We arrived in Ohio with the goal of us both putting one on the ground. We have yet to do that, but I felt good about or chances this year for some reason. There were some set backs, though. We had to learn a new piece of ground because the ground that we had permission on got leased out. I don't begrudge the farmer for leasing the ground at all. We couldn't afford to lease it, and especially for the amount of money that they were paying. The farmer was getting $15,000 for the lease and this has to go a long ways for a farmer. Thankfully we had an excellent relationship with the farmer and he offered up some ground that was not being leased. This was ground that no one wanted to lease because it was fields with very minimal cover, but we figured it was better than nothing and thought we could make it work.
The first afternoon showed some promise with good movement, and most of the scrapes were dried up. This is good and bad. Bad in the fact that the you don't have that destination spot to set up on, but good due to the fact that bucks should be cruising and seeking.
It took us about a day to figure out where we needed to be but once we did, things happened quickly. My friend killed the second morning, and after helping him find it and dragging it out, it was time for me to get it done.
That afternoon I was set up in a cattle field that had some open woods in the back end of it. We had a south wind, so I had to set up at the very back along the fence that ran the edge of the property. My hope was that the bucks would use the section of woods to cruise from one piece of timber to the next. Well it didn't take long to figure out that the were doing that, but it was on the other side of the fence. This was a piece of property that I didn't have permission on and therefore couldn't shoot to. That piece of property had a large bean field on it that hadn't been cut yet. This was behind me and I could see almost the whole thing.
At the end of the evening I turned around to see a large buck crossing the bean field behind me, but this buck was about 600 yards away. I tried to grunt at him, but I knew it was just two far for him to hear me. The night before, in another stand location, I tried to rattle in a buck that moved above me. I wasn't able to bring him in, but it did bring in 5 other bucks, one was a giant that I had at 5 yards and just could get a shot. Unfortunately when this buck was going across the field I didn't think to try to rattle him in until it was too late.
About 5 minutes later I received a text from my buddy saying that he was there to pick me up and that I could shoot one now. Within seconds I saw another buck come out into the field. This time I tried to rattle. He looked up immediately and began to trot my way! There was still a whole lot that had to go right for this to work out. The buck was over 500 yards away when I called to him, it was getting dark, and there was still a fence between him and I that he had to cross. He got about half way and his pace slowed. When it did and I thought he might lose interest I pulled up my grunt tube and threw out a couple of grunts. When he heard this, he immediately started running at me. He stopped at the fence and was peering through to the other side he loaded up like he was going to jump the fence, then hesitated and walked two or three steps then peered back across the fence again. He loaded up again, and hoped the fence! I couldn't believe it! Now he was about 35 yards away, but I didn't have a shot yet and dark was fast approaching.... Finally he worked his way until I had a shot, I pulled out my range finder and was just barely able to get a yardage on him. He was at 28 yards. I drew back settled the pin and let the arrow fly.
When I let the arrow go, I was pretty confident that I put a good shot on him, but being low light it was hard to tell for sure. I sent my friend a text that I just hit one. He didn't believe me. When I got down to look for blood there was none at first and I was worried. I figured I would go until I saw blood and then make a decision from there. I finally found blood, and it was decent, not great but decent. After following it for about 20 yards he had to jump a ditch, that's when the blood got better. I thought about backing out, but after looking at the radar I knew that wasn't an option. There was heavy rain coming. We lost the trail for a while but circled back to last blood and found direction of travel he was headed out across a field, but we lost blood again. Rain was now fast approaching so we made a guess as to where he was going. When we got to the other side of the field we found luck, because there was blood right where we walked to. This field was huge and to find blood the was really lucky. We tracked him a little ways more and there he was! As soon as I put my hands on him it started to pour.
Calling this buck in from over 500 yards away was pretty unbelievable. The line is how far he came from.
