Then comes tonight. We had a potluck to celebrate the first week of school at 6 this evening. I got there about 6:15 since my crab cakes took longer than expected to cook.... I wolfed down a few choice items and then said my goodbyes.
Someone asked where I was going, jokingly, I said I had a date with a big buck with my name on it. My son asked if it was on his antlers.
I said maybe.
I'll admit it, I'm a baiter.
Of course I'm a cheapskate and only put three or four apples out at a time, mostly to see if deer are actually coming through the area, but it is nice to get them to stop and pay attention to something other than my bow being drawn if need be. I had an idea last year that if I hung a bag of apples up out of their reach, they might keep coming back to se if any had fallen yet and I would have an attractant even after the apples I put out had been eaten. Finally, today I decided to try it out. I had placed a small bag earlier where I had seen the two bucks opening day but I did not have time to prebait where I wanted to go this evening for the last hour of daylight. I dragged the black plastic oyster bag with me stuffed full of fermenting pomace from my cider squeezings earlier this week.
I parked in the usual spot and saw a doe and fawn in the yard as I walked to my stand. Being so late, I just decided to leave the pomace bag on the ground. Well, I had a doe and fawn come out about ten yards away, they obviously smelled the apples, but when the doe saw that black bag there, she tensed up and ended up taking off. Another doe worked her way down toward me from near my truck, she did the same thing upon seeing the black bag. Attention person talking about wearing black in the thread about camo... probably not a good idea outside of a blind....
Anyways, about fifteen minutes before shooting time was up, I decided to look to see if there were any other deer in the yard with the doe and fawn I had seen earlier. I crept around the gate and saw a deer, a good sized buck. I couldn't make out his antlers other than to tell they were fairly tall, but he was big enough bodied for me. I raised my bow and had to take a step more to clear some branches, he stopped eating, raised his head and took a step slightly toward me. I estimated the distance at about fifteen yards. Forgetting that I wanted to aim a coulle of inches low at that distance, I drew and let fly. I have little feather fluffs around the base of my nocks so it was easy to see the impact point of my Radical Archery Design's TiCon tipped arrow... high and slightly back of where I wanted it.
I could tell it was a complete pass through and darted forward as the deer took off across the yard so i could see which trail he would use to go into the woods. There is one main trail in that direction and that was the one he took. I headed home to give him some time as I was not sure how long it might take for him to expire with a high lung shot that might have only caught one lung since he had turned toward me just before I shot. Time: 7:56.
After an agonizing 45 minutes I rounded up my son to go with me to look for the deer. He is always excited about getting to track, and is pretty good at it as well. Normally Weathergirl would have gone as well, but she has been battling a cold this week and needed to head to bed.
We took a quick look for my arrow but it had passed through the edge of the brush and will have to be discovered later. Pacing out the distance to the bucks divots, it turned out to be 20 yards. After walking fifty yards across the lawn and not seeing any blood, I was getting a bit more nervous. Luckily, I had seen where he went into the brush so we started there. Of course, the trail forked almost immediately... but my son found a drop of blood on a leaf, woohoo! We followed the trail slowly as there was little blood. It was all on the exit side of the trail though. Fortunately, we found the expired buck only about 20-25 yards later. As he lay photo first.
I realized this was The One, when we pulled his left antler out of the duff and I saw the little nib on the back of the rear fork. Knowing that this may well be the largest bodied Blacktail I ever shoot (it is by far the largest I have seen on the island), we took lots of photos since I will just be doing a Euro mount. I'll have to do a little editing though as they mostly seem a bit washed out with the flash.
I don't like leaving gut piles in my neighbor's yards, especially when they are nice enough to let me hunt, so we dragged him out whole. I got a deer butchering kit from my brother last year for Christmas and discovered it had a scale, which I had forgotten, so I was able to weigh him. On the hoof weight - right at 180 pounds!!!!
His neck at the base of the skull is 17 1/2", in front of his shoulder is 40", and behind his front legs is 44". I am just so amazed, thrilled, and lucky to be able to harvest a deer like this in, almost, my back yard.
