Hoytvectrix
5 year old buck +
This is a hunt I had on November 10th at my new(ish) farm in northern MO. This is a buck we had very little history of since we bought the farm last year. Just a couple of trail camera photos/videos in 2023. I did film him being an opportunistic satellite buck watching another bigger buck with a doe during the firearm season last year. I very briefly thought about taking him but was waiting on the buck with the doe that year and I never got a shot at the bigger one or any other mature bucks that year in archery or firearm seasons.
We have a great ridgetop plot that is a saddle between two ravines of cover on this farm. It hunts very well if we can access it cleanly and have any kind of wind out of the west (dominant wind for our area). This was kind of a random encounter, and I honestly had no idea what I would see in my first sit at this plot in the morning. I only found the trail cam photos and videos of him after the hunt, so I was initially second-guessing which buck this was.
As you can tell from the footage, the shot was pretty far back. I would love to blame it on my first shot at a deer from the saddle, or I only had a tight shooting window, but I really have no excuse for the mediocre at best shot. It ended up being a pure liver hit, with no other organs touched. We bumped him when blood tracking about 4 hours after the shot. He was very slowly heading toward the middle of the farm and downhill, so we backed out. I took up the trail in the morning and before I even started, I heard crows down in the creek at dawn. I went straight there and found him laying half in the creek. He had walked about 600 yards in total. I backtracked and found almost no blood from where we bumped him. I was going to check the creek anyways, but I had about 10 different things go right for this hunt, so I am very grateful.
