bigbuckhunter88
PMA Member
Well this season started off somewhat tough for me. Have had the cameras out since July in all the normal spots to pick up good bucks in their summer ranges and I kept striking out. Pull after pull was filled with young bucks. For the first year in a long time I was going into season without having a mature buck on camera. I spent alot of time scouting from a distance and still could not pin down a shooter. October got super busy for me. I hunted one early October cold front and had an encounter with a great 3.5 year old. I spent alot of my time hunting public areas as far in as I could possibly go and ended up having a few great encounters but it never worked out right. Fast forward to this past weekend. I snuck out of work early on Friday and saw great activity but nothing mature. My wife had the weekend off so I knew the evening hunts would be in one of our few locations set up with two stands. Saturday morning I had sightings of 2 mature bucks with deformed racks but neither of them read the script. Saturday night was basically dead. Sunday night found me in a double ladder stand that is in a prime location, I just usually never sit. We got in about 12:30 and let things settle down. It became the most action packed hunt I've ever been on. The wife has never shot a deer with her bow so anything is fair game for her at the time being. About 130 I decide to smash the horns together and tell her to get ready. About a minute after I put the antlers downs I spot a really young buck making his way towards us. The wife got ready and did everything right. She was at full draw but the buck took the wrong trail and was out of her effective range. After that deer there was maybe a total of 5 minutes that went by the rest of the night when we couldn't see a deer. We had does and fawns that came in just out of her range. I spotted a definite shooter on our bottom. He looked to be alone and I tried calling to him with no response. Then the doe appeared and I knew without her I didn't have a chance. She led him the opposite direction. We had a bunch of other encounters including her getting busted drawing on a great looking young 10 point. A doe we hadn't seen sneak in behind us blew and the 10 point left without giving her a shot. She got really disappointed but I told her "the way tonight is going we could get covered up in deer shortly". I truly believed that was possible but definitely wasn't expecting what was next. It was about 435 and I spotted a deer on the bottom, pulled up the binos and it was actually two bucks fighting. I put the binos downs and saw a doe heading my way from that direction. I told her to get ready. As as the words left my mouth I heard a grunt. I had my bow in hand and the doe was making her way right too us on a sprint. I could see 3 bucks behind her and all were not mature. The doe was closing the distance and the wife was struggling getting her bow off the holder. The doe came to a complete stop at about 10 yards and stared completely up at us. About this time is when I realized there were 5 bucks behind her and one definitely was mature. The doe took off past us with 5 bucks in tow. I tried stopping the mature buck to no avail. I let down and turned to see my wife trying to stop one of the small bucks at 7 yards but he wasn't buying that either. I lost sight of all the deer but could her the grunts and ruckus getting further away. We talked for a second and if the deer were close enough for her she would shoot, but if they were out of her range it was my turn. I honestly didn't think we had a chance with the doe busting us. I figured they were gonna keep going the way they went. Then the crashing started getting closer. I caught sight of the doe and she was on a trail that passed at 30 yards on my side of the tree. She stayed on that trail and 6 bucks stayed on that trail running passed but the old buck looped around trying to take a shortcut which put him out of range. This time when they passed they were headed to a field. I figured it was over and I told her it'd been a great night with both of us drawing on deer twice. That is when we could hear them coming back. This time the doe took a trail that we walk to the stand on. She passed within feet of the bottom of the tree and bucks were running everywhere. The mature buck looked gassed. I bleated at him 4 times and he finally stopped at 25 yards. I settled the pin and let it fly. He took off 10 yards and stopped to look around. I grabbed another arrow and was in the process of drawing when he tipped over. It was the most insane chase I had ever witnessed. Initially when I shot the buck I thought I knew who he was as I knew he had a deformed rack. Turns out it was a surprise buck that I saw Saturday morning. He had an absolute beast of a body. He had an old injury to his back left hoof and also had an arrow wound in between his back knee and hip. He ended up with 37 inches of mass measurements.
