Carpe diem
- Wannabelikedan
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Carpe diem
I debated whether to do a write up or not since I didn’t feel this was a skillfully executed hunt. It seemed more luck of the draw or right place right time scenario. Further thought about the hunt made me realize that there are some good points others can learn from and facts that are continually stressed on this forum that resulted in success.
First off, it’s been a 180 season from last year. I devoted a season and 2 off seasons into learning a terrain/wma that was highly altered due to a September flood. Last season it rained no more than an inch the last 6 months of the year. It rained nearly 30” in September-October alone this year. That wma has lower herd numbers but it’s still only seen roughly half that return to their normal ranges up to this point. I was off the first 11 days of season and made only 4 sits during that time. The rest of that time was scouting and I wasn’t seeing any sign worth hunting over. That second week I decided I had to find other ground to hunt or my season would be far worse than it has been. I chose a wma in another county that was less affected by the heavy rains but was gonna have far more pressure than I was accustomed to. The drive was further also but it was better than getting drained by mosquitoes and seeing nothing. On top of that, my few private pieces that produce during the rut never turned on like they did in past years. For some reason the does just weren’t there so neither were the bucks. The point of all this is to reinforce being mobile not only on a micro scale but up to the regional scale. Don’t burn your season on hopes but rather be active in finding targets that are physically there. If it weren’t for me abandoning plan A and creating a plan B I would probably still have all my tags.
My next point on success was actively scouting and continual awareness of what you see in the field. This wma has very high herd numbers and largely made up of does. My first day out on this piece I saw close to 2 dozen does. That translates into a lot of unbred and late estrous does. November 7th, I scouted my way in this piece and found the hottest sign I’d seen all year. Ended that day with a miss on one of the biggest typicals I’ve seen in the field. Tried threading the arrow through some stuff and was grateful for a clean miss. I was back in the next day and hung a cam over a scrape that was stupid close to doe bedding. Annual rubs told me this buck was frequent and a good chance he would be in there for maybe the rest of the season. One of many pics of the big 9 at the scrape cam.
Had several hunts hopping around this chunk trying to learn how he was working the area and where he might be bedding. This area is a large thermal hub with many fingers having possible beds for every wind. One night walking out, I spotted with my headlight a doe and a small buck off the point where I shot this buck. The wind that evening was mostly NNW and I remembered that going into this hunt. Point being be aware of why you spot deer when you do. Just after dark, I assumed there had to be bedding nearby.
Going into the hunt, my plan was to set up on a finger leading into the thermal hub. Wind was mostly NW and the finger was E facing. This finger was also loaded with scrapes that I guessed the buck would be working right after that day and a half long rain. I decided to access in cutting that wind cross wise because he could potentially spot me accessing in from the S. On my way in (maybe 1/8th a mile), I remembered the buck and doe I spotted weeks before off the point I was approaching. I wasn’t going to hunt this finger but it was along the way. My gut told me to just make a quick cut down a small clearing and scout. Wasn’t going to really kill me on time and you never know what you may find.
I started cutting in the leeward side down some well used trails and found some pretty good doe beds. A little further it started getting too thick to keep this “quick scout” quick so I bailed out back into the clearing. Soon as I hit the clearing I spotted a big buck staring back at me. Looked to be a big 10 that I didn’t recognize. He bounded off 20 yards and cut into the thick. I figured he was bedding in the brush opposite side I was scouting and I wind bumped him out of his bed. Nocked an arrow and slowly walked the clearing down which runs somewhat perpendicular to the finger but bowls around where I initially started in. Never spotted the buck but I was certain he was probably watching me walk the clearing.Towards the end of the clearing, I spotted a big rub on a cedar up a well used trail. It was leading back towards the access road I was initially going to walk. About 20 yards up the trail I look up and see a buck cutting towards the trail with his head down so I drop and knock an arrow. No way he wasn’t going to spot me but why not be ready anyways. He stops at 20 and locks on to me. He isn’t the biggest but he isn’t bad. Just at or outside his ears with decent mass and average tine length. I figured that was going to be the end of it. He then drops his head and takes 2-3 more steps sniffing the ground. I drew and he looks up again and he’s clear of the small bush that was originally between us severely quartered to. I switched to a substantially heavier arrow with COC single bevel broadhead this year. After plowing a large boar on a similar shot with that arrow back in October I was confident I was going to get into the vitals in this case. I touched it off and watched it disappear as he turned and burned out of there. I watched him run out of sight with no slowing down. Couldn’t hear him crash because of the high winds and wet leaves. In just a 10-15 minute walk I went from a pretty bummer season to having a recovery situation on hand. I looked around several minutes for the arrow and couldn’t find it. Guessing it was still in him, I slowly eased up towards his exit til I could find his tracks or any blood to give me something to go off. 20-25 yards some turned up leaves and first blood appeared. One spot looked of bubbly blood and some looked almost like small meat chunks. I knew he wasn’t going to lay down before the access road he was heading towards so I slowly pushed further. Blood was picking up and all of it was lung and some coming from the mouth from the looks of it. I came to the access road and the trail took a 90 to the left and 10 yards further there he lay.
The arrow entered the left front leg missing the bone and continued all the way out the right ham with half the arrow sticking out. Out of curiosity, I decided to gut him being freshly killed to survey the damage. Took out half the left lung missing the liver and obviously making a mess of the entire GI tract. Turning up the carcass to dump the remainder, the amount of hemorrhaging was impressive for a one lung hit. You hear many stories of lost deer on that kind of hit and 70-80 yards did this guy in.
For such an easy extraction, I had a friend still insist on helping me haul him out. Upon loading him in the truck, my fiend had the buck by the rack and I had his rear legs. When he let go of rack, the right side hit bed of the truck and the left side popped off. I was amazed and amused to witness a healthy 3 year old buck so near to shedding in the middle of December. The look on my friends face was priceless. After realizing he had the deer in the headlights look, I assured him it was more of a funny and memorable situation and he had nothing to worry about. I didn’t have any plans of mounting the buck shoulder or European.
The ending theme to this hunt was best summed by the well known Latin term “carpe diem” which means seize the day. I’ve had a sub par season up to this point. I continued to keep changing my approach, scout, and be aggressive by getting in tight to bedding areas. By that, I was granted a situation that I could have easily not capitalized on. I also could have passed that buck which 9/10 I would have had it been earlier in the year and even more so seen and judged from the stand. Being on the ground in bow range of any seasoned buck is a challenge and many times the predatory instinct kicks in when those opportunities arise. You begin hunting for the hunt and disregarding your antler driven ambitions. This is the third buck I’ve killed in December and all three have been taken from the ground.
First off, it’s been a 180 season from last year. I devoted a season and 2 off seasons into learning a terrain/wma that was highly altered due to a September flood. Last season it rained no more than an inch the last 6 months of the year. It rained nearly 30” in September-October alone this year. That wma has lower herd numbers but it’s still only seen roughly half that return to their normal ranges up to this point. I was off the first 11 days of season and made only 4 sits during that time. The rest of that time was scouting and I wasn’t seeing any sign worth hunting over. That second week I decided I had to find other ground to hunt or my season would be far worse than it has been. I chose a wma in another county that was less affected by the heavy rains but was gonna have far more pressure than I was accustomed to. The drive was further also but it was better than getting drained by mosquitoes and seeing nothing. On top of that, my few private pieces that produce during the rut never turned on like they did in past years. For some reason the does just weren’t there so neither were the bucks. The point of all this is to reinforce being mobile not only on a micro scale but up to the regional scale. Don’t burn your season on hopes but rather be active in finding targets that are physically there. If it weren’t for me abandoning plan A and creating a plan B I would probably still have all my tags.
My next point on success was actively scouting and continual awareness of what you see in the field. This wma has very high herd numbers and largely made up of does. My first day out on this piece I saw close to 2 dozen does. That translates into a lot of unbred and late estrous does. November 7th, I scouted my way in this piece and found the hottest sign I’d seen all year. Ended that day with a miss on one of the biggest typicals I’ve seen in the field. Tried threading the arrow through some stuff and was grateful for a clean miss. I was back in the next day and hung a cam over a scrape that was stupid close to doe bedding. Annual rubs told me this buck was frequent and a good chance he would be in there for maybe the rest of the season. One of many pics of the big 9 at the scrape cam.
Had several hunts hopping around this chunk trying to learn how he was working the area and where he might be bedding. This area is a large thermal hub with many fingers having possible beds for every wind. One night walking out, I spotted with my headlight a doe and a small buck off the point where I shot this buck. The wind that evening was mostly NNW and I remembered that going into this hunt. Point being be aware of why you spot deer when you do. Just after dark, I assumed there had to be bedding nearby.
Going into the hunt, my plan was to set up on a finger leading into the thermal hub. Wind was mostly NW and the finger was E facing. This finger was also loaded with scrapes that I guessed the buck would be working right after that day and a half long rain. I decided to access in cutting that wind cross wise because he could potentially spot me accessing in from the S. On my way in (maybe 1/8th a mile), I remembered the buck and doe I spotted weeks before off the point I was approaching. I wasn’t going to hunt this finger but it was along the way. My gut told me to just make a quick cut down a small clearing and scout. Wasn’t going to really kill me on time and you never know what you may find.
I started cutting in the leeward side down some well used trails and found some pretty good doe beds. A little further it started getting too thick to keep this “quick scout” quick so I bailed out back into the clearing. Soon as I hit the clearing I spotted a big buck staring back at me. Looked to be a big 10 that I didn’t recognize. He bounded off 20 yards and cut into the thick. I figured he was bedding in the brush opposite side I was scouting and I wind bumped him out of his bed. Nocked an arrow and slowly walked the clearing down which runs somewhat perpendicular to the finger but bowls around where I initially started in. Never spotted the buck but I was certain he was probably watching me walk the clearing.Towards the end of the clearing, I spotted a big rub on a cedar up a well used trail. It was leading back towards the access road I was initially going to walk. About 20 yards up the trail I look up and see a buck cutting towards the trail with his head down so I drop and knock an arrow. No way he wasn’t going to spot me but why not be ready anyways. He stops at 20 and locks on to me. He isn’t the biggest but he isn’t bad. Just at or outside his ears with decent mass and average tine length. I figured that was going to be the end of it. He then drops his head and takes 2-3 more steps sniffing the ground. I drew and he looks up again and he’s clear of the small bush that was originally between us severely quartered to. I switched to a substantially heavier arrow with COC single bevel broadhead this year. After plowing a large boar on a similar shot with that arrow back in October I was confident I was going to get into the vitals in this case. I touched it off and watched it disappear as he turned and burned out of there. I watched him run out of sight with no slowing down. Couldn’t hear him crash because of the high winds and wet leaves. In just a 10-15 minute walk I went from a pretty bummer season to having a recovery situation on hand. I looked around several minutes for the arrow and couldn’t find it. Guessing it was still in him, I slowly eased up towards his exit til I could find his tracks or any blood to give me something to go off. 20-25 yards some turned up leaves and first blood appeared. One spot looked of bubbly blood and some looked almost like small meat chunks. I knew he wasn’t going to lay down before the access road he was heading towards so I slowly pushed further. Blood was picking up and all of it was lung and some coming from the mouth from the looks of it. I came to the access road and the trail took a 90 to the left and 10 yards further there he lay.
The arrow entered the left front leg missing the bone and continued all the way out the right ham with half the arrow sticking out. Out of curiosity, I decided to gut him being freshly killed to survey the damage. Took out half the left lung missing the liver and obviously making a mess of the entire GI tract. Turning up the carcass to dump the remainder, the amount of hemorrhaging was impressive for a one lung hit. You hear many stories of lost deer on that kind of hit and 70-80 yards did this guy in.
For such an easy extraction, I had a friend still insist on helping me haul him out. Upon loading him in the truck, my fiend had the buck by the rack and I had his rear legs. When he let go of rack, the right side hit bed of the truck and the left side popped off. I was amazed and amused to witness a healthy 3 year old buck so near to shedding in the middle of December. The look on my friends face was priceless. After realizing he had the deer in the headlights look, I assured him it was more of a funny and memorable situation and he had nothing to worry about. I didn’t have any plans of mounting the buck shoulder or European.
The ending theme to this hunt was best summed by the well known Latin term “carpe diem” which means seize the day. I’ve had a sub par season up to this point. I continued to keep changing my approach, scout, and be aggressive by getting in tight to bedding areas. By that, I was granted a situation that I could have easily not capitalized on. I also could have passed that buck which 9/10 I would have had it been earlier in the year and even more so seen and judged from the stand. Being on the ground in bow range of any seasoned buck is a challenge and many times the predatory instinct kicks in when those opportunities arise. You begin hunting for the hunt and disregarding your antler driven ambitions. This is the third buck I’ve killed in December and all three have been taken from the ground.
Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible.... Learning is making it possible for yourself.
- Dewey
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Re: Carpe diem
Nice buck. Congrats.
- Lockdown
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Re: Carpe diem
You definitely put in the effort and it shows. Congrats on a great buck! Good luck filling that last tag... not that you need it
- Ack
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Re: Carpe diem
Congratulations!
- stash59
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- muddy
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Re: Carpe diem
Congrats. I had a buck I followed for 4 years, he shed the 1st week of Dec every year.
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Leading the way for habitat and management information
"It's a good thing you don't need commas and colons to kill deer" -seaz
- headgear
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Re: Carpe diem
Congrats!
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Re: Carpe diem
Well done, glad you had some late season success!
- Net Guy
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Re: Carpe diem
Congratulations!
- Wlog
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Re: Carpe diem
Congrats!
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
- Jackson Marsh
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Re: Carpe diem
Congrats on a good one! ! Enjoyed the story. Great job sticking with it and killing a buck.
That buck you have on trail cam is a beast.
That buck you have on trail cam is a beast.
- NYBackcountry
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Re: Carpe diem
Congrats, nice buck
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Re: Carpe diem
Great write up, congrats again
- hunting_dad
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Re: Carpe diem
Nice job of staying at it. Congrats
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