Excessive amount of reading alert.
After 19yrs of hunting ETX with a bow, I finally was able to shoot and harvest a mature buck. A mature etx buck has been my hunting Achilles heel. The struggles, disappointments, near misses, misfortunes, bad luck, and let downs to get to this point would've sunk most hunters. It even got the best of me at one point and I quit the lease I shot this deer on. The challenges of this lease are on par or exceed all etx stereotypes. The neighbors are horrible, the poaching is out of control, and even severe flooding has plagued us over the life of this lease. I wont even go into the pig problem that we have. Despite all of that, we have been able to create a steady producer on at small piece of land we lease. We have moved to extreme measures on a lot of things but mostly we have modified our setups, means of transportation, and learned the deer movements better. One stand in particular has been placed along a trail and is roughly 150yds from a heavily utilized bedding area. The down side is, its 150yds from camp too. But, it is a steady producer as long as you can keep the traffic and noise from camp down to a moderate level. This camp stand is where I was finally able to get it done.
I took 10/28-10/30 off from work so I could spend some time in the woods. We haven't had a mature buck on camera since opening day but I needed some therapy so I was ready to go hunt. I slipped out the Sunday afternoon before and saw 4 different bucks cruising around so I knew rut was in full swing. I got to camp around 3pm Wednesday and missed my window of slipping into the stand during the rain. So by the time I arrived pigs were all over the place. I stalked them to 50yds and missed over the top of ones back. Then settled into the stand only to miss another pig 30min later. Now that I've successfully moved all the pigs out, the deer started moving into the area. I saw 8 deer in total and not a single one was captured on Covert. They were moving too fast or just chasing each other around. Wednesday's hunt ended but I could tell by the way the does were acting, the rut was going and there was an active breeding buck in the area.
Wednesday night was a disaster. All the wood was too wet for a camp fire, Temps dropped to 39f, 2 different heaters broke before 11pm, and there was a massive rat storing acorns in my trailer when he wasn't fighting the other rat. I'd like to say I woke up in a crappy mood Thursday morning but if you don't sleep, you can't wake up in a crappy mood but I locked it up and got to the stand. The good news was, I was fully adapted to the cold weather at this point.
The hunt started out good and I had steady action. Same process of does coming into the area but being very cautious until they finally tucked just inside the woodline and stood there for 45min. Finally a young buck came back and chased them off. About 8:45 I had enough but knew that I would be better off cranking up my Buddy heater in the pop up than goin to camp and freezing my *** off in my trailer like I did all night. At 9am I gave completely up and started the heater. By 9:05 I was the warmest I'd been in over 12hrs so I kicked my feet up and was tempted to take a nap. We had pigs patterned at 10am for over a week so I decided to stay and waste another arrow on one of them. At 9:10 I see a glimpse of horn through a side window from down wind of me. Figured it was one of the small bucks from earlier that morning. Then as the buck entered my shooting window, I realized that it was a buck we call Joker. A 6.5yr old that doesn't score great but is the best buck we have on cam this season. I start to move slowly towards my bow and then realize that he's not stopping to eat, he's just cruising through to get to his bed. I kicked my movements into high gear bc its now or never. He was quickly moving out to 30yds walking almost straight away. As I draw my bow and get the arrow aligned with a hole in the mesh, he stopped to grab a kernel or two that I out for hand corn. As soon as he stopped I guess him at over 25yds and less than 30yds and let it rip. Arrow hit solid and blood was spraying as he ran off. The bad part it is, it wasn't a full pass through so I was a little nervous on how much penetration I got. I walked to camp, saw great blood at the shot location as I passed by. Less than 30min later I couldn't take the wait any longer. I went in after him. It was the easiest blood trail I've ever followed and I walked up on him 80yds later. Rough score of 110"-115".
As I walked up to him I just sat down next to him and said a prayer of thanks to the Lord above. I felt a huge sense of relief and haven't felt this accomplished in a long long time. It's been absolute hell at times with how hard this place is to hunt. Im rather hard headed so that compounds the issue at times. I am not sure I'll ever feel more accomplished on a buck again. Thanks for reading.
After 19yrs of hunting ETX with a bow, I finally was able to shoot and harvest a mature buck. A mature etx buck has been my hunting Achilles heel. The struggles, disappointments, near misses, misfortunes, bad luck, and let downs to get to this point would've sunk most hunters. It even got the best of me at one point and I quit the lease I shot this deer on. The challenges of this lease are on par or exceed all etx stereotypes. The neighbors are horrible, the poaching is out of control, and even severe flooding has plagued us over the life of this lease. I wont even go into the pig problem that we have. Despite all of that, we have been able to create a steady producer on at small piece of land we lease. We have moved to extreme measures on a lot of things but mostly we have modified our setups, means of transportation, and learned the deer movements better. One stand in particular has been placed along a trail and is roughly 150yds from a heavily utilized bedding area. The down side is, its 150yds from camp too. But, it is a steady producer as long as you can keep the traffic and noise from camp down to a moderate level. This camp stand is where I was finally able to get it done.
I took 10/28-10/30 off from work so I could spend some time in the woods. We haven't had a mature buck on camera since opening day but I needed some therapy so I was ready to go hunt. I slipped out the Sunday afternoon before and saw 4 different bucks cruising around so I knew rut was in full swing. I got to camp around 3pm Wednesday and missed my window of slipping into the stand during the rain. So by the time I arrived pigs were all over the place. I stalked them to 50yds and missed over the top of ones back. Then settled into the stand only to miss another pig 30min later. Now that I've successfully moved all the pigs out, the deer started moving into the area. I saw 8 deer in total and not a single one was captured on Covert. They were moving too fast or just chasing each other around. Wednesday's hunt ended but I could tell by the way the does were acting, the rut was going and there was an active breeding buck in the area.
Wednesday night was a disaster. All the wood was too wet for a camp fire, Temps dropped to 39f, 2 different heaters broke before 11pm, and there was a massive rat storing acorns in my trailer when he wasn't fighting the other rat. I'd like to say I woke up in a crappy mood Thursday morning but if you don't sleep, you can't wake up in a crappy mood but I locked it up and got to the stand. The good news was, I was fully adapted to the cold weather at this point.
The hunt started out good and I had steady action. Same process of does coming into the area but being very cautious until they finally tucked just inside the woodline and stood there for 45min. Finally a young buck came back and chased them off. About 8:45 I had enough but knew that I would be better off cranking up my Buddy heater in the pop up than goin to camp and freezing my *** off in my trailer like I did all night. At 9am I gave completely up and started the heater. By 9:05 I was the warmest I'd been in over 12hrs so I kicked my feet up and was tempted to take a nap. We had pigs patterned at 10am for over a week so I decided to stay and waste another arrow on one of them. At 9:10 I see a glimpse of horn through a side window from down wind of me. Figured it was one of the small bucks from earlier that morning. Then as the buck entered my shooting window, I realized that it was a buck we call Joker. A 6.5yr old that doesn't score great but is the best buck we have on cam this season. I start to move slowly towards my bow and then realize that he's not stopping to eat, he's just cruising through to get to his bed. I kicked my movements into high gear bc its now or never. He was quickly moving out to 30yds walking almost straight away. As I draw my bow and get the arrow aligned with a hole in the mesh, he stopped to grab a kernel or two that I out for hand corn. As soon as he stopped I guess him at over 25yds and less than 30yds and let it rip. Arrow hit solid and blood was spraying as he ran off. The bad part it is, it wasn't a full pass through so I was a little nervous on how much penetration I got. I walked to camp, saw great blood at the shot location as I passed by. Less than 30min later I couldn't take the wait any longer. I went in after him. It was the easiest blood trail I've ever followed and I walked up on him 80yds later. Rough score of 110"-115".
As I walked up to him I just sat down next to him and said a prayer of thanks to the Lord above. I felt a huge sense of relief and haven't felt this accomplished in a long long time. It's been absolute hell at times with how hard this place is to hunt. Im rather hard headed so that compounds the issue at times. I am not sure I'll ever feel more accomplished on a buck again. Thanks for reading.
Attached Files
Comment