Thursday, January 23, 2020 – ‘What a Day’ - Part 2 of 3:
For the next 20 minutes, I didn’t see nor hear any deer when suddenly, I see a larger group of deer coming from the NE headed straight for the cut soybean field at the top of the cup area. All of them were antlerless deer being led by a large adult doe.
I quickly grabbed my rangefinder and estimated approximately where the deer would be popping out into the cut soybean field, which appeared to be within my best shooting lane. I figured it was going to be approximately 40 yards where they would cross my window.
Since it was nearly 5:30 p.m. and I seen no other bucks all afternoon, plus I was getting a little frustrated of not seeing any more bucks, I decided I was going to spend my last $24 dollar either sex tag on that big leading doe and wrap up my season.
Well, as that lead doe made her way out as expected and got within my best shooting lane, I released.
‘WOOPS’ - I shot completely over her back, just barely missing her. Not sure exactly why or how, but it happened. I suppose I figured wrong for the distance by about three to five yards.
So, I kept composure and eye on the leading doe along with the others as I quickly knocked another arrow because none of them had a clue as of what just happened. They didn’t immediately flee the area, they just stood around looking.
As the lead doe turned back around from where she hopped out 15 yards further into the cut soybean, she made that fatal mistake to go straight back to my first arrow that was plugged into the ground.
When she stopped at my arrow, that’s when I released again, using the same 40-yard pin and this time, I hit her perfectly while she stood broadside.
Then all the deer immediately took off after the initial impact, through the top of the cup area of the field, heading straight towards the first ravine that goes right along the field edge, just within the woods.
Tactacam video of both shots on the same deer:
I knew she wouldn’t go too far based on the shot placement and the first blood splatter that I could see on the ground near and around my pass-through arrow within the field.
I was however, afraid that she’d run down into the much bigger & deeper ravine, which would’ve made things very difficult for me to get her back out of there, because she was the biggest doe out of the group.
I watched her and all the others head back towards the NE, heading towards the pines again were they originally came from. That’s when I saw a few more deer come out of the pines, which I believe with all the commotion that just happened, it must have drew the attention of them, causing them to step out to investigate what just occurred, including two, maybe three small basket rack size bucks.
I immediately started to pack everything up and lowered my bow & hunting pack to the ground. Then I started to climb down while breaking down my ‘Lone Wolf Alpha’ stand & sticks as I continued making my way to the ground.
When I reached the ground, I packed up my tree stand, attached my hunting pack to it, threw them both over my shoulders, grabbed my bow and made my way to my two lit arrow knocks within the cut soybean field.
When I reached them, I picked them both up and placed them back into my quiver after taking a quick snapshot with my cellphone of the bloody arrow that obviously hit its mark. Then I hiked all the way back to my truck though the muddy cut soybean field.
Once I got to my pickup, I placed my stand into the bed, changed out of 95% of my hunting clothes, jumped into the cab, fired up the truck to get warmed up for a little bit.
Then I called the wife to tell her that I’ll be late for dinner and explained why. At the same time, I posted the field pic of my bloody arrow on the ‘LIVE from the stand 2019-20’ thread.
I don’t get very good cell service at the property and my cellphone was about out of battery life since I hunted all day and took plenty of pictures & videos with it. I was down to about 15% of battery life at the time when I made that post.
After getting warmed up in the truck, I grabbed my field dressing pack, minor light, bow & toboggan sled and took off back through the muddy cut soybean field again to go pick up the blood trail of the doe that I shot roughly an hour in half earlier.
When I reached that location, I started to track the easy blood trail that she left which lead me to the first smaller ravine, approximately 30 yards from the field edge at the top of the cup area.
Then I look down through that small ravine, which leads to the much bigger, wider & deeper ravine below, thinking to myself, I’m in screwed if she made it down in there.
Well, as luck would have it, I flashed my light onto the other side of the smaller ravine and there she was, part way up the hill laying there dead. Apparently, she tried to get to where all the others went at the top of the hill and into the pines, roughly 100 yards from impact area.
That was a huge relief when I found her there because I knew I could easily drag her out from that location, even though it was still a long way back around to my truck, but still much better than at the bottom of that huge ravine that was just below her.
Once I finally reached her, I took a couple of field pictures with my almost dead cellphone
(in fact, my cellphone photo flash failed to work for me on the second & third pic because the battery was so low), dressed her out, tossed into the toboggan and started my way to the top of the hill, back through the small ravine and into the muddy cut soybean field, which by the way, it also started to rain a little bit as I got to the field, making it even more difficult to get any decent traction.
My shot took out both lungs:
I estimate that I dragged her roughly 450-500 yards altogether and got her all the way to my truck okay. During the drag time, I only took one short couple minute break along the way. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I told the wife.
I loaded her up with the toboggan into the bed of my pickup, jumped into the cab, called DOW for my conformation number and then headed down the road for home.
I got home around 9:30 p.m., hung her up, unloaded the rest of my truck and then went to go eat dinner with the wife since she was waiting on me patiently.
After dinner, I skinned the deer and left her to hang for the rest of the night. I knew come morning I was going to have to take care of her first thing because of the warmer temperatures suggested in the weather forecast.
So, this morning, shortly after I got up and had a couple cups of coffee in me, I started carving up my deer. I finished her up around noon.
For lunch, I cooked up a couple of fresh tenderloins for the wife and I.
Right after that, I cleaned everything up that I used to process my deer and put it all away.
The rest of deer is now in the freezer along with the five others that I harvested previously this season. I’d say my freezer is nearly at full capacity, stuffed with plenty of fresh venison.
Normally I’d have a half cow in the freezer that was organically grass fed only, which cost me well over a thousand dollars. The person that I used to get that beef from has since retired last year from raising cattle and I can no longer get that same quality of beef through him anymore. So, I increased the volume of venison this year as a supplement to my beef intake. I prefer venison over beef anyways.
When it came time to purchase this year’s hunting license and deer tags, I went ahead and bought all six of my deer tags then, which was well before ONDR’s deer tag price hike. I had every intention of filling each of them, which I accomplished now. I could have done it much sooner if I really wanted to, but I tried my best to not only knock down a respectable buck this season and try to do some quality deer management in and around my home, choosing to not to harvest any does.
I kid, you’re are very thoughtful with sharing all of this with us. You take a ton of time to bring us along, thanks you.
