Little 8

After getting called out by Greenie on another thread I figured I better make a post about my harvest last Monday...Let me start off by saying that I'm not an antler hunter but, like most hunters, I want to harvest the biggest buck I possibly can. That is part of the fun and misery of deer hunting for me. I'm a bit disappointed with this buck only because I have the best part of the season just now getting here and I've taken myself out of the excitement of the rut. I month from now I will either look back and be thankful that I was able to tag this buck or I will be disappointed because another more mature buck may give me an opportunity. I am grateful for the pile of meat this buck gave me. Here is the hunt...

I got to my newly located stand a little before 5:00 on Monday, Oct 24. It was rather breezy to start with but I had a good feeling the wind was going to taper for the last hour of legal hunting time. My favorite, most active time to be in a stand is when a breezy day is about to turn dead calm before dark. Around 6:00 things had gotten pretty calm in the woods and I had been fighting off the urge to pee. I decided before it gets any later I should pee and get it over with before any deer come around. I stood and turned to pee and I look behind me and there is a nice big doe coming right to me at 30 yds. I watch her continue to come right to me. At that point I realize if she goes right I'm going to get busted by scent if she goes left I should have a good chance at tagging her. She started to go right and then immediately went left. My stand is in a cluster of maple trees and there are like 6 trees growing out of one base. Once I realized what direction she was going I had to get spun all the way around in my stand without being detected. This isn't always easy in a metal stand that sometimes wants to make noise when you move. It seemed like an eternity (maybe 2 minutes) but I finally got spun around with my compound bow off the tree hook and in hand. The doe is now about 8 yds standing straight away from me and she keeps looking up at me like she knows something isn't right. About that time I hear another walking from the same direction where she came from but I can't see it because the cluster of trees is blocking my view and I can't spin around that far to see. I wait for a few seconds to see what it is and it turns out to be another doe slightly smaller than the first doe but she walks in and blocks my shooting lane for doe #1. As I am waiting for the right opportunity to shoot doe #1 I hear a series of short, deep toned grunts come from where the does just came from. I can tell by the steps that is a buck of some kind. He was dragging his feet with every step and making all kinds of noise unlike the tiptoe way a doe moves through the woods. As I hear him coming, the doe gives me a perfect shot at 10 yds but now I want to see this buck before I decide to harvest her. The buck literally walks right underneath my stand and stops and gives out a couple of quick grunts. I looked straight down through my platform and get a top view of his rack and thought "I'd shoot that". I immediately draw and wait for him to step out from my tree a little because at this point I'm either shooting him or the doe. Well, he saved the does life because he ended up charging at them and they ran off about 30 yds. Without even thinking about taking a second look at his body/rack size I put my sight pin right above his left shoulder as soon as he gave me a broadside shot. I let the arrow fly and stuck him right in the boiler room! As he ran off out into the bean field I could see my arrow sticking out his side and I knew he would be down in seconds. About 2 seconds later he flopped down and it was over. I texted my hunting buddy and said I shot a decent but not big 8. I knew it was an 8 but that was really all I knew at that point. I got down and tracked him out into the field and when I walked up I gotta admit I was a little disappointed but happy at the same time. Weird feeling really. That all happened in less than 3 minutes and my first thought when I was about to shoot him was "shoot now and ask questions later". I've had too many bucks over the years that I've let walk only to determine minutes later that I should've taken them when given the chance. Not this time. I actually made an unbelievable perfect shot. I punched the heart dead center and had it pinned to the deer's opposite shoulder. No wonder he went less than 30 yds. There is a part of me that is glad I got it done because we haven't been seeing any big bucks to speak of until this past Friday. I was out on a drive that evening and saw a huge 8 point enter the one end of the other woods I hunt about 30 yds from a stand I have in there. I am bad about seeing one or 2 good bucks in my area and essentially only hunting them and it is a grind that rarely has a happy ending. I am glad I not still hunting a "ghost" deer but I am hopeful one of hunting buddies can harvest this brute of an 8 pointer. Sorry, this is the only pic I have of my buck. Not a very good pic at all.

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For some reason I couldn't upload my pic from the Imgur site so I had to use a smaller image saved on my computer??