"Hi Rise" is back

[lmartin5]

Nice buck...hope you get him.

[bgleaton]

That's a cool buck!

[hammer63]

Got any recent pics?

I have pic's as recent as 8/13/16, when my camera card filled up. I posted a video on my Facebook page @ The Hammer Feeding System.

[Irrelevant]

Man that is a cool deer

[88 Bound]

Good luck! Looking forward to seeing a pic of him dead!

[Brute Killer]

Great looking buck. Good luck.

[tl1197]

Love the name! Nice buck.

[Mexico]

That is a cool buck!

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[sectxag06]

that's a great looking deer.

[goldtip5575]

Hoping you get your chance and we can share a congratulatory drink in camp.

[hammer63]

Hoping you get your chance and we can share a congratulatory drink in camp.

Mark your calendar...October 1 at about 9 PM we will celebrate.

I think I have him patterned. He comes in early early AM, so I will not take the chance of blowing him out on a morning hunt. We will not go to that set for a morning hunt until he is dead or goes off the radar. Instead, I will try to catch him coming in for the evening feeding. Pictures and video so far have him coming in both morning and evening and staying for an hour or so. That should be enough time to get it done.

[hammer63]

I'll do my best, but I don't know if I can express in words just how incredibly gratifying the hunt for "Hi Rise" actually was. There's just something about hunting one specific deer and especially an old warrior with which you have years of history and failed attempts at.

To set the scene, so to speak, my wife and I hunt on a 20K acre low fence ranch and our chosen pasture is about 400 acres. We have two set-ups with very large feed pens. Each set-up has a corn feeder on each end and a timed free choice feeder in the middle, with our Krivoman blinds on the northwest edge of the pens.

As mentioned in a previous post, year after year, he was a regular. He was a regular, that is, until the slightest bit of hunting pressure and then he disappeared.

He liked protein. He was addicted to protein. We used that to our advantage. Our feeding strategy is probably a little different than most, but it works for us. We like our bucks to receive the bulk of the feed so we elect to feed free choice during the hours of the day that bucks are more likely to be comfortable feeding. That includes letting them feed in the night. But as season approaches, we adjust the feeding times closer and closer to hunting hours. Three weeks ago, we were feeding free choice 5:30 - 7:00 AM and 7:30 - 9:00 PM. Bucks would be lined up waiting for the feed to drop. In order to get these bucks feeding during hunting hours, we changed to feed 7:00 - 7:30, both AM and PM.

This year's mid-September trail camera cards showed that he had been coming in, morning and evening, to get his daily ration of protein. He would check in at all hours of the night to see if any protein was to be had, but he was standing at the feeder every time it opened, religiously.

Knowing how sensitive he was to any human activity, we knew that we would have to play it smart.

As miserable as the heat can be in Del Rio, we chose to fill feeders three weeks ago in the middle of the day, so that we didn't disturb his feeding schedule. Great plan. We almost pulled it off. Unfortunately, the Ranger battery croaked and we were in "his" area at the time he normally comes in to feed. But, we did the best we could.

Not knowing how that might affect his travel and knowing his history, the plan for opening weekend was to get to the lease Friday, make the 20 mile round trip to pull camera cards, and do that without any further disruption. We needed to know where he was in order to make a plan to hunt him. Gathering of the cards was a success. Upon reviewing, the trail camera pictures showed that he had quit coming to the feeder where we had been broken down last trip. As luck would have it, though, he just moved over to our other spot and had become just as regular there. Our concern was that he was still coming in at all hours of the night. We could not, in good conscience, even think about trying to beat him at his own game in the dark.

So, we opted to pass on the opening morning hunt. We knew where he was and figured that as long as we don't blow him out, he'd continue coming in. We made a plan to go in extra early Saturday afternoon. We parked the Ranger 1/4 mile away and tip-toed in. We got settled into the blind at 4:15 PM.

The evening hunt began shaping up like we would expect. Corn feeders are set to throw at 6:30 and protein feeds at 7. Does started showing up at 5. They'd check every port on the protein head and then just mill around in and out of the pen. Right on schedule, the young bucks started showing up at 5:30, doing the same as the does. Things were shaping up nicely. We were anxious for the corn feeders to throw and the protein to drop.

6:30 rolls around and the corn throws. It was a feeding frenzy. For about two minutes, that is. Two pigs, one 30# and one half that size, skirted the pen until they found a way through. When they slipped into the pen, the pen emptied. Not one deer was left in sight. The hunt was essentially over. For deer, that is. My wife was given the green light on shooting a pig. She didn't kill one, but both of them suckers. We felt vindicated, but we were confident that "Hi Rise" was probably in the neighborhood when the pen cleared and would probably not be coming in that night.

When it came time, we exited the blind as quietly as possible with intentions of trying there again in the morning.

We got up at 2:30 Sunday morning, left camp at 3:00 and were settled in the blind at 4:15, hoping that we could slip in without blowing him out. He was a no-show Sunday morning there and we had a suspicion that he either moved back to our other spot or he had gone underground for the rest of the season. We decided to pull cards again to see if he had shown up. He wasn't on camera Saturday evening but he showed up at the other spot Sunday evening.

We were on to him. So, we decided to get in very early and hope that he stayed put. We drove a route we had never driven before, walked in 3/8 of a mile and got settled in the blind shortly after 4 PM. It was going to be a long, hot wait.

Just like Saturday evening's hunt started out, this hunt began shaping up text book style. First come the does. Then come the young bucks. 6:30 rolls around and the corn throws. There were 18 does and 5 young bucks in the pen and they gobbled up the corn in 15 minutes. About half the deer ventured off after the corn was gone, but the other half were hanging around for the protein. That would be a 15 minute wait. Sure enough, protein fed at 7 and within minutes, the pen was full of bucks which eventually pushed out the does.

The protein feeder is set to feed free choice from 7:00 - 7:30 and once the gate closes at 7:30 there's about 6# of feed left in the tube. With all of the bucks feeding, I began to worry about running out of feed once the gate closed. What would happen if he showed up at last light with no feed? Could I get an arrow off before he left, in the event that he showed? Lots of scenarios went through my head.

Like a champ, and as I had dreamed he would, "Hi Rise" came strolling in at 7:28. He made a bee line for the protein and buried his nose in it. In no time, an arrow was nocked, bow was up and I was just waiting for the shot to present itself.

The shot came quickly. At 7:30 an arrow was released. Initially, the shot looked good - a bit forward - but lethal. So I thought. Review of the video had me worried. The shot appeared to be way forward, but little could be confirmed on that little bitty screen. We decided to take up the track, at least as far as first blood. We didn't really see where he went when he busted out of there. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn't like the fact that I didn't get a pass-through.

15 yards from the shot laid all but 8 inches of my arrow. The blood on it looked good but not definitive. By this time, we had lost most of our light and it was getting dark quickly. All we took from the blind were our flashlights and my bow.

Struggling to pick up a blood trail, we kept going back to where the arrow lay. Evidently, shortly after the buck exited the pen, he literally crashed into a huge cactus and fell down. I assume that was due to the forward shot and more than likely he had a broadhead stuck in his off shoulder.

Without blood, we resorted to following what we thought were his hoof prints. That got us going in the right direction, but we just couldn't pick up blood.

Finally, my faithful tracker - my wife - spotted blood. A few feet farther was more blood. It was not the kind of trail that would give you confidence, but it was blood. Then there was a little more blood. OK, we have blood and now our flashlights are giving us fits. Hers needs batteries and mine has a faulty switch that cuts off unexpectedly. My dear wife suggested that I stay near last blood while she went 50 yards back to the blind to get batteries for her light. She headed that direction as I scoured the immediate area looking for more blood.

I've watched many horror movies and never have I heard the bloody scream that I heard that night. Half way back to the blind, with a dimly lit flashlight, that poor woman encounters a coiled up rattlesnake. I can not put into words just how petrified that poor sweet woman was, but "total meltdown" might be a good description of her reaction.

At that point, the game was over. It was now a matter of survival. The deer was no longer important. Getting her to a place she felt safe was all that mattered. With my fading light, I retrieved our gear from the blind, not knowing where the snake had gone. And to add more fun to the evening, we still had a 3/8 mile walk in the dark to get to the Ranger. Oh, joy!

The 10 mile ride back to camp was a long one. It was a quiet one. Disappointment was the tone. It was difficult to accept that we were leaving behind a deer, especially that deer. But it had to be done.

We decided that we would head back out in the morning. So, at 8 AM, we hopped on the Ranger for the 10 mile trip. We picked up last blood immediately after briefly reminiscing on the prior night's events.

She pointed to a spot of blood on a blade of grass, then another on a rock a few yards down the trail. Then, she said "look at that big blood spot on that rock". She was pointing a few yards up the trail and continued walking towards it. About the time I located the "rock" where that big blood spot was, she and I both realized that it was not a rock. It was the old gray ghost "Hi Rise" in his final resting place. He was laying dead not more that 25 yards from where our tracking had ended the night before. He only ran 75 yards from the place he stood when I shot him.

We celebrated. We hugged. We high-fived. We might have even teared up a bit. This deer is not the highest scoring deer we have taken but he is the most memorable for many reasons. He is my most special deer of all time and he will be on our wall.

Weighed 155#, scored 143 1/8", photo history shows him to be 7+, teeth showed 5

Hoyt Faktor Turbo 70# 28.5"
Slick Trick Magnums 100 gr
Beman hunters 340's
Krivoman blind
Krivoman feeder
The Hammer Feeding System

Thanks for reading!

[freezerfiller]

Congrats , great story and beautiful buck

[dope hunter]

That was a great story! Congrats on the buck!

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[bgleaton]

Congrats! We changed one of our Krivoman feeders to a timed protein feeder this year and I'm hoping it keeps the bucks coming in. That's an awesome story and a great buck!