Tuesday morning, November 4th I went in for an all-dayer in one of my best locations for a rut hunt. Action was warmish, seeing 6 bucks by 9:15 and some chase activity. Nothing then til a doe fawn at 1:15.
At 3:15 I hear a deer coming up over the hill behind me on my right. I get stood up and turned and see a decent left antler so I pick up my bow and nock an arrow. He comes out of the really thick stuff and stops 25 yards away, quartered away under an apple tree in the woods. The limbs were low and the leaves still on so I couldn't get a good look. But I knew he was a fairly heavy racked 7 or better. There was a pretty open hole from me to him but I was still not sure if he was a shooter. Then he turned and began to walk broadside and crossing right past me. I made a quick decision I would shoot if I got a chance and drew back. he walked into the opening I had picked and I tried to stop him but he just kept going. So I swung ahead to the next hole and when he came into it I gave him a very loud stop bleat. He slammed on the brakes and I put the pin back a bit as he was now quartering and released. Hit him maybe an inch or two back from where I was aiming.
He bolted forward 10 yards hung a 180 left and ran right under my stand and stopped 8 feet behind my tree. I could see half the arrow sticking out but covered in blood to the back of the fletching. There was no evidence of any exit on the side that was now facing me. He took about 5 more jumps and stopped again behind me and stood for about 20-30 seconds before bounding down over the hill to an old woods road where I lost sight of him. But I could hear that he made a 90 left and ran out the woods road. Then quiet. No more running. But no crash either. I could look down at the base of my tree and see blood everywhere. I gathered my stuff, got down, looked at the nickel-sized drops of bright red blood and walked out......making a BIG wide circle so as to not spook him if he wasn't dead yet.
Went home and called my buddy. We decided to go in after him at 5:00. We met and drove my truck in on a gaswell road that runs the side of the hill. 150 yards from my stand I look down over the hill in the woods 50 yards and there's a rack...... It's him !! He's laying on the woods road..... head up and looking right at us. I stopped and glassed him. Pulled up. Backed up. Pulled up........back and forth. He just laid there. Never got up the whole 5 minutes I was studying the situation. Drove out the road and turned around and came back. Stopped and looked again for at least 5 minutes. No way to put on a stalk. Way too thick to get an arrow to him from the road we were on. We knew he was feeling REALLY crummy because a fawn would never have put up with a tenth of the time we spent looking at him til it woulda blown outta there. Decided to leave him over night and come back in the morning.
On the drive home I got to thinking about trailcam pics of bears right on that hillside last week. And coyotes. Called my buddy back and said I think we need to go back around 8:30 with the spotlight and have another look. So at 8:30 we come back and he's still alive, but head on the ground. This time I decide that's it. Coming back in the morning. He's laid in the same spot for over 5 hours. We'll come get him at first light.
Sleepless night. Meet my buddy at 6:30 Wednesday morning. Drive my truck up and look down. Can't see him. We get out and I joked that a bear dragged him off. I grabbed my bow and we started down over the hill to the woods road and I'm not seeing him. we get about 15 yards from where he was bedded and up he jumps 20 yards to our left and bounds out of sight down over the hill !!!! He had laid in 3 different beds in the space of 8-10 yards for 15 hours and leaped up and ran !!! I was SICK !!! We back tracked the blood trail to my stand and found the back half of the arrow. So I assumed the front half was still in him. We also found that he bled like a stuck hog for 100+ yards then just flat QUIT bleeding 30-40 yards before he bedded down. There was one spot of blood about half dollar sized in the bed he laid in the longest.
My buddy had to go to work. So we left. Didn't want to push the deer. 60 yards downhill from where he jumped up there is another wood road the a 60-70 foot high cliff that goes down into the creek bottom. Across the little creek it starts up-grade to a public dirt road. I didn't think as sick as he SEEMED to be he would want to go too far. So I gave him a few hours.
10:00-ish I came back to where he jumped and found no blood. So I dropped down on to the cliff road to see if I could find where he had come down over the bank there. Nothing. So I started walking the road. One step and glass the bottom. Another step......glass the bottom. I had gone about 30-40 yards up the road and between the creek below me and the dirt road I spot a standing deer. It's him !!!! He is 100 yards out and 70 feet down. He is quartered slightly toward me and walking step by step, head down and looking rough. I sit down and watch him take 4 or 5 more steps and he bed down right on the brow of a knuckle that rolls 10 or 12 feet down to the flat that is the creek bottom. He is about 30 yards off the dirt road. I check the wind and a stalk would be do-able from the dirt road. I start glassing all around him trying to find a landmark of some sort that I could pick out from the other side of him. I find an oddly shaped little apple tree that's just a little behind him and a few yards to the side.
I back out and go to my uncle's place. Tell him what's going on and he says he'll take his bow and slip in 150 yards up the bottom from the deer and watch in case he runs that way. I knew if I jumped him on the stalk I could see where he went if he went down stream. And I pretty much laid money he was not going back up over the cliff. I left him and told him I had to go home quickly and get 3 pairs of wool socks and I'd be back to try a stalk.
So I got parked about a half mile down the dirt road from where I had last seen the deer and walked up. I knew my uncle was already in place. Started scanning for my landmark tree and found it after about 10 minutes of searching. I stepped up off the road and kicked my boots off under a big clump of grass and took a step. And glassed. Check the wind. Glass. Take a step.... I had made maybe 12-15 yards off the road and was sure the deer was within 15-20 yards in front of me when I hear a vehicle coming up the road. DANG !!! I can NOT let anyone see me. If they stop or honk or yell "how ya doing ?" I'm hosed. I look and it's the UPS guy. The truck is rattling and banging and I figure I'll let him get about 50 yards down the road from where I'm at and I can hopefully take two quick steps to a bigger tree and hunker behind it with the noise from his truck covering any noise I might make. It worked !! He went right on by.
So I slowly push myself up, sliding my back up the tree. I look and KNOW that I should be seeing a tine or an ear. But nothing. I glass. Nothing. I KNOW that I am looking at where he was. He's gone. I glanced left and BOOM !! THERE HE IS !!!!!! He had moved down over the bank and about 5 yards left. He was bedded under a treetop broadside to me and facing away. I knew he was first pin. But not wanting to blow maybe my only chance I ranged him. 21 yards. There was a spindly multiflora right in front of me with about 5 or 6 stems sicking up head high. I nocked an arrow and drew, buried the pin in his armpit and squeezed....... CRACK !!!!!!! The arrow somehow nipped one of the multiflora stems and buried in a maple 5 yards before it got to the deer and a foot left !!!! I quickly nocked another and looked. He hadn't even budged !!! It was like he never heard a thing !!! I side-stepped a half step to clear the bramble and put the next arrow right where I wanted it. He sprang straight out and over the treetop he was under and bolted 50-60 yards full speed then stopped. He leaned forward......leaned backward and pitched forward onto his belly and nose !!!!
12:15 PM...........
21 hours after the first hit he was down to stay.
It was only when we rolled him over and started gutting him that I realized the front half of the arrow was NOT in him. The original hit cut through his last rib on the left side and exited his right brisket just in front of his right front leg. Nearly a textbook shot. His initial lunge at the shot had snapped the arrow in half. The front half dropped out and the back half slid mostly back out of the entrance wound. His liver had a hole through one of the big lobes. His left lung had a hole through it. He was a dead deer walking !!! But 21 hours later...........I had to kill him again.........
37 years I have been hunting deer with a string and stick. 20 years more than that my uncle has been doing it. Never......... NEVER EVER.........has either of us seen ANYTHING that compares OR can explain......
