Owenator
Life Member
It has been a fun year so far my and goal was to shoot my first buck with a bow. I practice quite a bit and hunted hard during youth season and early bow season when I could. I was hoping for Crabby the buck my dad ended up shooting in November. Crabby was a buck I had passed for four years but he never showed during daylight this year when I could hunt him. I told dad to shoot him if he had a chance and was happy for him when he did. I again passed up some really nice deer with hopes they will get older, a couple of them were really tempting but I knew they had huge buck potential if allowed to go another year or two. It is fun for me just to watch the deer and like seeing them from year to year get bigger and finding their sheds. I had a really close call with a huge buck in the last weekend of October my dad rattled in for me. I couldn't shoot him and dad could't get to his bow as the buck was alert and looking our way. I am only allowed to shoot 20 yards or less because of my draw weight and this giant buck stood at 29 yards an easy shot for dad but he came in so fast after dad rattled he didn't have his bow ready and was trying to get me a shot. We estimated the buck to be close to 165- 170" with an 8 point frame a true giant buck I love being that close to these big old bucks and this was a deer we had never seen before. Dad always told me I could shoot whatever I wanted with my bow if I liked it and made me happy so I wasn't as picky being it was my first bow buck and how many yards I could shoot but I still wanted something nice. The night before Thanksgiving we sat in one of our favorite spots and dad spotted a nice buck working his way towards us. Dad said he would take one of two paths and if he picked the right one I would have a close enough shot if I wanted to shoot him. He stopped in front of us and dad told me he was 20 yards I was already at full draw and picked my 20 yard pin and put it on the spot and shot. My arrow went through and was hanging out the back side and I could see blood right away. Dad said it looked like a liver hit a little further back from where I had aimed as I was very excited when I shot but dad said he was a dead deer and I was pumped. We ended up waiting all night before finding him Thanksgiving morning. It was raining and we were miserable and we had no blood trail but dad was confident we would find him close by. We started grid searching the area dad thought he would be and it wasn't long and dad shouted for me to come over that way and pointed down the fence and there he was on we our neighbors side of the fence down in drainage below a pond dam. I was so excited and ran over to him and dad wasn't far behind. We tagged him and dad and I decided to see if the neighbor would let us come in on his side to get him out or we would have a long drag as we could not drive the Ranger to where he was from our side. Thankfully the neighbor let us and we wished him a Happy Thanksgiving and dad was able to get the Ranger close enough to rope him up the hill and pulled him to the truck. That made it nice and we were able to make it to Thanksgiving dinner with the family. I am thankful dad takes me as much as we can and spends time making sure I get to hunt even if he can't because of me. I am looking forward to late season and maybe that big old 8 pointer will show up a little closer!
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