Twenty mile per hour West wind is one of my least favorite of all hunting conditions for our place. None of my setups are designed for wind out of the West , high winds have historically not been conducive to deer movement, it is obnoxious to sway side to side in the oak tree, and cedars blow into all your shooting lanes. It is pretty much the worst. But……every once in a while things come together, even when conditions are not what one would consider optimal. Saturday morning I walk into my tree stand setup on the North end of our family property in the dark. I climb into the tree after fighting the cedars that are blowing all around me. After being settled in for about 20 minutes the feeder spins at 6:40am a couple minutes before first light. A couple minutes after it throws I make out a small body deer heading across an open flat to my Northeast, but I could not make out what it was, nor was it heading into my feeder. I assumed it would circle around my setup and blow me out, but instead after about 10 minutes, from directly down wind of me the little 4 point came strolling in. He immediately starts chowing down. The strong winds were pushing me around quite a bit, which was annoying, but luckily the wind helped drown out a lot of unnatural sounds, like when my quiver fell out of the tree, and bounced off the ladder. The little 4 point didn’t even look up. I knew this would be a huge advantage to me if by chance something I wanted to shoot decided to show up. He ate for about 5 minutes but started looking to our West. As he looked back for the 3rd or 4th time, I decide to turn and give a glace back to the West. As I do, I see a big bodied deer and a nice set of antlers clear the fence into our property from about 150 yards out. This was a deer that I had not seen on camera and one that I knew would stick him if he came in. As luck would have it, this buck did come in. As he methodically made his way, with the West wind, toward the four point and feeder, I attached my release and waited for him to slip into my shooting lane. The wind continued to blow, at this point causing the cedar trees to fold down into my lanes. He worked all the way to the edge of the corn from the feeder, but still not into my window. Finally, he pushed forward another ten yards until he was broadside at sixteen yards. I draw my Z3 and anchored, found the spot, and then….the wind blew cedar limbs into my shooting window. I stayed drawn, caught my composure, and waited a second until the wind eased. Then breathed out again, settled my pin, and let the SlickTrick fly. He hunkered up upon impact as I watched him run off. I saw the exact path he took, but didn’t notice any visible wound on him as he ran off. I did feel really confident that I had made a good shot, but with the nasty windy conditions and a touch of buck fever, anything could have happened. So a small amount of doubt did start to fill my mind. I waited for 30 minutes, then quietly climbed down, picked up my quiver that I had dropped earlier, and went to look for my arrow. I found the arrow relatively quickly and it had good blood, so I decided to go find him. There were only small drops at first and not much volume, but luckily I knew the exact path he had taken. Sure enough as I got to the last spot I had seen him, there became a much more pronounced blood trail. That helped remove any doubts that I had about a poor shot. I follow it a shot distance to group of cedars. I moved back a few of the limbs to see further in, I saw him piled up in a small opening. He had probably only made it 80 or so yards. Saturday ended up being a great day and I am glad I didn’t just chalk one up to poor conditions. You never know what can happen…N.DaWoods.
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