My journey as a hunter

[BloodSoakedBerber]

Great read, thanks for sharing.

[WV Bowhunter]

Hey wv bow hunter. I like your write up and all the pictures you posted. When we have pictures to look at from when we were young and starting to where we are now its like a timeline laid out in front of you where you can see how you have evolved into a true hunter. When I first started bow hunting I too hunted off the ground. My first buck I shot was from the ground. I hunted from a fields edge and hid in a bush. I had a small 5pt come within 7yds of me and when I shot my arrow hit a stick and deflected causing the arrow to hit his main arteries in his neck. He fell right in front of me where he had expired moments later. I will never forget this hunt as long as I live.
I have shot does, small bucks, and even some big bucks. To date my biggest is 140" and weighed 260 lbs. I now know what they mean when they say there is deer hunting and there is big buck hunting. It is as if we are talking two different sports. Now we study entry/exit routes, scout, and pick and chose stands based on the wind. We are evolving everyday we hunt and scout. I hope we never stop learning and the day i think i know it all i will hang my bow up.
By the way I live in n.e. ohio and hunt some good public land. If you ever need a place to scout or got a question hit me up. I am looking for a few good guys to hunt with. Its always good to have some motivation and competition to drive us.

Thanks man!! I hunt in SE Ohio now, if I get the itch to head north I’ll get ahold of you.

[street28ss]

Nice muley!

[WV Bowhunter]

I figured since this thread sorta has my cliff notes history as a hunter I’ll plan on adding to it each year for my benefit of having it all in one place. This is my 2018 hunting season.

Iowa -
I guess this hunt really started in 2015 when I decided to buy a pp for Iowa. I spent a little time kicking around where I would hunt but by spring of 2017 I had a few areas of public narrowed down that I wanted to look at. My buddy and I headed out in March to scout and get a feel for the area. We were not disappointed, I found so much sign I knew that it would be good that fall. We put in for tags and didn’t draw. Another year of waiting gave me more time to digital scout and another spring scouting trip was on the horizon for us. We planned to go scout several different times but something always seemed to come up (sick kids, work and fresh snow storms) and the scouting trip of 2018 didn’t happen.

We finally got out there Oct 27th and got out there to do some scouting to see what the 3 pieces of public we had scouted the year before looked and none of them were looking that great. Sign was right where we figured it would be but it wasn’t looking like fresh hot big buck sign. Over the next 7 days I walked 48 miles on 5 or 6 pieces of public ground mostly scouting and finding spots that were worth sitting. I think I might have hunted 4 or 5 times that week and it wasn’t until the day before we were going to head back to WV did we see what we were looking for. I found a perfect looking draw with doe bedding all around the bowl the terrain created and really good buck bedding on several points around there. Bucks were running around that place like crazy and it was clear that there was a hot doe or two in area. We found another spot on a ridge about 300 yards away that looked like a killer area as well. This was the area that my buddy was going to hunt.



This spot had the hot sign, the right terrain, appeared to have a high deer population and I could access through a crp field without messing up to much of the area. My first hunt in the area was what I had hoped for. I had deer all around me and had close encounters with a couple really nice bucks but things didn’t work out with them.

I had to be back at work in a couple days so we made the decision to pull out and head back home for a few days. I worked Monday-Friday but my mind was still in Iowa. We loaded back up Friday afternoon and made the 14 hr drive through the night and we’re in a stand the next morning. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have hunted Saturday morning because I was completely exhausted and really cold (it was 10 F that morning). I was smart enough to not waste going into my best spot when I wasn’t 100% into it. We both decided to wait until Sunday to push into that best area we found and set all day.

Sunday was pretty uneventful as far as seeing shooter bucks but I had small bucks and does around me all day long. I did see one buck that might have been a shooter around noon but he was 100+ yards away and in brush so I didn’t get a good look at him. I did have a doe and a fawn that worked by me at some point that looked directly at the tree I had setup in about a week before. Glad I had decided to move my setup about 50 yards this time.

At 3:50 I heard the unmistakable sound of a chase with grunts mixed in. I immediately decided this was a buck I would take if the chance arised. The buck was hard on the doe and she worked he way inside of 30 yards of me and then right by without me having the opportunity to get a shot at the buck. She worked to my right and squatted to pee!! I knew that buck would finally hold still. I ranged the spot and started to draw before the buck even got there. He buried his nose directly where she pee’d but was facing directly away from me. I held at full draw and patiently waited for a shot, he finally worked his rear end around and gave me a good quartering away shot. I picked a spot that would drive into the offside shoulder and before I knew it, I felt the bow jump in my hand and saw the arrow hit it’s mark.

He ran about 20 yards and stopped behind some brush at 40 yards from me. It was clear he was really hurting but was still standing. As I finally talked myself into sending another arrow his way through the brush, just as I drew and before I could shoot, he laid down. About a minute later, he jumped up and fell right back down in the same spot for good this time.

As I gave him a few minutes I looked off into the horizon and saw my buddy walking through the crp field. I knew there was no reason he would be out walking before dark unless he got one too so I gave him a yell so he could walk down towards me and I could figure out what was going on.

I was pretty excited and was telling him I got one and he was telling me he just shot one too when I saw a guy walking towards us. I guess another guy was about 100 yards behind me and neither of us knew it. He was watching my buck waiting on the doe to lead him over that way when he saw me shoot him. Just like most of the guys you run into on public land, he was a super nice guy. Even helped my buddy drag his buck while I was getting mine field dressed.







We had somewhere around a mile out with each of our bucks. I’m sure if we would have stopped for more than a few minutes the sweat dripping off of me would have froze my shirt.

I still can’t believe that we both killed within an hour or two of each other. It was a great hunt and we will definitely be back when we can draw again. We met some great guys at the parking lot and out in the field.

We didn’t get a picture of our bucks together so when we pulled back in the driveway I had my wife at least get a picture of us with our antlers.



Back to WV-

My oldest son has really started getting the hunting bug. He killed his first two does last year and this past spring killed his first gobbler. He was all fired up for the opening of WV gun season so he could try to take a buck.

It was a really slow day for us, I had a pop up blind setup since in the past he has had a hard time sitting still. The blind was setup on the top of a ridge between a good buck bedding point and some good doe bedding. Problem was the wind was really inconsistent and about 7:30 I had one blow at us from exactly where I figured a buck would be slipping back to his bed. We saw a few does in the morning and got to watch 5 hens and 2 jakes work through the woods. At one point the jakes even gobbled. It was a pretty good morning in the woods. We headed back to the house for soup and pb&j sandwiches and headed back out to the blind early for our evening sit.

Just like the morning it was pretty slow. I was glad that we were in the blind as it began to rain for about 2 hours. After a pretty uneventful evening and with dark quickly approaching, he told me he wanted to walk back out to the pasture field to see if any deer were in it.

When we got out there he spotted 4 deer about 400 yards away. A little too far for his 44 mag and the 50 yard range that he had practiced for. Haha. I told him we could try to slip out the top of the ridge and see if any deer were in the low spot above a draw where I knew they like to enter the field from years of seeing it happen.

As we crested the ridge I saw a doe 100 yards off and then a decent buck right at the edge of the woods about 150 yards off. I told him that that’s a decent buck and asked him if he wanted me to shoot it. He had never seen a buck get shot. He said yes and I had to do something quick, we were standing in the middle of a wide open field and he was one jump away from the woods. I pulled my rifle up and asked him if he was ready, I steadied the crosshairs and touched the trigger. He dropped in his tracks.

It was a fine ending to a great day in the woods with my son. He was pretty excited when we got up to the deer and he got to grab the antlers. It’s the smallest buck I can remember shooting for quite some time but sharing the memory with my son made me realize that getting the next generation fired up for hunting and not thinking it’s all about killing a wall hanger every time, it was well worth putting my tag on him.







The next day we cut my deer up in the morning and I took my son out to a different area than we hunted the day before that afternoon. As we we easing out a ridge I tested the wind with milkweed and found a good spot to sit and watch a little cove that was on the leeward side of the hill. I knew we had bedding to the north and south and hoped that something would work it’s way into the range of my sons 44 mag. About 1/2 hour before dark my son said there’s a deer, sure enough a buck had dropped down of the bedding point to our south. Problem was he was still way out of his range and would have to cover a good bit of ground to have him get a shot. He kept working his way toward us and after what seemed like an eternity he was about 50 yards away. I told him to keep letting him come our way but to be ready shoot if he became alarmed by us.

The whole process of the buck working his way closer had my son pretty shook up. He was breathing so hard or struggling to breathe was closer to the truth. I kept telling him to slow his breathing and to calm down and pick a spot but it didn’t help much. The buck finally looked up in our direction and I thought he had us made. I told him to shoot and he did. The buck looked unfazed and ran closer, I think the buck had a death wish. I loaded another round in his rifle and he squeezed off another shot, the buck bolted this time and I could tell he was hit but I didn’t think it looked like a good hit the way he reacted. We walked down to the point of impact and found no blood and only a little hunk of meat. I immediately thought there is no way were going to get this buck but we took up the trail of turned up leaves with no blood trail. After only 75 yards or so I look up and find the buck standing there licking its leg. I told my son to let him have it and he did. I saw the buck was hit hard and he only ran about 20-30 yards and crashed. The shot was perfect and had taken out the heart.

To say I was a proud dad would be an understatement. What a feeling being there when your son kills his first buck.



A couple days later I took advantage of a rainy morning to access an area that is normally tough to get into without spooking everything out of that hollow. The spot I picked set up perfect for the south wind we had and finally the rain stopped around 11 am. The rain stopping got the deer on there feet and I saw a few does and a small 7 pt get on there feet and start doing a little mid day feeding. I think it was 11:55 when I caught movement down the hill, I saw antlers and after quickly lifting my rifle and finding him in the scope I immediately recognized the buck and knew he was a shooter. He was quartering away and would be out of my only opening soon so I let him have it, he crashed within 10 yards or so from the point of impact.

I think he was 5.5 as I had had pictures of him from the last couple years. I had no pictures of the buck this year with velvet off so he either left the area and just came back or was avoiding my cameras all together. Either way this is a darn good buck for my area and I was tickled to get him.

[backstraps]

Good stuff man! Very impressive journey you have had, and are having. Hope the good times keep happening for ya

[Jackson Marsh]

Awesome year! Congrats!

[tundra]

enjoyed this post, and the pics,,,, thanks for sharing

[greenhorndave]

Thanks guys. I feel almost silly posting all that when I know I have so much more to learn.

First, great job and stories.

Second, don't feel like you don't measure up somehow because there are a lot of us who haven't remotely had that kind of success... Yet. We newer folks can learn a ton from you, so I appreciate it!

[Motivated]

Great job! What an enjoyable read!

[Uncle Lou]

Thanks guys. I feel almost silly posting all that when I know I have so much more to learn.

Don't feel silly, I think most BEASTs would be proud to have that pile of bucks. Your humility is also a great attribute. Great write up, and it was a pleasure to meet you last year in OH.

[tundra]

I would not feel silly, I thought it was a great post, and loved that smile on that young man,,,,,, I have to learn how to post photos, I can barely operate this computer, and still have a flip phone.... I like seeing in season photos and stories,,,,, this year I am going to do the same,,,,,

I have a photo album of just RUBS,,,, started to photograph them many years ago, only because I use to keep my own studies of my areas etc,,,, its on the coffee table at my cabin in the UP,,, its just marked RUBS,,,, had a lot of guys look at it, and they enjoyed that.....

Part of the fun