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November 24th Deer Season JournalMonday was a crisp cool day that was a great day to hunt and I was able to spend most of the daylight hours in the woods. The day produced six buck sightings along with a few does. The highlight was a frustrating broken zipper on our oldest blind and a curious spike buck. I had set out a bottle of doe urine on my evening hunt. A small spike seemed to wind the doe urine as soon as he came to where I could see him. He eventually made his way right to the bottle and smelled the open bottle at which point he jerked his head up and slowly walked off. This all happened about ten yards in front of my blind. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud at this young buck and his new discovery. In the evening I had the opportunity to play with a doe and small eight point buck with a doe bleat call. Twice they came back up the hill close to my blind to investigate the bleat. They were both within 20 yards at some point. The weather Tuesday was warm, almost too warm but I’ll not complain. In extended morning and evening hunts I saw six bucks and several does. During the morning hunt I witnessed a pushing match between a six point and a four point. I was also thinking about the fact that I had seldom seen deer visit the mineral licks during the hunting season. As you can probably guess a doe and small four point buck visited the mineral lick in the late morning hours to prove me wrong. Wednesday was the warmest day with daytime highs in the 60’s, which seemed to suppress deer activity during mid-day before we again saw activity in the evening. Between Ryan and I we had nine buck sightings for the day with some of these bucks showing up more than once. The morning hunt produced a sparring match between a nine point and a six point. Thursday, of course, was Thanksgiving and saw the worst weather of the week with rain and colder temperatures. I saw three bucks on my morning hunt and another sparring match, this time between two young eight point bucks. Friday gave us the most activity along with some frustrating moments. In the morning hunt the wide nine point buck showed up and gave Ryan a shot. Ryan took the shot and the buck took off over a steep hillside as is usual. Upon investigation we saw him laying about 50 yards from where Ryan shot him, still alive. He was lying with his rear toward us facing over the hill and appeared to be laboring some in his breathing. After watching him a couple of minutes we decided to leave him alone where we thought that he would die. I was afraid that a shot in the back hip would just send him farther over that steep hill and make for a messy gutting job. After about an hour we returned to find that he was gone. We followed a light blood trail over the hill into the hollow and then up a steep hillside on the opposite side. After a couple of hours of tracking we saw him running across another hill. We followed the visual sighting but couldn’t get another shot. We couldn’t find the blood trail anywhere near the location where we had last seen him so we headed back hoping that the wound was not fatal. We had a long tough walk/crawl back home. Ryan had been watching this buck since late last year. Our mistake was not putting another shot into him when we saw him lying down, which was my mistake. I’ll not make that mistake again. This is a picture of the wide racked nine point buck that led us on a cross country journey. 
This evening hunt was what Ryan and I needed to make us forget about the morning fiasco. A doe and a couple young deer came in first and Megan was hoping they would get closer. While waiting, a small eight point buck came in and she decided she wanted to take a shot at him. At the shot the buck took off over the same hill that provided the morning excitement. We couldn’t find any blood after tracking the buck over the hill for about 75 yards and we saw him running over the hill below us. After looking at the video we also noticed that it looked like the buck took off some time after the shot as well. Here is the small eight point buck that Megan took a shot at. 
Before Megan had taken the shot at the small eight point buck a spike and another small non-typical eight point buck had walked between the blind that we were in and the blind that Ryan was in. The spike came back first but Megan wanted to wait for the other buck that was with it. She had already turned into a trophy hunter. Much to my surprise the next deer to come along was a large seven point buck. We had pictures of this buck but I’d not actually seen him before. I was now wondering why Ryan wasn’t shooting. This was a pretty nice buck. After a lot of re-positioning in our blind and waiting for a good broadside shot Megan took the shot. Once again the buck started to go over the hill at which point Ryan grunted at him. On hearing the grunt the buck stopped right in his tracks. It was the craziest thing I’d seen yet on an already bazaar day. The buck stood about 50 yards away staring at Ryan’s blind and there was Megan with an empty single shot gun. The buck started to walk away from us so I quickly and as quietly as possible put another shell in her gun. As the buck was about to go out of sight I grunted loud and he stopped. After I grunted again he turned left and I told Megan to get ready, I thought that he would come back. Sure enough he was curious enough that he came back to investigate. Before she could take another shot it became too dark and I didn’t want to try a blood-trailing job over that steep hill again in the dark. We watched him for a little while longer and called it a day. This is a picture of the seven point buck that we saw, this picture was taken later that evening. 
The first week of our rifle season has come and gone with some heartbreak and some exciting moments. Although we didn’t get put out hands on any deer we did have some great experiences and we have a lot of stories to tell. |
