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1991 - One from the archives

cotty16

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member


The date was 11-20-1991. Up until this point, I had only killed one deer. It was a button buck with a shotgun when I was 11. In 1991 I was 17. Between football, basketball, and chasing girls, I had little time to hunt, but something clicked in me at this age that I wanted to get out more.

I was sitting on a field edge that had shown alot of action from scouting, but this guy had never been seen by me.

It all seemed to happen really fast. I remember sitting on a stool (yes, I was on the ground up against a tree). Not much cover and the field was slightly tapering up from my spot. My only hope of ambush was to see the a buck before it saw me as it would come over the rise.

I hit the grunt tube a couple of times and I heard a response. I'd grunt, he'd grunt. We went back and forth a few times. Not much longer, this guy popped up in the skyline. I just remember standing up, drawing, and letting loose. Somewhere in the range of 35 yards I aimed and he turned to run away. All I heard was a thud... then the shakes kicked in.

I waited on my dad to arrive (this was before cell phones) at dark to tell him the news. I had no idea if I hit the buck or not. We went up to the spot where he stood and found some blood. We then decided to head home, grab a bite to eat, phone a friend of my dad's, and head back out with the lanterns.

The blood was sparse... little pin size drops here and there, but nothing steady. We looked and looked, but in the open field the tracking was really tough. The blood finally lead us into a small patch of woods and it disappeared. My heart was breaking as I thought we'd never find it. The three of us combed the hillside, back and forth, until about midnight. Nothing...

We were on the verge of giving up, when my dad's buddy asks me, "How big you say he was?" "At least an 8", I remember saying for the millionth time, I think. He then says, "Well, I got an 8 here with his head wedged in a tree. You think it's him?"

I couldn't get there fast enough. There was my first buck, let alone bow buck, laying dead looking right at me. When he fell, his head turned perfect against a tree as if he was bedded and watching me. It ended up, that it was a high lung shot (I have no idea how since I was shooting uphill) and the cavity needed to fill. At the final resting place, blood was everywhere.

It was an unbelievable ending to a gut wrenching evening full of anticipation, desperation, and a lot of luck. In the end, until this year, this was my biggest buck. It scored 131 and earned a Pope and Young certificate. At the time I had no idea what that was. I also thought that this was going to be easy every year from then on out. Boy was I wrong.

I know one thing for sure... this buck from 1991 got this boy hooked on hunting and it's been an obsession ever since.
 
Last edited:

finelyshedded

You know what!!!
Supporting Member
31,856
260
SW Ohio
Nice story and great deer. I remember the Jim Crumbley tree bark camo era! Hell, it was about all there was at that time. Thanks for sharing.
 

cotty16

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
Thanks guys.

The other stuff I'm wearing is a bit outdated as well. LOL

The hat and t-shirt are from my now defunct high school. We were the Wintersville Warriors. My school combined with another in our district, the Mingo Indians. That's when it became the Indian Creek Redskins. They still use the same building as my old high school, it's just the name and colors have changed. Anway...

Another detail about that deer: I was using an old precision bow with aluminum arrows. The bow was a leftover from when my dad used to deal Precisions out of our basement in the 70's. According to my dad, I had a Sattellite Broadhead on there, but I'm not sure. I just used whatever he gave me. That bow had almost no let off. Whatever you pulled back is pretty much what you were holding. I used that bow until 2007. I just always used it for sentimental value. My buddies would get on me about getting into this century. It was like shooting a Red Rider BB gun. You know how you can see the BB come out and you need to aim high to allow for massive drop? That was this bow. It was SLOW!
The last straw with it was when I had a 140 class 10 point in my sites and I bounced the arrow off his back. I sat in the tree for three hours after that miss and mother f**ked myself and that bow. I retrieved my arrow and it had a very small piece of meat on the broadhead. I was sick. I vowed to retire the bow figuring that had to be the problem and it wasn't the shooter or the misjudge in distance.