I have posted this elsewhere, but I might as well brag here too....
I shot a heck of a buck on Monday with my bow.
We had finished two weeks of gun hunting and basically saw no sign of rutting activity at all until the last few days. So I figured that the post-gun-hunt bow season was going to be HOT like it has been the last few years.
My buddy Burt and I made plans to hunt Howe Island Monday morning. Howe Island is in the St Lawrence River off Kingston Ontario, near Wolfe Island. One gets to the islands via ferries.
On the way to the island at an HOUR before first light, I mentioned to Burt that I had almost called him at 4:30 am to say STOP DROP as I had hardly slept that night at all. BUT I had drank a coffee and there I was, on the ferry to Howe Island. Anyways I said that I was worried that I might fall asleep on the stand, so if I could please be in the Maple tree stand (which has a platform and a front guard) that would be better than the bare-ass ladder stand at the poplar tree. Fortunately, Burt agreed.
First light was 6:32 am and we had been in the stands for a long time before that.............and finally at 6:51 am I did a doe bleat with a can. At 6:52 the Poop Fairy hit me hard on the soft spot on the top of my head and said “POOP NOW!!!!” So instead of hanging around to see if any bucks would come in to my "doe in estrous" bleat, I was out there dropping some toxic waste in the weeds and wiping my butt with grass. I thought to myself that this was an inauspicious time to be out of the stand and making lots of noise and some amount of scent that would not normally be present, I am sure. I got back into the stand with some alacrity but nothing was happening.
Around 7:30 am, I saw what I believed to be a doe and a fawn, and shortly thereafter a buck chasing them, about 400 to 500 yards away. There was not much in close, so I amused myself from time to time doing grunt calls and canned doe bleats. The Poop Fairy was threatening Round Two about 8:30 so I did a doe bleat and started putting stuff away, thinking I would probably get out of the stand a bit early, make a hot deposit on the way back to the truck, and meet Burt about 9:00 as planned.
And out of nowhere there he was. A giant buck about 35 to 40 yards off to my left, behind a tree, looking for that horny doe. OH HOW I WISH I had a rifle or shotgun with me at that point........................
Anyways, he was sniffing around and looking for the source of his lust, and was not coming into my kill zone, but instead walking directly into my down-wind scent cone. He did not bust me, but he was turning away and probably would catch my scent any second................
When I measured the shot later it was 46 yards, which is certainly past my comfort zone and not a shot I would normally take. But on the other hand he was the biggest buck I had seen in a lifetime of hunting, I had an unobstructed view of his body, and my Excalibur scope has a 45 yard setting on it, so ............I shot him, quartering away. He jumped straight up in the air, clicked his front and rear hooves together, and departed with some haste. Fortunately I could see where he was going, and I had the impression that I saw him drop into some scrub. I waited a half-hour, went to where he had been when I shot, and found neither bolt nor blood. So I got the heck out of there and came back much later. In fact, it was almost seven hours later we found him, stone cold dead.
He is a smasher, and I am guessing his live weight was probably 300 pounds. Fortunately I do not own a set of scales, so by next season he may be approaching 400 pounds on the hoof.
We could not hang him in my garage, without roping off his antlers and tying them to a different point so his nose was not on the floor. Without any BS at all, this is a HECK of a buck and the best I have taken in forty years of hunting.
Doug
I shot a heck of a buck on Monday with my bow.We had finished two weeks of gun hunting and basically saw no sign of rutting activity at all until the last few days. So I figured that the post-gun-hunt bow season was going to be HOT like it has been the last few years.
My buddy Burt and I made plans to hunt Howe Island Monday morning. Howe Island is in the St Lawrence River off Kingston Ontario, near Wolfe Island. One gets to the islands via ferries.On the way to the island at an HOUR before first light, I mentioned to Burt that I had almost called him at 4:30 am to say STOP DROP as I had hardly slept that night at all. BUT I had drank a coffee and there I was, on the ferry to Howe Island. Anyways I said that I was worried that I might fall asleep on the stand, so if I could please be in the Maple tree stand (which has a platform and a front guard) that would be better than the bare-ass ladder stand at the poplar tree. Fortunately, Burt agreed.
First light was 6:32 am and we had been in the stands for a long time before that.............and finally at 6:51 am I did a doe bleat with a can. At 6:52 the Poop Fairy hit me hard on the soft spot on the top of my head and said “POOP NOW!!!!”
So instead of hanging around to see if any bucks would come in to my "doe in estrous" bleat, I was out there dropping some toxic waste in the weeds and wiping my butt with grass. I thought to myself that this was an inauspicious time to be out of the stand and making lots of noise and some amount of scent that would not normally be present, I am sure. I got back into the stand with some alacrity but nothing was happening.Around 7:30 am, I saw what I believed to be a doe and a fawn, and shortly thereafter a buck chasing them, about 400 to 500 yards away. There was not much in close, so I amused myself from time to time doing grunt calls and canned doe bleats. The Poop Fairy was threatening Round Two about 8:30 so I did a doe bleat and started putting stuff away, thinking I would probably get out of the stand a bit early, make a hot deposit on the way back to the truck, and meet Burt about 9:00 as planned.
And out of nowhere there he was.
A giant buck about 35 to 40 yards off to my left, behind a tree, looking for that horny doe. OH HOW I WISH I had a rifle or shotgun with me at that point........................Anyways, he was sniffing around and looking for the source of his lust, and was not coming into my kill zone, but instead walking directly into my down-wind scent cone. He did not bust me, but he was turning away and probably would catch my scent any second................
When I measured the shot later it was 46 yards, which is certainly past my comfort zone and not a shot I would normally take. But on the other hand he was the biggest buck I had seen in a lifetime of hunting, I had an unobstructed view of his body, and my Excalibur scope has a 45 yard setting on it, so ............I shot him, quartering away. He jumped straight up in the air, clicked his front and rear hooves together, and departed with some haste. Fortunately I could see where he was going, and I had the impression that I saw him drop into some scrub. I waited a half-hour, went to where he had been when I shot, and found neither bolt nor blood.
So I got the heck out of there and came back much later. In fact, it was almost seven hours later we found him, stone cold dead. He is a smasher, and I am guessing his live weight was probably 300 pounds. Fortunately I do not own a set of scales, so by next season he may be approaching 400 pounds on the hoof.
We could not hang him in my garage, without roping off his antlers and tying them to a different point so his nose was not on the floor. Without any BS at all, this is a HECK of a buck and the best I have taken in forty years of hunting.
Doug
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