My set-up was in a funnel that I call the Fish Barrel; between the topography and a deer fence that the owner put in just to keep them away from the gardens up close to the house, it comes down to about 50 yards across. I don't usually set up right in it, just because it's so tight, but it has always been my go-to for the last day or two of the year if I've been striking out, and I was pretty sure that I was going to go down again.... My big plans to get out there pre-dawn fell through when it became clear that I was going to need to help get a couple of kids off to school; good thing I had packed all of my outerwear unto a big plastic bin and stashed it in the warmest spot in the house so I wouldn't be forced to put on a bunch of frost-covered clothing.
But as so often happens, once I decided that I was going to be the bus driver... suddenly, we were late getting out the door for THAT as well, so I ran to the back yard for my stand and carried it out to the car. #1 son was ready to go, at least, and suddenly I realized that I hadn't gotten my bow into the car. Run back in for that. Drive off to school - it's right on the way... stop at Lakeside Diner for a sandwich and a cup o' coffee, since there's no sense hunting on zero blood sugar - and then dash up to the property. Pulled off to set my stand out closer to where I'd be hunting - no sense hauling it a few hundred yards back there from where I usually park. So I went to the back of the wagon, pull out the stand and .... where is my big plastic bin full of...??? Oh, spit. Seriously? It's now about 9:30; high tide in 10 minutes or so. Prime Time, and I'm screwed. NO WAY can I handle even a half-hour in a tree without that bin.
So I figured what the hell... Hauled the stand back and picked a tree; not the usual one with the raggedy bark on it, but maybe a dozen yards farther to the east. Seems like the deer travel over that way anyhow. Ran back to the wagon and made tracks for home. I have to say that it was some consolation to realize that it was going to take me just 35 minutes and a hair under a gallon of gas to get back to pick up my stuff. I had hunted a few years up around Cornwall.. 80- 90 miles each way worked out to about $30 worth of gas, round trip, and this little snafu was going to cost me all of 2 gallons at $1.65 a pop. Grab & Go; hauled back up there, got dressed and started in to the stand, taking time to glass a bedding area near the gate I was going to use, just to make sure I didn't screw up my entire day before I even began.
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Raggedy bark tree is the one right about the limb dampener... with a downed Laurel leaning against it. On the left-hand edge of this pic is a big, downed log, which figures in later...
Buuuut..... Nothin'. Not a squirrel, not a mouse. Not even a dickie-bird was moving. But as I sat there, I began to see things that I knew should be there... Ah. There's a rub. Just a little one, but you couldn't ask for an easier shot than if something were to stop there. Oh, yeah... There's a small scrape. Also inactive, but another chip-shot.
So I re-checked the time. About a quarter to quitting time. Time to stand up for a last look around, and I craned my head around the side of the tree, catching that breeze right in the face. Then something moved. And a few more scuffing sounds in the leaves, but a shade different. And there she was... moving across the funnel right now, near the Laurel in the background here... but was she headed North? South? And as far away as she was.... Even if she was coming my way, would she get to me before I ran out of time?
Then she started coming through; I thought she was going to wander over near the fence... about 20 yards... Get the release onto the loop... No. Wait. DAMMIT! I'd been fingering that thing in y pocket all day long, just making sure it'd be ready when I needed it and now I couldn't get it onto that loop to save myself. She kept steaming right along. I was sure she'd blow right on through before I got this sorted out. NUTS!!
But then she hooked over in my direction towards that smaller scrape I had noticed earlier, and - Saints Be Praised - she stopped for a sniff.
For all the pin-point accuracy of a peep & pin set-up, it just doesn't seem that helpful in a hunting rig. And I obviously need a new hat. The short brim ran afoul of my bowstring, and now that I've got the release onto the string, suddenly I'm having to crane my head around to get a good look at this beast. Then I realize that I wasn't even looking through the damn peep! OK... Suck it up. Settle in. Didn't check my level, but this was a 10-yarder... 12, tops, and I shoot this bow high-wrist so I won't have to worry about it too much anyway. Find the peep... find the pin, and....
All hell broke loose. At the release, I heard a good, solid thump, followed by a barking sound which I've never heard a deer make before. Then she went into a bucking bronco routine... rolling and thrashing and crashing across the ground. DAMN, did I wish I'd been carrying my recurve and using the back quiver - could have had a second shot in there quickly! Instead, I groped for a second arrow, already cussing myself for a bad hit. You see, about 4-5 years ago, I had taken wat turned out to be the biggest buck of my life in this same spot; he'd been standing no more than 15 yards from where she had paused at that scrape, and I had peeked. With a scoped rifle. Going for a neck shot, and I just creased his throat, so instead of crumpling on the spot, he reared up on his hind legs and crashed over a big log just about 5 yards from my tree. Remember the log on the left side of the earlier pic? That was the one. Then he jumped up and ran to a spot at my 2:00, maybe 2:30, and stopped, head down, panting hard. I knew he was hit fairly hard but didn't like where this was headed, so I went for a follow-up shot just as he turned, and.. Missed. That turned into the longest recovery of my life. Took about an hour and a half and ended with me watching and waiting for him to expire, too close to the neighbor's property line to want to take a follow-up, and worried that he'd head onto someone else's property before he kicked off.
So here I am; a second arrow on the string, the doe now stopped right next to the log that the buck had crashed over. The shot had looked true, but I couldn't see the arrow anywhere. And it's getting dark. FEET of snow expected by morning, and two hockey games to coach, so the earliest I could get back would be.... Noon again? Except that the landowner has only given me permission for weekdays because his new ladyfriend visits on weekends and doesn't approve of hunting.
I need this like a hole in my head!
The deer is now directly between me and what light is filtering through the clouds from where the sun was about to set. And she's facing directly away from me now. Then she turns to her right a bit and starts to move off. And like a MORON, I punch the trigger. Did I even line up on the damn peep? I'm sure I saw the arrow tracking way too far to the left. Sounds like I hit a rock, but she jumped forward, crashed over the log and is now lying belly up. So I sat back down, nocked another arrow, just as a precaution, and tried to think this through. I DO NOT want to lose any arrows on this property. Too many people, too many kids, too many dogs using these woods. And I know it'll take me a good 10 minutes to get things squared away and get the climber back down out of this tree. But I have made the mistake before of causing too much commotion up in a stand and having a hard-hit animal move off on me, so I just sit, trying to mark the spot on that second arrow in hopes I'll be able to find it tonight.
Not AGAIN!
But then she turns to her right. Peep. Check. Level. Check. #1 pin settles about 4" behind the near foreleg for the double-lung; she's stopped, and I'm not letting her walk NOW... Same Thump. Same bark. One surge forward and down she goes behind a screen of brush.
So here I am. Not sure how dead she really is, but I'm pretty much out of options. I've got one broadhead left in the quiver, but I can't use it unless she gets up again, and at this rate, it's going to be too dark to see what I'm shooting at anyway. So again, I sat. Waited until it was dark enough that I couldn't pick her out against the background without binocs, then lowered my gear and started working my way down.
Except for one thing.... I had cut the shrink-tubing off of my chains so that I could see how rusty they were, and now they're collapsing against the tree. After 5 minutes of trying to get the lower unit to slide down the trunk, I started to get a little concerned. The tree was too big to shinny down it, and I was up too high to be willing to risk a fall. Hmmm... I wonder if I could rig something with my haul rope... It's strong enough, but.... Try again.
It moved. Back in business, but DAMN, is it getting dark!
Now to make some sense of all this…
With the bigger flashlight, I found this: 8” of bloody shaft. A few sprays of solid red blood on the ground and drops leading over towards that log.
Not only was this arrow not where it should have been.... WTH happened to that broadhead??
"Good blood" seemed like a bit of an understatement.
The weird thing was, I could see the exit wound - hard to miss with an arrow standing there in it, but didn't see another mark on her...
Anyway; Success! Decided I'd figure the rest out later.
I don't know if I agree with that.
Turns out that my first shot was high, owing to the short range. This bow hits about 3" high at 15 yards, and I hadn't compensated for that. But the steep angle definitely helped. Actually, it probably made all the difference in the world.Even though I hit through the backstrap and passed above the spine, I also got a decent-sized laceration through the off-side lung. And the reason I couldn't pick out the exit wound right away was that it simply hadn't bled a whole bunch. Not externally, anyway.
Second shot, longer range, less of an angle, hit lower and exited higher, which took it just barely under the body of the spine, so it took out the descending aorta and the ascending vena cava. Instant - or very nearly instant - catastrophic drop in blood pressure.
I always get my hides tanned, and now I've got a pretty good pile of 'em because I'm never sure exactly what I want to do with the leather. But not this one.... It's going to be a back quiver for sure. Because even though I got this deer with the Contraption, the design is going to be just Way Too Cool. Thinking to sandwich bright red leather to make the BH cuts really pop.
You think I should go with buckskin tan, or the so-dark-brown-it's-almost black?
Not only was that blade inexplicably curld over, but when I took a closer look, I noticed this, too...
I was thinking this doesn't say much for the durability of a head dubbed a "HellRazor"....
"What happened to its leg?" So I looked down and saw this funny little mark.... That and he had noticed the hoof kind of flopping...
Turns out that I was right when I recalled seeing that arrow track low and left, which would be spot-on with the nagging sense that I had looked AROUND the peep, rather than through it. You'll have to forgive me; this was my first non-Trad archery kill!
So I didn't hit a rock. I hit bone. That explains the sound, the lunge across the log, the arrow showing up in the "wrong" place, and the blood being only on the fletching.
And under the circumstances, I guess I won't give the head too bad a rating for durability after all; it won't shave, but all three blades pretty much pass the fingernail test.
I had a good laugh over your contraption problems. Yeah, should have had the recurve.
I near went nuts looking for the doe in those other pictures. I think I found here in the second one, right?
Can't see it in this shot, but the bone was just shattered. Must've blown out a fair-sized chunk once the BH had been squashed down as far as it was of a mind to go.
That ability to edit images is pretty cool... Too bad we don't get it on Leatherwall, but I suppose it's too high tech.... ;)
If there had been a deer back there when I was futzing around with the phone, it would've been too much....
Thanks, Bill - My feeling towards the Contraption now are like "Yeah, OK... BTDT. Check it off the bucket list." Rather shoot a recurve or LB.
I mean... You never know exactly how things might have gone down if you could go back and change One Thing, but this shot couldn't have been more than about 7-8 yards. Well, MAYBE 9. No way 10. Not the closest I've ever taken, by any means, but....
And that's why I call this stand the Fish Barrel....
Not really any lack of confidence; just a lack of familiarity with so damn many moving parts! So yeah, I had to think about it the first time, and the net was a shot that went straight down the line but an inch and a half or maybe even a couple inches high. A half inch lower would have dropped her in her tracks. Plenty lethal, but nothing a half hour to forty-five minutes wouldn't have settled, so long as I didn't bump her coming down the tree. Trouble was that she stopped too close.
The second shot was the one on which I did let a little buck fever get the better of me, in that I stayed focused on my target to the degree that I forgot I was using the gadgets and went half-way on auto-pilot.
Third shot was Money. I'd had a chance to pull it together and take the full second at full draw that I needed to settle, check and squeeze. Yeah, it could've gone 4-6 inches lower without falling off of the pie plate, but didn't need to in order to pretty near guarantee a recovery, whether she'd gone a couple more yards or another 80-100 until she dropped. A solid double-lung is a solid double-lung any time of day.
Funny thing is that I'm quite confident that my first shot would've been placed better had I been shooting one of my recurves because there would have been no distractions, no surprise wardrobe malfunctions, no sequences to worry about, no jitters over a moving target.
Lucky for me my shoulder has gotten a lot better so I won't have to mess with the adaptive equipment next year...
You can edit/mark up photo in your paint program.
David- (Dave?) - Odd thing.... I don't really see that hunt as having gone "wrong" at all. Was it a perfect scenario? Nope, but most of Life is at least a little bit messy. I always expect a clean kill or I won't shoot, and I've passed up an awful lot of shots for each one I've taken; but a solid, lethal hit is always a good hit in my book..
But I'm definitely looking forward to simplifying things next time around!
I put it together in installments and didn't realize how much was there until after I'd posted the whole mess!
That's why printed material is always higher quality than digital - it gets edited before it goes to press!