Well my late whitetail season was a little shorter than I had anticipated… The only downside is – the hunt only lasted an hour and a half… The plus side – I had a deer on the ground in an hour and a half! I started off the morning by climbing in my treestand at 10 am after an all night drive to my spot and meeting up with my dad. I got situated in the stand and hooked up my hunter’s safety system, knocked an arrow, and I was ready to go. I pulled my watch out of my pocket to see what time it was so I could plan some rattling and doe bleats. Wouldn’t you know it, my watch was dead all of a sudden?!
I had just looked at it when I left the truck and it was working. I figured that was a sign of my luck for the day… I wanted to wait about an hour before doing anything, but my patience got the best of me. I figured it was about fifteen minutes in the stand and I decided it was time to do some doe bleats. I wanted to raise the curiosity of any bucks that may have been in the area. It wasn’t a couple minutes and this buck grunted twice about 50 yards downwind to the left of my stand.
Several minutes later the woods came alive, and this guy was crashing through the trees chasing 3 does to the moon and back! He chased those does around past my stand for over 45 minutes, grunting off and on the entire time. He then circled around and ended up back in the same piece of brush below my stand where I had heard the first couple grunts. The wind was blowing downhill and he was directly downwind of my Tinks scent bomb. He proceeded to rake a tree for several minutes and then things got quiet. I couldn’t figure out if he was coming in or what was going on exactly? Had he given me the slip and that was all I was going to see of him?
Then 15 minutes or so later, the three does came down the hill towards him and circling in towards my nice fresh pile of alfalfa. As they were coming in, the wind shifted in their favor heading up the hill. There was something they didn’t like as they turned around and disappeared back in the brush. Several minutes after the wind shifted, I heard this guy coming through the brush behind my stand and up on to an old skid road. He had his nose on the ground going a million miles an hour trying to pick up something he liked as he passed through one little opening I could see behind my stand.
I grabbed my bow and got ready as he proceeded by behind some tall evergreens. He circled to my right directly up wind of my scent bomb. He must have caught wind of my scent bomb as he immediately came crashing in to it and circled right around to 17 yards and started sniffing and terrorizing it and almost knocking it off of the limb! He backed up, grabbed a couple nibbles, and went right back to terrorizing the scent bomb! I drew back, he had no clue I was even there, and a perfect quartering away shot to the boiler room and he made 4 big hops, and a couple small stumbling steps and he fell over about 30 yards from my scent bomb. Talk about a cool morning seeing a buck full on rutting and chasing does!
My dad was in a treestand about 3 miles away so I climbed down and set up my camera and took all of my pictures on my own. After my picture session and notching the tag on my buck, I waited out the rest of the day for my old man to come pick me up right before dark. That was pretty boring...
That was probably the shortest hunt I’ve ever been on – but I wouldn’t have changed a thing!
I had told my dad that morning before leaving the truck I had always wanted to kill a big heavy 3x3 plus eyeguards. I guess someone was listening to me?! He weighed 185 lbs field dressed. And a couple pictures of him in the back of the truck taken with my cell phone for the “truck racks”.
