On the afternoon of Sat., Nov. 4th 2006 I was hunting in Licking County, Ohio on land that we have hunted for about 4 years. I had been in the stand since about 1 PM. I had not seen a single deer until 4 PM. My stand is in a tree that sits on a fence row (behind me) in the middle of a patch of woods. I looked up the fence row and saw a heck of a buck cross the fence about 150 yards up. I tried grunting and bleating to get him to turn, but he kept heading parallel to my stand and I lost him in the woods. I was kind of bummed, but happy to have seen him. At that point, I had no idea how big he was as I only saw his rack for a split second, but his body was HUGE.
At 5 PM, I heard something coming directly towards my stand in front of me. The stand overlooks a small patch of briars/deadfall in the middle of the woods. On the opposite side of this patch is a small ravine, so I could not see what was heading my way. I could tell it was a deer working his way around the thick patch when all of a sudden I see a massive rack rounding the edge and heading right towards me (this is at about 24 yards)! As soon as I saw his rack I knew he was a big deer and that I would shoot if I had an opportunity, so I did not look at the rack again (and still really did not know how large he was). He continued straight towards me and I was worried he was going to turn to my left, walking right in front of my stand. If so, I would have to turn to the left a little with him at about 4 yards to make the shot. However, thankfully, he angled a little right and when his head went behind a large tree (the tree was 5 yards in front of my stand and the deer was about 10 yards behind the tree), I drew. He continued on towards the fence row that runs behind my stand and I stopped him at all of about 7-9 yrds. with a mouth grunt. Here is where it gets REALLY ugly…
I had a solid anchor, the pin was perfect and I released. He did a HUGE back kick with his back legs and then jumped the fence. He ran about 15 yards, stopped and started to wobble. I thought, “Please go down!” However, as I looked at him I could see the very back of my fletching sticking out of his rib cage much further back than I had aimed. To my horror, I knew I had gut/liver shot him! I have no idea what happened, but I can only figure one of two things…either my arrow hit a branch off of a treetop that was on the ground in front of him (I never saw the little twig sized branches) or I just pulled the shot and had a poor follow through (probably option b…I think I was just anxious to see the shot and did not have a good follow-through). Keep in mind that I do practice quite a bit and consider myself a good shot, but at 9 yards, how could I blow this one!!??
I watched him walk off very slowly, directly away from me (still wobbling a little) until he got to the edge of an overgrown pasture. That is where I last saw him and thought he laid down right there. As much as I wanted to try to convince myself that I had a good hit, I knew it was bad and waited an hour. I then quietly backed out of the woods and let him go. It was the longest night of my life…I knew he was a good buck, but had no idea how big he was.
The next morning, my brother and a buddy of ours headed out. We went to where he was standing when I shot and I found fur, but no blood. We proceeded to follow the trail I knew he took and started seeing blood. It was not a lot, but he was bleeding from both sides. We trailed him to where I last saw him and found more blood, but no deer. We stayed on the trail and the blood continued to increase until we came to half of my arrow. Once he kicked the arrow, the blood all but stopped! We were following drops at this point. About 20 yards later we lost the trail and were looking for it when my brother told us to be quite because he heard a deer in the overgrown fence line that was 20 yards away (a different fence line running perpendicular to the one behind my stand). We waited about 5 minutes and heard a branch break. After about another 5 minutes, it was silent.
I began to slowly parallel the fence line with the wind in my favor. About 25 yards down, I looked through some thick brush with my binoculars and saw a deer lying there! I could only see the white of his hind end, but could make out legs and tail. At that point, I had no idea if he was mine or another deer someone had shot and lost. I eased up towards him after I realized he was not breathing and saw half of his rack sticking up. It blew me away! Finally, I eased all the way up to him and my brother and buddy joined me. He was down and he was HUGE! I could not believe all the character he had, but I felt blessed and thankful for having had the opportunity to harvest such an amazing deer.
I did not have him weighed, but I am sure he weighed somewhere between 275 and 300 lbs. on the hoof and it was a bear dragging him out! He has 18 scoreable points and my taxidermist green scored him at 186.25 gross. His neck is 22″ and he aged at 6.5 years old.
I could not be happier!!! FYI, I now am a 100% firm believer in giving them time if you are at all uncertain of the shot. If I would have pursued him at all Sat. evening, I would have bumped him from his bed and probably never found him. Handling it the way I did, he ended up dying about 110 yards from my stand from a bad hit (I did nick his liver).
Bill
