I hunted all day last Saturday and yesterday and saw a grand total of 1 deer over 22 hours of hunting. Today was the last decent rut hunting chance I had as I am not able to hunt again for two weeks. Well it happened this morning. I was up at 330am and headed in to a place my friend and I call the "quad saddle". Twenty minutes before first light I heard grunting and chasing. About 7am I had a friggin herd of 10 doe come through my set-up. I shot at one doe at 20 yards and missed low. It was my first hunting shot with my compound in 2 years. Ughhhh. I was just trying to stack the freezer and blew it. I held tight and told myself that if 10 doe don't bring in a buck then I didn't know what would. I stood at 8am and began eating some trail mix when a buck came right through the saddle just like the does. I dropped the trail mix, picked up my bow, drew and he stepped into my shooting zone. Only one problem. He literally sniffed the arrow I shot at the doe earlier. All the muscles in his body stiffened and he stepped back one step and looked ready to bolt. I then drilled him. I could see blood pumping out of him when he ran. I felt my shot was a little far back but not bad so I waited one hour. My friend came down from his stand and helped me track. It took us awhile to cover over 200 yards of blood trail. My friend finally spotted him! I was starting to get really nervous. Upon gutting him I found I had sliced part of one lung and a small portion of the liver. He bled like heck internally but not too much externally.
Well here is my ABD (average buck down). He will probably run around 75-80 inches and that is an average 2.5 year old buck for my area. He has about a 14-15 inch inside spread. My buddy shot a smaller 5 point buck last night so we were ecstatic that both of us scored on public land.
