San Juan Success

[oneshotkill]

  Some people I know in the San Juans have a cabin in the woods with an apple orchard around it.  I have permission to hunt there and this year I got drawn for a second tag for the area I hunt so I was excited when I headed out.  Early on in the morning I was still hunting through the woods and took a doe with a 15 yard double-lung shot.  Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures before I skinned it.  I took a break for lunch and help some friends of mine with a roof job before heading out again for the evening to sit on a haystack near the apple orchard.  I rearranged the hay bails to make somewhat of  a blind and settled in for the evening.  I was seeing deer all night but they were mostly does and fawns.  I am pretty much a meat hunter and am not looking for a trophy but I wanted to get a buck with my second tag.  I was just enjoying watching the deer and was a few minutes from heading back to my friends house before it got too dark when I heard a snort.  I very slowly turned my head and saw that a spike had snuck into 20 yards behind me and winded me.  He took off running across a field but then stopped at about 60 yards and did sort of a stiff-legged walk back towards me to figure out what I was.  When He got to 40 yards his head went behind a tree and I came to full draw.  As he came out from behind the tree he stopped bradside and looked back towards the woods.  That was his death as I released and sent my arrow through the center of his heart.  I watched him run across the field and right as he entered the woods I heard him go down, scramble around for a second and then silence.  I walked over to where my arrow was stuck in the ground (due to the downward nature of the shot) and found it covered in good blood.  Because it was getting dark and I had heard him go down, I immediately picked up the blood trail and found him after about 50 yards.  

I just finished butchering the deer tonight and had backstrap steak on the grill for dinner.  He does'nt have big antlers but he sure tastes good!

  

[Buschingc]

Congrats... Thats a good looking spike...

[HuntingFanatic]

Nice job! Those are some daggers on him.

[ICEMAN]

Wow, very cool story, great job!

[Skyvalhunter]

Congrats!!! Nice looking deer. Nice thing about those island bucks is you can haul them out easy

[Chris]

That is a HUGE spike!!   Well done and be proud.

[GoldTip]

Nice shot and great story, congrats on the backstrap feast!

[winston2789]

way to go, sounds like a successful hunt

[3dsheetmetal]

That's a sweet spike you have there congrats 

[KimberRich]

Sounds like a great day hunting.  Doesn't get much better than that! Can't see the pictures because I'm at work.   But can't complain..  I guess I'm talking hunting while working so that not bad..

[ratherhunt]

Nice Buck, Congratulations

[elkoholic1]

 :tup:nice spike congrats!!!

[LongTatLaw]

nice on the bow brother!

[TeacherMan]

Cool I really have been thinking of going over around thanksgiving and trying for blacktail.

[Armadillo]

nice spike!!