This comes about as I've been hunting a certain buck for 5 years now. A gooder. I seen him twice last year, and once this year in 5 years. He's not a mega-giant but I have been super-infatuated with him. To the point of being problematic. Well, this year I didn't even start hunting whitetails until October because of my elk Manitoba elk tag. I managed to see the buck once in mid October, but he was a little far at last light and I elected not to #sendit. This buck lives in a ginormous tract of woods which makes him difficult to pin down.
So along comes the 12th of November, and I'm not really "feeling" any of my usual spots, but in the back of my mind I have one spot that I have yet to hunt. It hasn't been hunted in years, but doesn't have much bush on it. An 80 acre piece with 10 acres of bush. The rest is a hay field. It is neighbouring a piece I hunted for years until the landowners let every Tom, Dick and Harry on and the quality dropped off. I figured what the heck I'll give it a go.
Knowing that mature deer often do what I would consider "weird" behaviour, I made a plan accordingly. I've seen a few big mature deer cruise across the centre of fields here. I think it's weird because it puts them right out in the open, but I guess in an archery-only area (aside from the heavy poaching pressure) that behaviour would keep them relatively safe. The behaviour is also limited to those magic rut days.
Temps tonight were -10 and dropping with a stiff 30km WNW wind. With that in mind I placed my decoy off a little to my west, quartering towards me as usual. All I had to do was wait.
Let me tell you, it was cold. Very cold. I was very happy to have used hot hands insoles in my boots, and hot hands in my wool flip mitts, and even turned on the new heated vest. (which was a total life saver).
At about 4pm I notice a doe and fawn feeding out from the south. A little while later they run away from a tractor driving down the N/S road. About 15 min later, I notice a herd of does and fawns coming from the south, working their way west, then north into the field towards me. They're about 450 yards away. A short moment later I notice a doe feeding in a field 1/4 mile to the north of me (across the gravel road) and a buck works out to nose her. I grab my horns and give him a good rattle session. I am unsure if he heard anything. Oh well, he was a ways away. In the meantime, these does are working their way closer to my location, which can't hurt.
This buck is a couple hundred yards WNW from me, ie directly upwind. Couldn't be better. I can shoot to the north and south side of the shelterbelt, and he can't wind me until he gets east of me. I rattle, he stops. In my saddle I am able to stay on the opposite side of the oak and keep rattling without him seeing me. He simply watches, and then when I finish continues on his path undeterred. It's like he knows exactly where the does are. For the image above, the X is were I saw a buck. and the dots are his path to the area where does are feeding.
I put the horns away, and grab the binos as he hits the shelterbelt where I can no longer see him. A few moments later I see a doe running as he is obviously pushing does around. I catch another glimpse of him, and he seems to have singled a doe out, and she is working East towards me. They're roughly 120 yards out. I give him a big nasty grunt as he looks my way.
That gets him walking as he marches behind this doe. Everything goes away as I grab the RF to double-check a few marks in the field. At about this time the doe is closing as she gets to 50...40 I range her line in case he follows it exactly. I do believe she was in heat and wanted to check all available suitors to see who is best and that is why she came my way.
Anyways, she circles around downwind of the decoy. Not this again. The buck locks up 65 yards away and through brush. I've seen this movie before. 150 yards to the East of me, 6 years ago I had a doe and buck working my way along the exact same shelterbelt as the doe winded me and took a 170 buck with her. One of the biggest deer I've ever seen alive. I don't like the way that movie ended. She starts giving the decoy the head bob, and silently I'm cursing.
Slowly she keeps walking apparently unbothered. The buck takes a few steps and I draw. He keeps walking and now instantly bristles up and starts that stiff legged angular strut-walk towards the boss buck decoy. You've all seen what this looks like and it's a whitetail hunters dream. He is 100% focused on the decoy.
He works his way circling towards the decoy and stops at 25 yards, 5 yards from the deke, and perfectly downwind of it. Now, I did have the decoy "airing out" outside since Halloween, but I know I touched it while setting up, and I know I am about to watch him turn inside out and get outta there. He is 100% frontal, with his head slightly lowered to crush the deke, and fully covering the front of his chest with his skull.
What can a guy do? Is this how it unfolds and all comes crashing down? All I can do is hold my draw. I have since swung around the side of the oak in my saddle and have the pins buried waiting for him to open up. After what seems like an eternity he takes 2 more steps towards the decoy opening up a quartering to shot. At this point he is mere feet from the decoy and I know in an instant he could crush it.
I let fly.
The arrow hits behind the shoulder and he takes off.
I stop quickly at the landowners house, friends of mine to let them know what happened, and that I plan on coming back later tonight, so if they see lights in the field not to be worried.
I talk to my brother and a couple buddies about it, and continue with the plan to come back 4 hours later at about 9pm. I don't want to lose him to coyotes which have been very prevalent this year. Talking to my brother he throws caution about going too early, but I feel he's hit hard seeing as he hasn't moved.
I pick up my brother and we continue to the field. My hopes is the truck lights will illuminate a body in the field. As we arrive, I realize that is not to be the case. We get out of the truck, and try to find where he started walking. It takes a bit but we find the spot. We follow a combination of tracks and blood as the buck seems vey confused not really going in any direction, but going a general SE towards the 10 acres of timber.We find a bloody bed, a few chunks of stuff along the way, and another 2 beds in fairly short succession. looking good. 3 beds in the last 80 yards or so as we get close to the bush. Just then my brother Matt whispers "I see eyes!" Sure enough. There he is, head up. Crap!!! I have no knife on me, nothing. As we deliberate for a minute the buck jumps off headed toward the NE into the field he came out of. We run to the field to shine it to see how he looks running. I have a very bright flashlight and he isn't in the field. Good sign. We get the heck outta there.
Nothing to do but wait until morning. My brother is hunting the morning, so I come back with another friend who is out of work with nothing better to do lol. I feel confident he is toast by now. Temps overnight of -16, but sleep wasn't much to come by. Talking to buddies they ask: "What was he?" I remember bladed brow tines, and I thought I remembered good G4's but playing it back in my mind I am unsure. I never really looked at him, other than the first second when I instantly decided I was shooting. After that, "shoot mode" took over. Although it may sound like I am score focused I really am not, it's just the only universal system to talk about size of a deer. "I dunno could be 120, could be 140?" I tell them as I don't want to overhype him and I'm really not totally sure what I shot.
We slowly pick our way across the hay field and he gets to the bush on the north side. It's thin but certainly he died in here. No dice. He continues through and into the neighbouring field. The grass gets high and I nearly step on him.
Instant relief. I notice his jaw moving as he still breathes, but is unable to move his head, body or anything else. I quickly dispatch the buck once again shocked at the toughness of these creatures.
And I was totally OK with that. It was such an exciting situation with the decoy etc. I was good. Never in my life had I had this kind of time to hunt November, nor will I likely due to my job change, and so I had set lofty goals. But over the course of time I started to relax and focus on having fun. This situation had been all that, and I was happy to enjoy it, but now the buck reminded me why I had just instantly gone into "shoot mode." He was a real beauty. My friend is thankfully as anal as I am about photos and we took our time taking some nice pictures.
Great hunt, and totally agree, of all the animals I’ve hunted, nothing is even close to the punishment a big buck can take.
Well done.
So there you have it. If you've got a decoy, or simply need some encouragement to use it - this was for you ;)
Hope you all have a tremendous rest of the season.
Kurt
I ain’t buyin that line about the reason the doe in heat was headed your way, though! ;-)
Paul, you’re right. Although we always want to hear that crash after about a 5 Mississippi in an odd way it did add excitement to the whole hunt. Sleep was restless, but I got a lot more time out of the hunt. And to find him in the end with no damage of any kind, meat or otherwise was really nice. Even the tenderloins were clean and didn’t look like any gut juices had been up against them. He grossed 158 0/8” for interests sake.
I had pictures in a different spot of a very similar 6x6. My brother had pics of it last year and we could accurately say it is 4.5 years old. With the younger look on this buck and the similarity to that other buck I would guess that it too was 4.5 years old. Amazing how every now and then a buck can come along and hit nearly 160” at 4.5 years old meanwhile there are many bucks I know to be in the 6-10 year age class that are basic 4x4’s or 5’s that can be confused with an average 2.5 year old. Genetics are an interesting thing.
I got very blessed to take a great buck. I firmly believe it’s all about having fun. I know it’s blasphemy for this site but I would have been super tickled to take a nice buck rifle hunting the week prior. Sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves for a certain deer or whatever, and I came to really be able to take it in this year and enjoy myself and ironically got gifted a couple awesome animals. Good luck to everyone!
It's super fun, but it also doesn't work every time. That's my tips from my trial and error learning. Thanks men for all the kind words.
Dean I’ll post some pics as some interesting things happened as I’ll explain. Attached here is the entry just to the left of the E
Also, whatever happened to make the two holes happened fast, as by the time the deer ran 200 yards I could see the guts falling out the bottom as I said in the video I could see something hanging out. Very strange. Either way I’m happy as more holes is better, but very strange.
On another crazy note - check out this shoulder blade. It was on his near side (the side I was shooting.) SO GLAD I didn’t hit it because it’s like an inch thick two-tier shoulder blade. Other side was normal.
You may have just answered an old - like 30 years ago old - head scratcher.
My cousin and I were hunting when he hit a deer dead center in the shoulder blade - shooting 70 + pounds with a 3 blade Muzzy. The arrow sounded like it hit a cement block and literally bounced off. He just shook his head and couldn't believe it. Could this have been the reason???? Don't know, possibly!
Loved the video! Could tell it was cold. Been there.
Excellent recap about the follow up. Animals can be amazingly tough and go a very long way. You stuck to it and were rewarded!
Love it!
Congratulations Man! Well done!
