I met my wife to be last march.... she was a client of mine, when she said she takes the entire month of sep off to bowhunt.. well I knew she was the one for me. She told me about this property she hunted out of salem for Blacktails.. and once we got together I made it a point to go check it out and scout.... once the landowner gave me the greenlight I ponied up the cash and bought a oregon archery tag. At one point we had 5 cams on the place, yet only one had consistent deer on it..... we had 2 good bucks that we wanted to go after... a super nice tall 3x3 and a big 4x4 I named "Hank". We I hung a stand in early august and started adding apples. The next 3 weeks we got pics of does, both our bucks and others... mostly at night.... we did not even hunt in august as we were to busy with elk and we both wanted to hunt late season and the rut. I made weekly trips to re bait, check cams... I am 100% sure I picked more then 2000lbs of apples this fall for my spots. We only had 1 set of daylight pics of our bucks in august and nothing in the daylight till the 4th day of late archery, Nov 20th. It just so happened that after 3 slow days of hunting only seeing a small buck and the regular does I took my good buddy east for to fill his ML tag. On Thursday when I checked my cams.. BOTH bucks were there in the daylight!!!!! needless to say i was upset and thought I blew my chance. I was in the stand 5 days later when at 1030 or so my buck walked in and gave me a 15 yrd or less shot.... my arrow hit home and he went less then 25 yrds.... He broke off 2 of his pts at some point but he was still a great deer and I was thrilled to take him.
Amber was up next and this morning felt like the day, she does not do well in treestands so last week I put one of my blinds at the base of the tree my stand is in and we got it in place. She left my house at 4 am and made the drive down to hunt, she had a small buck and yearlings on the bait most of the morning, then around 10 she heard noise behind her in the draw and caught a glimpse of "hank" going into the brush.... 20 min or so later 3 does came up the trail and milled around with the yearlings... she knew "Hank" was not far behind.. 20 min or later she heard noise and got ready... "Hank" walked out at less then ten yards and went right to the cam/bait. when he stopped she made a perfect shot with her .308 and he went less then 25 yards!!!!! I have never in my life been more proud... I arrowed my 2nd P&Y buck and she killed a B&C buck as far as I can tell! getting lucky and killing a big deer is great.. but there is something to to said about working hard.. picking out a certain buck or 2 and not giving up until you get them! We have a had a killer year together so far.... I got a buck in spokane, we both got bucks In idaho and now these 2 stud BT in oregon!!!! Hope you guys enjoy the story and pics.... best of luck to all of you! God Bless
My Buck -
Amber and "Hank" -
My buck before he broke off his 2's -
one of the 100 pics of Hank in the dark -
