Sunday, November 21, 2010

Southwind Buck

I love it when a plan comes together!  This was the view from my treestand at about 7:25 this morning.  I didn't have a real camera with me, so I took the photo through my binoculars with my Blackberry.  It's kinda hard to make out, but that little patch of white 2/3 of the way up is a deer laying about 40 yards away.

Meetings and a nasty head cold have kept me out of the woods for a while (including yesterday's opening day of gun season), so for my first day of gun season I had to pick a spot without the benefit of any recent scouting.

The Weather Channel was predicting a south wind, so I broke out my topo map - and between sneezes - looked for terrain features that would be good candidates for setting up downwind of cruising bucks.  One particular saddle that runs directly north-south caught my eye. 

I've noticed a good amount of walk sign there over the past several weeks.  I've also seen lots of does in the general area, but nothing in particular had screamed out "hunt here."  I figured by setting up on the north end of the saddle I could cover it without stinking up the likely approach routes.  In the absence of a better plan, it was worth a shot.

By flashlight, I picked out a nice straight white oak that seemed to offer a clear view across the saddle and hauled my sneezing, wheezing butt up the tree.  At about 7:15 I noticed movement in a patch of thick stuff about 50 yards away.  I could make out a decent set of antlers but didn't get much of a look.  There was another opening about ten feet in front of the deer, so I settled my scope on it and waited. 

In just a couple seconds, the buck stepped into the small opening and gave me a clear shot.  The .270 ballistic tip hit behind the right shoulder and took out both lungs on the way through.  The buck managed to go only about 20 yards before piling up right beside a logging road.  Tracking and retrieving couldn't have been easier - which was a good thing, because I really wasn't looking forward to dragging him out of a hollow.

As I sat there in my stand trying to line up my phone's camera lens with my binoculars (not an easy task) a little basket-rack 8 point walked right by the downed buck and never even broke stride.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get everything lined up in time to capture that.

What a morning!  What a start to Thanksgiving week!  Just last week, I promised my neighbor some sausage from my next deer.  He'll be thrilled to have it in time for the holiday.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats and what a great story to go with that great buck!

dahratadeo said...

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