One and Done doe down

[BRoth82]

I’m going to start this off with my journal of this year, so hopefully I can show the decision to take a Doe and end my buck hunting for the year. If you don’t want to read through this, I did shoot a big doe last night and found her this morning.

The area of MN I hunt in is a one deer zone, with a bow you can shoot an either sex deer, but with a gun you must apply for one of the 25 doe permits, if you’re name isn’t drawn it’s bucks only hunting for you. The public and private areas I hunt are mostly CRP grass with some cattail sloughs mixed in and little tree cover, where there are trees on public it’s usually big cotton wood trees, smaller ash trees and some Oaks but not many at all (and these are usually pounded by other hunters). The private land I have access to has an Alfalfa field to the North, Corn to the West and South, then a farmer’s grove to the NE. The CRP was burned this spring and came back like crazy, most of it is shoulder to head high, it also has a low area running from the NW corner to the middle of the southern line. There are no cattails in that low area and a few scattered trees that are 10’-20’ tall and 2”-5” diameter. I should also point out that the landowner runs a pheasant hunting guide service on this land and usually has hunters out there 4-5 days a week, pheasant hunting opens October 10th.

I started off the year with the intention to shoot a buck off some of the public land I scouted this past winter, well on August 4th things took a different turn. On the CRP field that I have permission to hunt I have an elevated blind (6’-7’) off the ground that has a water hole and mineral lick in front of it, I have a camera in there to check on what there is for deer. My intention with this setup is really for my wife to have a place close to home she can gun hunt out of. I did my normal camera check after letting it sit for 2 weeks, I had pictures of a few does and a couple small bucks, then on Aug. 4th I had pictures of a buck that makes you change plans really quick. Over the course of the next month and a half (September 18th) I would get over 2000 pictures of this buck from 18 different days, and lay eyes on him on 7 different days. I started to document when he would come in and where he would come from. He would be on my camera anywhere from half hour before sunset to 5 mins to dark.
I started to put some of the pieces of the puzzle together, and determined that on any E, SE, S winds he was bedding in the neighbors CRP field (NW of my blind, and along the West edge of the Alfalfa field). On the other winds it was hard to know for sure where he was bedding, sometimes it was in the neighbors CRP and others was the CRP I could hunt.

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September 19th bow opener we had a SE wind, so I decided to sit in my platform stand since it’s the most common wind that he was coming in on, it would be a just off wind and maybe a little risky but I felt I had to be a little aggressive with hunting this piece of property. Around sunset I caught movement to my NW and a doe was standing in the Alfalfa field at 70 yards, she decided to come down the field road (I’ve never seen them do that while glassing) and caught my wind, she didn’t blow just turned and trotted back into the neighbors CRP. Shortly after the doe moved off 3 deer came out into the alfalfa about 400 yards away, after looking through my binos I could see all 3 were bucks. One was a little basket 6 pointer, the other a nice 11 pointer that I have pictures of and the last one was the big buck. The big buck and the 11 pointer sparred a little then moved back into the CRP grass, there was only 5 mins of shooting light left so I slipped out of there in case they came in after dark.

My next hunt was the 24th we had a calm East wind and that should be about perfect for the platform spot, after putting a bug in my wife’s ear about how this would be the perfect wind to hunt that big buck, she reluctantly agreed that I should go after him. I climbed back into the platform stand and waited, at sunset I was focusing my attention to the alfalfa field since that is where the big buck would come out of on a SE, E wind. With 5 mins to closing time I turned my head back to the East and there he was standing at 40 yards in the grass staring at me, somehow, he caught my head movement. He stared at me for a while then blew and turned and bounded off, when he blew, he spooked another nice buck that was about 20 yards behind him. I don’t think he knew what I was but saw something that he didn’t like and got out of there, I sat till dark and slowly walked out with my head held high, knowing I was able to get that close to a mature buck in farm country. But the bad thing was he was now on to me, would he only come in during the night and I messed up my only chance at him or would he come back in daylight. One thing I was sure of was if I wanted a chance at killing him, I couldn’t sit in that platform again, or I had to make some changes to it.

On a windy day I slipped in to the platform stand and added pine boughs to the front of it to give me more cover and brushed out the grass under the stand so I could sit under it, hoping the buck would look at the platform not see anything out of place and come in. I know this was very risky, but something that I thought needed to be done, after a couple of days past he was back on camera right at the last few minutes of daylight.

September 26th had a bad wind for the platform stand and my daughter (8 years old) was asking if she could go with, I asked the wife and she said sure take her with you. Now I’m scrambling to figure out where we can go that won’t mess anything up but still be able to see if that big buck comes out into that Alfalfa field. The landowner has a tower stand on the East side of the property that can fit 2 people in it and is about 400 yards away from where I had been hunting, so that would be our destination. Before leaving I had her go to the bathroom and get her camo on, she was jacked up that for sure. We made our way out to the stand with an hour of daylight left, knowing if we made it that long I’d be happy. After 5 mins of sitting she looked over at me and asked if it was ok to fart in the woods, I smiled and said yup go for it, she lets 3 loud farts go and smiled at me. If any of you have kids the first light in my head should have went off at this time, since I knew what usually follows a fart like that. Yup she looks over and says “Dad I have to poop right now”!! You’re going to have to hang over the side of the blind and let it rip, she says “Ok” like she was wanting a chance to do that all along… When she gets done, she just smiled and asked if the deer will know if she pooped there.. No they can’t tell if it was a person or another animal. We didn’t see any deer, at all that night.

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My next hunt was 10/2 we had a NNW wind so I went back in and sat under my platform stand, the wind was really good but I could only see 30 yards around me and didn’t see a deer. It was at this point my wife kindly told me that the kids have been very bad when I’m out hunting and that I should think about shooting something soon.

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I was able to go back out on the 3rd and that is very rare for me to be able to get out hunting 2 days in a row, usually I can get out 1 night a week. With the weatherman predicting a NE wind I made my way to the platform stand, since that is about the perfect wind, once I got into the stand I started dropping milkweed and it was blowing everywhere from East, to North to West, Grrr.. Well I’m already here and running out of time so any deer that comes in is going to have to look out. Around sunset the wind finally stabilized out of the NE, about that time I saw a doe in the corner of the alfalfa field 70 yards away, she ended up disappearing and there was a smaller 8 pointer standing there. I decided to grunt at him to see what would happen, he looked my way but just moved back into the CRP grass, next time I looked over there, there was a doe standing there again she disappeared. 10 mins to dark I can hear something moving through the grass to my South, I get ready and a doe pops out at 10 yards, I think about shooting her when I hear another deer behind her. Out pops another bigger doe, so she’ll be my target as I get ready to draw on here I catch the first doe going into the grass to my south, she crouches down and turns back into my opening. In my mind I’m thinking that buck must be right there, sure enough he steps out, so I turn and draw on him, I get my pin on his vitals and move to the next opening to wait for him. He’s quartering away and walks right into my pin, I touch off the shot and hear a thwack! I see my lighted nock sticking out of the ground where he was standing, but he trots 5 yards and stands looking back at me, what the heck no way I missed him. After he trots off, I look at my blind and sure enough the bottom blade on my broadhead nicked the cross board and sent the arrow right over his back.

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This gets us to last night, we had a SE wind again and my wife made it more clear now that I needed to get a deer on the ground, she’s awesome and very understanding. I head out and get into my platform stand at 5:45pm, at 6:00 I see 3 deer enter the alfalfa field to my North again 425 yards away. If they make it to me before dark I’m going to take one, they feed around then go back into the CRP grass. A little bit later they come back out and head my way, they make it all the way to the corner and cut West to go into the corn, right where my wind is blowing. I’m thinking no way is this going to happen now, but just like that they turn back around loop out into the alfalfa so they don’t get my wind and start coming right for me. Just before the lead doe exits the grass into my opening I come to full draw, I let her get broadside at 15 yards and settle my pin behind her shoulder, touch the shot off and can see my lighted nock sticking out of her close side, but the arrow is buried up to the fletchings. She takes off and I can see her going through the CRP grass so I’m following her with my binos, thinking no way is she making it this far already, then she exits the CRP and cuts across the alfalfa field, I’m thinking again she’s going to tip over in that field. Nope she makes it to the Farmers grove, I make a mental note where she entered and get down to see if I can find my arrow. After going down the trail 10 yards or so, I find ¾ of my arrow with the broadhead, nice red blood, but a little dark as well. I find a little blood on the grass and back out.
I started the track an hour or so after the shot, I knew she entered the grove 420 yards away, so I didn’t need to worry about spooking her, I followed a very sparse blood trail through the grass and into the alfalfa, once in the field though I couldn’t find any blood. I slowly walk to the edge of the grove to where she went in, while I was looking for blood a deer exited the grove 50 yards to my North, I found a little puddle of blood and backed out. This morning I went back in and searched the grove from the NE since we had a SW wind, my thought was I’ll grid search my way towards the last blood then pick up the track. Well this grove was like every other farm grove around here, tires piled up, old cars parked, broken farm equipment and steel barrels all over the place. I ended up making my way to the last blood and found a few drops down a trail, so now at least I had a direction of travel. I only went 40-50 yards and there on the other side of a couple busted up cars she lay there dead. She died last night, and surprisingly to me no coyotes had found her, I ended up hitting high and getting the top of both lungs. She ended up traveling 520 yards and all the blood I found I could have fit in a coffee cup, luckily for me I was able to keep eyes on her until she entered that grove, otherwise it would have been a nightmare of a tracking job.

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I do have a bonus doe tag for a zone close to me so I can shoot another doe, but I can't shoot any bucks in MN and am headed out to Nebraska the middle of November for a rifle hunt where I can shoot a buck and a doe. The November hunt is what I’m looking forward to the most since I’ll be taking my dad this year, this will be the first time in 20 years that we’re going hunting together. I also get to do some in season scouting for next year..

[Boogieman1]

Congrats looks like a tasty one

[Lockdown]

Nice work!

[RiverBottoms]

well done. Great story

[Edcyclopedia]

Sweet!

[BRoth82]

Thanks guys, I build a new shed this year that's more of a she shed but I can clean fish and deer in there. Got to test it out with the doe and it worked great. I usually get about 30-32% field dressed weight in boned out meat, it was 84 dogs out yesterday so I wasn't as picky as I normally am, but still ended up with42 pounds of meat off of her.

[backstraps]

Awesome stuff and some good pictures Congratulations

[PaPublicLandHunter]

Great story and congratulations

[Uncle Lou]

Well Done and thanks for taking us along. Great story. Shootem and eatem.

[Jackson Marsh]

Nice BRoth

Good luck to you and your father in Nebraska.