IAspurs
Life Member
The afternoon of November 12th I decided I was going to head to a part of the farm we rarely hunt. I had several encounters with a deer we call MJ and he always seemed to be coming from to heading to this part of the farm. I headed out early with a pretty good idea of where I was going to hang. I got in and got the stand hung and got settled in for a long night. I saw a few does early in the afternoon and it was dead until around 5. I was starting to pack stuff up and I had just taken the camera off the arm and put it in my backpack. I turned around to take one more look before putting the arrow back in the quiver. All of a sudden I could hear crashing to the north of me and could hear a buck grunting. Two does appeared in my shooting lane at 20 yards. The buck appeared at 40 yards heading straight for my tree. He was trying to cut he does off and walked into my shooting lane at ten yards and I was already at full draw. I knew he was quartering to me a little bit and needed to put it right against his shoulder. I released and watched my arrow hit right behind his shoulder. He mule kicked and was out of sight with in 10 yards. I walked out and waited for my brothers before going to track him. The arrow looked good and we had tracked him for about 200 yards and found a bed and no deer. We knew something wasn't right so we backed out. The next morning we headed back and tried to pick up where we left off. We had a very difficult time finding any blood after the bed. We talked to the neighbors and told them we believed the deer made it onto their property. They told us to go ahead and look for him. We walked everything and came up with nothing. That evening my brother contacted all of the other hunters in the area letting them know I had hit a deer. We continued to look for him over the next few days and came up with nothing. Fast forward to Wednesday November 20th. I had just got home from the morning hunt and sat down on the couch and my phone rang. When I answer my brother tells me one of the neighbors had found my deer. The celebration began. My brother and I headed to pick him up. We met the neighbor and I finally got to lay my hands on the deer that had been keeping me awake for a week. When we finally got to see my deer I just had to know what happened. I knew where my arrow hit and was puzzled why he had gone as far as he did. It turns out he was quartering to me a lot more that I had thought. My arrow had hit right behind the shoulder but had exited about four inches in front of the back leg. I thanked the neighbor many times and told him I will mount his next deer for free for giving the deer back. Here he is my best bow buck to date. 157 1/8
