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    Bow hunting is easy! :D



    I type that with as much sarcasm as I could ever possibly convey through text. You’ll see why I’m calling it easy soon enough. I’ve been a TBH member for 364 days, joining October 17, 2018, after buying my first bow. My plan was to learn as much as I could so that I could hunt in 2018 on public land before rifle season. I didn’t exactly see any animals at Davy Crocket National Forest last year, so this was truly my first year bow hunting. During the past year, I’ve come to realize that if there is a story be told, you have an audience of like-minded folk that would appreciate it, if it’s not too long. After writing it, I came back here to tell you that this is long. Sorry!

    So, here’s my account of my first buck with a bow, and first non-spike in Texas. I hope you enjoy.

    I invited my best friend, Moffa, with me to the lease. Moffa had never hunted anything before. I promised him as much fun hunting during the entire weekend as you could possibly have with a shotgun: sitting with me in the morning, dove hunt in the afternoon, sit with me during the evening, hogs on Saturday night with my new Sightmark Wraith and Sniper Hog Light, and another sit Sunday morning.

    Our lease is a good 3 hours and 15 minutes from home, west on 20 to Abilene and 45 minutes south on 277. I get off work at 7 p.m. Friday, so I told Moffa to be at my house at 7:30 and we’d pack up and leave. We ended up leaving around 9 p.m. and after stopping to fill up and to get Moffa a license, we arrived around 2:30 a.m. We eventually unloaded everything and were in bed at 3:30, hoping to wake up at 5:15 to be in the blind by 5:45.
    This did not happen.

    Both of us slept through the alarm and I was only awaken by the bright sunlight coming in through the window on the east wall in the living room: it was 7:10 and I missed my wake up time by 2 hours!
    I was very upset at myself. All the work I had done and time spent away from my family to get everything right and my first Saturday is spent sleeping in! I woke Moffa up. We got dressed and drove well past the spot I originally planned to park at. I figured it was a race against time at this point and weighed the sound of my truck driving the extra ¼ mile vs. being in the blind as quickly as possible.

    It was a shorter walk to the blind, but we made it around 7:45 a.m. for my first sit of the year, and first realistic chance at using my bow.
    About 10 to 15 minutes went by and I started thinking about what all we needed from my backpack. I didn’t know how much noise would be made, so I quietly asked Moffa, “Hey, reach in the backpack and get the range finder and binoculars.”

    He did as instructed. Wanting to test out the bino’s, he puts them to his eyes. “BUCK!” he says as loud as he can while still being considered a whisper.
    I turn my head, and sure enough, a buck comes from behind the feeder out from the woods, circling around to get the scent, just as I’ve read the buck’s do. It was an eight point – small, but an eight point. I don’t get too excited, I know without looking through the bino’s he’s not a shooter by any standards including legal standards. A second buck comes out, 8 points, bigger than the first. Then a third buck. “Oh, S***! Big buck!” Moffa says.

    I ask for the bino’s and take a look. Yes – this one was on my hit list from the pics I had been collecting since July. My heart starts pumping, perspiration follows and adrenaline begins to flow. A fourth buck showed up, but I really paid him no attention. I was locked on the best of the bunch.

    All three trailed the first buck in the same path. One-by-one they crossed the road, went into the tree line as if they were trying as hard as possible to not be seen. They came closer, crossed the road again and began to enjoy their first meal of the day.

    Only 15 minutes at the most had passed between us sitting down and the 4 bucks showing up. We didn’t have enough time to have a game plan. I would quietly whisper instructions, “don’t move,” or “carefully hand me the binoculars.”

    “They’re so majestic,” Moffa said as they made their entrance and began grazing on the corn.

    “We’re going to wait a minute to shoot,” I told him. “I’m jacked up on adrenaline and need to calm down. Just watch them right now.” I took the bino’s and had a look. My fear, as I’m sure with a lot of new hunters, is to shoot an illegal buck. I don’t know what 13 inches looks like 35 yards away from me, so I wanted to be sure what I was shooting was 13”. It only took me once to look through and know he was probably closer to 16”. The next step was to prepare for the shot.

    As they grazed, the youngest one, (the lookout that entered first), kept staring our way. It was almost like he was alerting the other three. We gained his attention quite a few times, and of those, two of those times were for a minute or two. It brought me back to childhood and having staring contests with my sister. Each time I thought he was going to blow my cover, but he always went back down to eating, as did the others.

    My shooter continued to eat on the wrong side of the feeder. You could tell he was the dominant one as he had his main course under the feeder and the other three stayed to the outside of the circle eating the scraps. As he continued to eat in a tight circle, there were hardly any opportunities to shoot. He would move quickly in the tight area that was his, and if he wasn’t behind the feeder, he was at an awkward position.

    After about 10 minutes, he seemed to have had enough. They all started to walk in the same line they came in. I knew this was it. (My uncle explained on my first ever deer hunt that bucks enter and leave the area in the same direction for the most part.) As they casually walked off, it was now or never.
    I don’t know why, but something made a noise that caught their attention as I drew back. I didn’t have to make that “Meep” sound I heard in so many YouTube videos – he just stopped broadside. No time to range him, I had to guess. I put my 40 yard pin on him since the feeder was 35 and he was behind that.

    I let it fly. “THWACK,” is all I heard. I knew it was a hit. I did not know where or how severe the damage was. I thought I was left (so this would have put it closer to the head) and hit shoulder blade since I could see the arrow stuck in him as he took his first step in his sprint, and after two more, I hear a snap and see my arrow fly up in the air. There was no mule kick, just an explanation for how the phrase “High-tailing it on out of here,” came about.
    I was not excited. My first emotion was confusion mixed with a small amount of disappointment. I did not know, based on how he took off, if this was a fatal hit. I did not know how much blood there would be.

    Moffa wasted no time. “Well, let’s go find him,” he said about 15 seconds after the shot. We walked over to where he was hit. Blood. I don’t know how much is a lot, but we at least found some blood. A few steps later and I found my arrow. It had snapped. I looked and there was about 5 inches worth of blood on the arrow, but I didn’t know how much of the arrow was still stuck in him (come to find out, it was about 5 inches inside him still, so the arrow went about 10” deep.) We followed the trail. Left, right, through the woods, up a hill, through the brush. The trail went cold a few times but Moffa, who must have a sliver of tracking dog in his DNA, picked up the trail three or four times. We continued the hike through the hillside, eventually going over the crest of the hill and worked our way down. Two or three times we found where he stopped to rest evidenced by a pool of blood. I thought back to what I had read on TBH…give them 20-30 minutes before looking so they may not run as much. This lead to further confusion and worry that my shot was not fatal and we were further stressing an injured animal.

    We continued to trek through the hillside through heavy cover. We sensed the buck was beginning to become confused. The trail left by the blood would just kind of meander through in different directions as if he had no clear path.

    After 45 minutes of searching, and coming to what we thought was the end of the trail, Moffa looks up. “There he is. He saw us,” he says. “You’re going to have to put another one through him.”

    I’m still confused as I don’t see him through the trees and brush. After about a minute, I finally see him, and he was down. When Moffa saw him, he was still up! He eventually fell down about 15 yards from us. As I approached, he attempted to get up and run more, but couldn’t. His will had finally diminished.

    I said to Moffa, “We need to give him a few minutes. Besides, I have to join a conference call.”

    Yeah no joke. It was 8:50 and I had a conference call at 9. Cell phone reception is spotty at our place, but unfortunately, I had service. So at 9:45 the meeting ended. Now that I was free from work and that was plenty of time for the deer to expire, I could look at where I shot him. The wound was in the front of the shoulder, almost like I got him in the middle of the chest. I have no idea what vitals I hit. The only conclusion I’ve come to is that I nicked an artery and he slowly bled out. The broadhead was never recovered.

    We began the process of tagging and recovery. You may remember the deer ran through thick cover downhill. That meant we had to drag him through thick cover uphill. It wasn’t a problem and we got him as far as we could and I went and got the truck. We loaded him up and took him to B&K Processing in Bronte. A few days later he was done and I had 68 lbs of venison in the freezer. I had shot two doe last year and got 81 lbs from both of them, so this was a big deer!

    I couldn’t be happier. I got to sleep in an extra two hours and I have the deer trained to come in 15 minutes after my arrival. Thus, hunting is easy. I am getting a Euro Mount which should be done in 4-6 months.
    And now, my first deer with a bow has been immortalized on the green screen. If you have made it this far, thank you. I hope you enjoyed my story.
    Attached Files

    #2
    Awesome write up, and congrats on your first archery buck! He’s a really nice 8 point. The hardest thing to do when you’re that pumped up is to relax and give the deer time. I’ve made that mistake before and it cost me. Glad to see it worked out for you. Hopefully Moffa is hooked too!


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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      #3
      Hell ya. Hell of a first deer. Very similar to mine. Congrats.


      Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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        #4
        Congrats on a great buck!

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          #5
          Congratulations!

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            #6
            Awesome job!

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              #7
              Great write up. Congrats on the buck.

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                #8
                great read and nice buck. I hunt between bronte and ballinger.

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                  #9
                  Congrats!!! I'm so excited for you man!!!

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                    #10
                    Congrats, Bow hunting is a rush, been doing it for 46 years, shot my last deer with a rifle in 2000.

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                      #11
                      Thanks everyone. I will spare you the novel of "what can wrong" which happened last weekend.

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                        #12
                        Great buck. A lot bigger than my first.
                        Congrats

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                          #13
                          Great buck for your first one. Congratulations! Your story had me exited every step of the way.

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                            #14
                            Congrats

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                              #15
                              Congrats on a really nice buck.

                              I hope you split the meat with your
                              “ tracker.”


                              Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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