On a late October morning Sam and I made our way to the tree stand that we had set several months before, on the back of the property and due to its location we didn’t check the one trail camera in that area very often.  It just didn’t make for easy access at the time without risking pushing around deer.  Sam having taken his buck two weeks before was along for my morning sit hoping to catch me taking a deer on camera, I was just hoping to take a doe on a well used path not far from my stand.  We felt we were still another week away from even early pre-rut activity so I was more than happy to take a doe, get some meat in the freezer and practice my game processing skills.  after a couple hours in the stand, around 9:00 or just before, I saw 2 does start to walk in on the path we thought they would follow in.  After finally getting Sam’s attention, I picked up my bow, I switched on the camera attached to my bow and began to go through my pre-shot routine, prepping for when they stepped into the opening.

For some reason they lingered behind some smaller trees and with my senses heightened I patiently waited.  The possible reason for their milling around came 2 minutes and 30 seconds after I switched on my camera, I heard the snapping of a branch and turned my head to see the left antler of a buck, a thick, tall tined antler, walking straight to the tree that Sam and I are sitting in.  Sam claims to not have heard me say, “buck buck buck.”  I immediately set my feet and tried to pull my bow back.  First attempt, the buck stopped and looked up, so I stopped my draw.  After he started walking and his head was behind some branches I tried drawing again, and again he stopped in his tracks and looked around.  Finally, on the third time trying to draw my bow, I come to full draw, by this time Sam looked over and saw I was at full draw the opposite direction of the does and didn’t know what was going on.  This thick antlered buck pivoted at about 20 yards and started moving to the does.  The buck walked through a shooting window that my truck could drive through but was moving too quick and I never got a shot.  Nervous that he would just keep quickly moving I searched ahead, trying to keep calm, for another shooting window.  I found one about 8 yards ahead of the last spot, in the direction he was heading.  I setup there and waited for him to move into the opening.  He took two steps into my window, I let out what had to be a very convincing, “meh”, to get him to stop for my shot, and I let my arrow fly.

In the beat of a heart, I heard the arrow “pop” as it hit the deer’s rib cage, and he dropped his head and bolted to his right.  Both Sam and I tried to watch as he ran straight away from the tree we were standing in, but with it still being early in the season the trees still had plenty of foliage and after running off 20 yards we couldn’t see him any more.  Like a lot of other hunters, I started to get the big buck shakes after taking my shot, and as I sat down Sam could see my excitement and we talked through the events and trying to follow the buck.  Trying to give me a moment to collect myself, Sam climbed down first and tried to find my arrow and without running after where we saw the buck run off, tried tracking the deers path looking for sign.  Sam doesn’t see blood too well so I finally climbed down and immediately found blood at the point of impact, though not seeing my arrow around I got a little nervous.  Laying 20 yards away though, was my arrow, coved in blood, with a great blood trail leading away from it.

While we were still in the tree Sam could see the buck run down into the creek and seemed to walk around and maybe lay down about 75 yards away.  As we walked towards where he dropped down into the creek we moved real slow and tried to stay low and just peak over the edge, not wanting to jump him and push the buck further.  As we peaked over the creek bank we saw the right side of rack stick out of the water, as he laid there, expired, we could finally show our excitement of a successful harvest.  We climbed down the bank, and drug him onto a little sand bar and just marveled at his body size and his unique rack.

This was a deer we had seen the season before and had some early pictures of him in August, but hadn’t had him on any cameras since.  We couldn’t have been more excited about how the morning went and couldn’t wait to share our story and deer meat with our friends and family.