Spiider
5 year old buck +
My oldest son, Ty (11), took this 8 point on Friday night with his bow. It was a 15 yards shot from a tree stand. It was 185 lbs live weight and 150 lbs dressed out. This is his biggest buck and his 2nd using a compound bow.
I had a long standing event to go to on Friday but things can change on a dime at home with my wife and 3 boys. Made the best of it knowing there was a cold front coming through starting that night, so we headed back into our 20 acres and settled in the tree.
We’d been seeing several doe, a couple spikes and a bread basket 6/7 point over the last week of hunting. He decided he was going to shoot the 6/7 if it got close enough. It came out with a spike and was out of range for about 10 minutes, when Ty noticed this 8 point come out. I knew the deer from trail camera pics, but we don’t talk about and try not to look at antlers when potentially shooting… He wandered around our micro clover plot for a little while, I said another quick prayer with my son, and he walked towards the big white oak tree that we are next to. Ty drew back, settled himself as best he could and released. We heard a thwack and we could see the arrow still in the deer as it ran (the luminoc didn’t light up though…). It was about 7:25 PM so it was dark enough that we couldn’t see where the arrow entered.
We hugged, prayed and stayed in the tree as long as we could before getting down. I warned him it might be tough since it was an angled shot so blood might be scarce. We thankfully found blood (good blood) only a few feet from where it was hit. Following that trail through the clover plot, then the brassica plot was easy. Then we got into the cereal plot and the trail went cold. And that was the last place we could actually see the deer, so we had no idea where it went from there.
We searched for roughly 2 hours when a friend and his son (Ty’s buddy) came over to help. My friend had a flashlight light like I’d never seen before and quickly found blood with it. It was headed into a 2 acre switchgrass field that I hadn’t been in for a couple years. Long story short, it started raining and we lost the trail several times when there would be an opening in the switchgrass and only drops of blood were on the ground, as opposed to big smears of blood in the switchgrass. 4 hours total later, after my son’s friend found a spot of blood when we were ready to give up, we found the deer finally. It had only ran roughly 300 yards but towards the end it was running erratically and ended up only about 100 yards directly behind our house…
So thankful to have found the deer, so proud and happy for my son.
I had a long standing event to go to on Friday but things can change on a dime at home with my wife and 3 boys. Made the best of it knowing there was a cold front coming through starting that night, so we headed back into our 20 acres and settled in the tree.
We’d been seeing several doe, a couple spikes and a bread basket 6/7 point over the last week of hunting. He decided he was going to shoot the 6/7 if it got close enough. It came out with a spike and was out of range for about 10 minutes, when Ty noticed this 8 point come out. I knew the deer from trail camera pics, but we don’t talk about and try not to look at antlers when potentially shooting… He wandered around our micro clover plot for a little while, I said another quick prayer with my son, and he walked towards the big white oak tree that we are next to. Ty drew back, settled himself as best he could and released. We heard a thwack and we could see the arrow still in the deer as it ran (the luminoc didn’t light up though…). It was about 7:25 PM so it was dark enough that we couldn’t see where the arrow entered.
We hugged, prayed and stayed in the tree as long as we could before getting down. I warned him it might be tough since it was an angled shot so blood might be scarce. We thankfully found blood (good blood) only a few feet from where it was hit. Following that trail through the clover plot, then the brassica plot was easy. Then we got into the cereal plot and the trail went cold. And that was the last place we could actually see the deer, so we had no idea where it went from there.
We searched for roughly 2 hours when a friend and his son (Ty’s buddy) came over to help. My friend had a flashlight light like I’d never seen before and quickly found blood with it. It was headed into a 2 acre switchgrass field that I hadn’t been in for a couple years. Long story short, it started raining and we lost the trail several times when there would be an opening in the switchgrass and only drops of blood were on the ground, as opposed to big smears of blood in the switchgrass. 4 hours total later, after my son’s friend found a spot of blood when we were ready to give up, we found the deer finally. It had only ran roughly 300 yards but towards the end it was running erratically and ended up only about 100 yards directly behind our house…
So thankful to have found the deer, so proud and happy for my son.
