Ok... I was asked for this on my picture but it was getting missed so I am putting it here...
This is the link to the satellite picture of the area I took him in. In January 2000, there was NOTHING here but desert. Now, where I took this buck is now the 13th hole on a golf course.
The part of the course is on the left side of the picture.
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Buckeye,+AZ+85326,+USA&ie=UTF8&ll=33.490838,-112.527165&spn=0.010737,0.018647&t=k&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1This hunt almost did not happen. I got up early to go to work. When I got to the hospital that I worked at, the staff looked at me like I was crazy and wanted to know what I was doing at work. I did not know that the schedule had been changed the night before after I had left. I decided to stay and make sure every one showed up for work. Oddly enough, this time every one did!
I sat there and said well hell, I’m going hunting! I said it half heartedly. On the way home, I thought about it and decided well hell, I am going hunting. It was the last day of the late archery season and I had not hunted at all the whole year. I had not even bothered to get my hunting license because I had been working so much. I pulled into a Walmart and got my license and tag and went home and changed clothes, grabbed my bow and got in my truck and headed out to the desert about 15 minutes from home.
I got out and started walking and remembered an old water tank not far from where I was so I decided to go check it out. On the way out there, I found and old stool and tied it to my pack. I hate trash in the area I hunt in! When I got to the tank I saw how the brush had grown up around the area and thought it might be a good place to ambush a buck. I saw a lot of tracks in the area so it looked promising to me. I saw a lot of deer, rabbit, and quail tracks so I new they were using the tank so it must have had water in it.
I picked out a spot thirty yards from the tank that gave me a good view of the avenues of approach and it had a huge ten foot tall boulder that made a great back drop and provided me some shade.
I remembered that I had some rope in my pack and took the old stool and made a seat and sat down. About ten minutes later, two does came in from my left. I watched them mill around the tank for a while when a truck came by about sixty yards from the tank. The does took off a little ways away. I noticed some movement to my right and saw two more does coming in. They milled around and a covey of quail came in and played in the water and the dirt. It was a kick watching them play around the does! The does stayed for about fifteen minutes and left.
About ten minutes later I caught more movement out of the corner of my eye and I turned my head in time to see the antlers cresting the hill ten feet behind the tank! I never expected a deer to come from that direction since there was about a sixty foot deep crater there! I was thinking to myself OH SH*T! I did not have an arrow ready and I was not in a good position to do anything. I had to SLOWLY get myself out of this stool and get myself setup to get a shot. The buck kept coming on into the tank like there was nothing else in the world out there. I managed to get up and my bow ready and drew back. From where I was standing, I could not get a clear shot so I started to step back. When I did, I stepped on a twig. SNAP!!! The buck whipped up his head and looked so I SLOWLY leaned forward so all I could see was his hind quarters. I watched him for a few minutes until he relaxed and I leaned back until I had the vitals in my sights and let it fly!
The buck flipped around and went back the way he came. I gave him a few minutes and went to get my arrow. When I got there, I found a huge blood splatter and lots of hair. I saw bubbles in the blood and knew he was done for. I walked up the top of the hill and looked down into the crater and the buck looked up at me and took off like a rocket! I watched him run up the other side of the crater and across the dirt road, out across some flats and stop on a road about a quarter of a mile away. I sat down and pulled out my binoculars and watched him and he walked off the road down a fifteen foot embankment.
I waited about an hour and took off trailing a wonderful blood trail. I topped the road and went down the other side and found the blood drops had gone down to about the size of a dime. Then the buck hit some black gravel. Oh this was going to be fun! I found where he had picked up with two other deer and had ran and then I lost the sign.
I went home and got a friend and he came out with his Australian Sheppard and we looked together for a while before another friend showed up. They started looking on a small hill while I stayed low. My reasoning was that I knew he was hit bad and did not think he would go up a hill like that.
I was tired and sat down for a few minutes when my friend’s dog came up to me. I reached out and was petting him with out looking at the dog. When I turned around, I saw a hair on his muzzle. I pulled it off and looked at it and said to the dog “You found him didn’t you boy?” and he just panted a bit like a happy pooch! I told him to show me and he got up and led me to a wash about twenty yards away and up under a tree in some bushes in the wash lied my deer. He dropped three hundred yards from my truck!
And that is the story of my first Arizona desert bow mule deer!
