canal from us. My buddy jumps out, draws and asks me a yardage I tell him 25 and he absolutely drills him and he doesn't make it 10 feet.
Sorry about the pic, but it was all we could get. I have killed quite a few bobcats and I guarantee this cat weighed every bit of 40 pounds.
Well Sunday morning comes and I am feeling really under the weather but I get up knowing its my last day to hunt this particular property for at least another 2 weeks. We were running late and I don't end up getting up into my stand until 6:30 that morning after dropping my buddies off. I had already spooked a deer off in the process of walking in, so combined with feeling like death and now I think my hunt is already done for I grab my phone to text one of my buddies who was out there, about how we have to start showing up there on time, no sooner had I received the respond text saying it wasn't his fault when I looked at the time and it was now 6:41, 1 minute after shooting time. I set my phone behind me and look up and notice a deer about 40 yards out in front of me working its way down the pipeline nose in the air sniffing the air for the buck bomb I had sprayed coming in. I could tell he was big-bodied, and when he got to 20-25 yards, I saw his head turn and could tell he had pretty good antlers so I figured it was the ten I was hunting and I saw he had a big Roman nose as well, so I prepared to draw. I quickly drew back as he was making his way from left to right dead broadside. When I get to full draw he looks right up at me and is at full alert. I try to look thru my peep but it has turn and I can't see thru it, so I roll it over with my nose. Find his shoulder and let it rip. At impact it flips him over and knocks him on his side, he tries to run off on all 4 but is just pushing with his back legs as he plows the ground with his chest. I think deer dead. Well to shorten this part of the story, the deer wasnt dead. we tracked him for about 650 yards, and stayed on solid blood the entire way. I was able to get another arrow in him after 650 yards and nearly 5 hours of tracking. The intial shot hit about 3 inches lower than I had aimed and went through the bottom of the right shoulder cutting it nearly in half, through the bottom of the brisket and cut the left leg in 2. If it was not for the rage 2 blade I can honestly say we would not have found the deer. When I went back to the point of the initial shot I had misjudged the distance thinking it was 20 but it was more like 23-24 yards. We were all extremely tired and parched so we stopped to get a drink when I walked out there was a man admiring the deer in the bed of the truck, I introduced myself and he did as well(can't remember his name for the life of me) but he told me he was a taxidermist and asked if I would mind if he scored my deer, I said heck no, go ahead. He asked what I thought it would score and I said 134, he said he thought it might go high 130's so I was pretty excited to say the least, so he got out his gear and went to work right there in the parking lot. After it was all said and done he came out with a gross score of 148 and 6/8, and net of 141. I still didn't believe it so we went back home and did it ourselves filling in the info off the B&C website and we came up with 147 and 3/8 and net of 139 and some change. Also if by this time you have not noticed, the deer I shot and the deer in the game cam pics are 2 different deer! I had never seen this deer or had a pic of it, it was quite a surprise and we still have another deer out there to hunt. We aged him at 6.5 years old, and when we were skinning him I found a .22 bullet lodged in his neck, which is why we probably don't get to see that many deer grow to this size down here.
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