About a week ago, I found a nice little area about 3km from home. Big buck sign everywhere; scrape lines, rub lines, tracks, etc. The Wife ™ and I had managed to put in a few part-day’s hunting for him, but just a few hours here and there as scheduling allowed. Wednesday however, we had all day to put into finding this guy.
Got going late (as usual, neither The Wife nor I are big morning people). On the way in, I saw blood splatter in the snow two different spots, which made me worry maybe someone else got the big guy we’d been chasing. When we arrived, I sprayed some horny doe pee in a couple of the scrapes near our ambush location. Then we kicked back with our feet up in our comfy reclining folding chairs. I was even more convinced that someone got our deer, because none of the scrapes had been checked within the last 24 hours.
Anyway, we decided to sit around for a while anyway. We hadn’t been there 10 minutes, and along comes a monster doe. Saw her chest first, and was just sure because of the size that antlers were about to appear. Nope, no antlers on her. An hour or so later, we saw a little 3 point, which was interesting, but not the guy we were after.
About the time 1:00 was rolling around, we hadn’t seen anything else, and sitting perfectly still in freezing temperatures will eventually get to you. So we got up and walked around for about an hour. No fresh tracks from our big buck, and not a lot of fresh deer sign in general. So we decided to head for another area where we’d seen some nice mature buck sign.
We’re driving out down a little quad track, when we spied the same little 3 point from earlier crossing the trail ahead of us; completely and totally unconcerned about a Chevy Tracker driving through the middle of the forrest 20 yards away from him. I was just opening my mouth to say to my wife that she should keep a sharp eye out, as there may be more bucks around if there’s a horny doe in the vicinity, when my wife said in a tense voice “stop the truck, stop the truck, right now!”.
I did, and she bailed out, loaded up, and stepped around the backside of the truck and off the trail and took aim. I still hadn’t spied what she was shooting at when the first BOOM shook the forest. At the shot, the buck stepped out from behind some brush and started walking broadside to us at about 75 yards. He didn’t look hurt, and I silently prayed my wife was paying enough attention to put another bullet in him before we spent a lot of hours trailing blood droplets. She was, and I could no sooner finish the thought, and the second BOOM echoed through the forrest, and the buck went down in his tracks as if struck by lightning.
I stepped out of the truck, and let out a loud whoop! That’s how ya do that, now, I tell you! As I yelled, the (presumably) hot doe lept up from her bed about 5 yards from the buck and bolted back into the forrest. We walked over to inspect the prize, and were very pleased with what we found.
My wife was on the phone calling some friends of ours who wanted to see us gut/skin one for their own edification (they’re taking up hunting next year), when I looked over and there’s that 3 point buck from earlier not 40 yards away from us staring longingly into the bush like a lovestruck puppy. I grabbed the camera and tried to sneak over to get some pictures of him from up close and personal, when I saw yet another buck in the 3-ish point range back in the bush staring in the same direction as the young buck. I got a little close before I got a picture, and they both bolted. I heard more deer back out of sight bolt with them. No wonder there wasn’t much action down in the valley; probably every buck in the immediate vicinity was up here chasing this doe.
My wife’s deer was a scrapper for sure. He has a broken tip on one of the main beams, and a whole bunch of chips and nicks on his antlers from fighting. Anyway, it was all over but the hard work at that point.
And that, is the story of my wife’s 2005 whitetail buck (possibly the first of 2, if she decides to hunt the late bow season; though at this point, she’s not planning to).