Due to work and prior commitments I haven’t been able to get to the lease and chase any deer around this year. This past Saturday I was finally able to slip away and get in an excellent few days of hunting with my dad. It was HOT, but we made it work. The first few days we were hunting a buck we called Little Fork. He hung out at a stand that is conveniently close to camp. We saw lots of deer but between a pop up that is falling apart, cows, and the occasional swirling wind we hadn’t been able to get it done. On Sunday evening it finally came together. Not long after getting in the stand we had a nice grey fox come by and run around for a bit. Later on we had 6-8 does and babies along with a few young bucks come in and grab some corn but got nervous and ended up leaving. At this point it’s starting to get later in the evening and we both thought our hunt was pretty much over. I went back to playing games on my phone and just enjoying what little breeze was blowing into the pop up. About 20 minutes before dark my dad tapped me on the leg and said a big one was coming down the hill. I had the binoculars and took a peak at him to just see a nice 3 year old 8 I recognized from the previous few days. I told him what deer it was and we both leaned back in our seats a little bit. About that time we both saw another buck coming behind the first. After watching him for a second, I knew it was little fork. I turned and told my dad who it was and he had a deflated look on his face. I didn’t understand, but continued to watch the deer close the distance. At about 75 yards out I told him he was bigger than I thought and he ask if he was a shooter. Confused, I turned and said “Yeah, it’s Little Fork. The deer we came here for.” He sprung up and started hustling to get ready for a shot. Apparently he thought I said it was a fork horn the first time and that’s why he wasn’t very concerned originally. It probably worked out better because he didn’t have near the time to get worked up. Eventually he came trotting in. He hopped right in the pen and started feeding on the opposite side of the feeder. After a minute or so something hit the fence to our left and scared him. He hopped out of the pen and we both thought he was gone. Turns out it was another young buck who came in the join the party. After he saw what made all that noise, he came back in, but jumped in the hand corn. At this point I knew it was fixing to happen and was shaking uncontrollably. LF finally turned and gave us a shot at 20. The shot looked good in real life and you could tell he was hit hard as he was running away. After looking back at the video though we could tell it was higher than we originally thought. We gave him a little time and took a peak to see if we could find any blood. After seeing very little we backed out for an hour or so and then went back. We followed specks of blood that were few and far between for about an hour and decided to call in a dog. We called Dylan Sivells with D&R tracking out of Harper. Dylan and his dog did awesome and after about 20 minutes we had our deer. He ended up making it about 500 yards and into a creek. He had to cross a giant open field first and we never expected him to do that. It wasn’t the perfect shot or way that we wanted to do it but it ended up all working out and we couldn’t be any happier with him. LF was a known 6 year old. It was our 3rd year of history with him. He ended up being more of a management buck than anything. He rough scores 117 and some change. We saw several 3-4 year olds that were 10-15” bigger than him so it was a good time for him to go. My dad is still on cloud 9 about shooting him. Here’s a quick video I threw together and some pictures.
[ame="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J2nSVps8aZU"]Little Fork 10/24/21 - YouTube[/ame]
I was in the hot seat next. We had a buck on the other side of the place we called Clayton. He is the crappiest buck I’ve ever had the pleasure of growing. He was 7+ for sure and probably score around 40”. No one wanted to waste a tag on him so I volunteered and I’m glad I did. He’s the biggest bodied hill country deer I’ve ever seen. We don’t have a scale at our new camp yet but I wish we did. He would rival a south Texas deer. This hunt had far less twists and turns. We got up in a tree stand and immediately had deer all over us. We watched deer all evening and was starting to think he wasn’t gonna show. He’s usually a regular as soon as the feeder goes off but was running late this day. When he did finally show, it was about 45 second from the time we saw him to the time I shot him. He walked around the pen straight into a small shooting lane. Ended up shooting him at 17 yards and he only ran about 50 before piling up behind us. It was a relief watching him fall after the crazy night we had the night before. All in all it was a weekend for the books and one of my favorite weekends at the lease I’ve ever had. I’ll post a video of him too. It’s my first time posting YouTube clips so let me know if they aren’t working. Thanks for following along and sorry about the long read!
[ame="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TpOzRV_hQQc"]Clayton 10/25/21 - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J2nSVps8aZU"]Little Fork 10/24/21 - YouTube[/ame]
I was in the hot seat next. We had a buck on the other side of the place we called Clayton. He is the crappiest buck I’ve ever had the pleasure of growing. He was 7+ for sure and probably score around 40”. No one wanted to waste a tag on him so I volunteered and I’m glad I did. He’s the biggest bodied hill country deer I’ve ever seen. We don’t have a scale at our new camp yet but I wish we did. He would rival a south Texas deer. This hunt had far less twists and turns. We got up in a tree stand and immediately had deer all over us. We watched deer all evening and was starting to think he wasn’t gonna show. He’s usually a regular as soon as the feeder goes off but was running late this day. When he did finally show, it was about 45 second from the time we saw him to the time I shot him. He walked around the pen straight into a small shooting lane. Ended up shooting him at 17 yards and he only ran about 50 before piling up behind us. It was a relief watching him fall after the crazy night we had the night before. All in all it was a weekend for the books and one of my favorite weekends at the lease I’ve ever had. I’ll post a video of him too. It’s my first time posting YouTube clips so let me know if they aren’t working. Thanks for following along and sorry about the long read!
[ame="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TpOzRV_hQQc"]Clayton 10/25/21 - YouTube[/ame]
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