Although the experience we shared that day far exceeded the reward of meat, we still shared it 3 ways. It was a small basket 8 point. The original shooter kept the rack.
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Although the experience we shared that day far exceeded the reward of meat, we still shared it 3 ways. It was a small basket 8 point. The original shooter kept the rack.
2 years ago I'm shotgun hunting one end of 100 acres in the hardwoods, my buddy is on the other end over looking the edge of the pines where it opens up to the beans.
I hear two shots and within a minute my phone rings..hes like "Yup....just shot a doe about 20 yards away" hes explaining how it went down and hes not a quiet talker in the slightest so hes practically yelling....then he pauses for a second...." huge buck walking right towards me same path as the doe did, let me put the phone down and shoot it"
I hear bang bang! He picks the phone up, Yup got him, hes laying right beside the doe.
Lucky bugger I wish I was recording as I could hear the shots threw the phone and in the open about half second later. Big 10 point buck too, I shot my 10 pointer two days before so I wasn't hunting too hard.
Good year, we got 4 big buckshttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...e7c0b0c1f1.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...b360d38060.jpg
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That is a tank of a buck! Goes to show when they are looking for love they don’t give two s about anything else!
Out in Saskatchewan just south of Moose Jaw. Hunting with a buddy and he shoots a little spiker buck. Throw it in the truck and start heading in for the day. Come up to the edge of town and there’s a big ten point buck about 60 yards in from the grid road. He’s pawing the ground all puffed up and grunting. Next thing we know he’s racking his antlers through the long grass. This goes on for 5-10 mins.
Now I had a tag in my pocket and gun in the back but figured first door open this deer is gone. Eventually sneak out and trying to figure out what’s happening. My buddy gets out and glasses the area and says there’s another deer laying down at the bucks feet.
Just then a car pulls up and starts honking, I assume to scare the deer away as we where well of the road. That buck did not even look up. Just kept stomping the doe and racking it with its antlers.
Anyways grabbed my rifle walked in 30 yards (30 yards from the deer) and shot it.
Ran 10 yards and piled up. Rankest deer I ever smelled honest to god would not shoot him again if I had it to do over.
That doe never even stood up as we gutted the buck and dragged him out.
When love is in the air!
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Sitting on a fence line one evening I could hear the deer making all kinds of noise in the dry leaves but they were in a small gully, so I had to wait for them to come up the hill when BOOM, a shot rang from my left about 100yds. Couple minutes later the neighbor comes out from a treestand to see if he hit it. He didn't see me until I stood up to walk over to him. He ended up missing the buck saying he should have brought a bigger rifle for the longer shot. If he missed with the 243 he was gonna miss regardless. I was civil as I wasn't sure he didn't have permission to hunt there but asked the landowner as I was driving out to find out he didn't. Then I was a little more miffed.
The next evening I went back and this time I could see the orange in the stand. I guess he thought if he was there early I might just leave. Instead I plunked my chair down directly overlooking the gully in the middle of the field. I knew I wouldn't see anything but I was determined he wasn't going to either. Later on I glanced down in his direction at the far end of the field to see a doe and 2 fawns out in front of him. I thought great, I pushed the deer to him. He didn't take a shot at them which turned out good for me as the next time I glanced to my left at the deer I caught a buck with his head down walking straight to me from behind. But as I turned he looked up and tried to run past me to the bush as I was jumping up out of my chair and trying to get him in the scope. Got him at around 40yds and the only thing I could hear as I walked up to the 8pt buck was my heart pounding in my ears. Normally I stay pretty calm but later that night back at camp I couldn't help wonder what the other guy was thinking as he watched the whole thing unfold in front of him. Needless to say he didn't come over to see if I needed a hand.:)
You didn't tell him to F off? The nerve that he would come back again.
The group I hunt with hunts the first 4 days of the rifle season and on the Friday we have a butchering bee to process the deer we have shot. This if followed by a BBQ of fresh venison burgers. A good friend of mine still had a tag and I invited him to come on the Sat, last day of the rifle season, to try his luck. Saturday morning comes and we’re having a blizzard! My buddy decides to come to hunt and the usual 45 minute drive takes an hour and a half. He gets to my place around 11 am and after some discussion, he heads out. I get a call from him at 12:00 and he tells me he just shot a nice doe. He is not really sure of his location and I get him to tell me where he walked. I get the tractor and drive to the area where he might be , get off the tractor and follow his tracks in the snow. 5 minutes later I find him. He had sat in my tree stand for about half an hour and then decided to walk to an area where I told him the deer bed down. He said that was the fastest hunt he has ever had. Our group shot a nice 8 point buck earlier in the week within 25 yards of where he shot his doe.
I think my best stories are of bucks I didn’t get,I could probably fill a book with “close calls and ones that got away” stories,lol
One particular buck that did not get away,i shot at point blank,zero linear yards away,straight down between the shoulders from 18’ up in a spruce tree.
I had this stand in some pretty thick spruce bush,but a bit of mixed open hardwoods in front of me,about an acre that I could see for a clear rifle shot,originally hung the stand as a bow stand,as there was always lots of scrapes there year after year.
So bow season came and went,had a couple close calls in that stand earlier in season,but now I’m packin the rifle,30-06 Remi pump.
I’d been stillhunting/stalking around the general area all day with a few rattling sets thrown in at a few locations,decided to finish the day in the bow stand where I’d be overlooking 5-6 fresh scrapes.
Climbed up about 4pm with a little more then an hour of legal light remaining,let things settle down for 15min,then commenced with my first rattling sequence and a few long tending grunts thrown in for good measure.
15 min of daylight remaining,I hear a deer approaching from the heavy thick cover directly behind me.....he is close....REALLY CLOSE....but I can’t see him,it’s really thick,and twist and contort as I might,can’t see him at all,but I’m guessing he’s less then 30 yards judging by crunching footsteps in the frozen leaves.
So he’s right there froze up for 5-10 minutes,he knows something is going on with the rattling and grunting,but he’s really cautious,daylight is fading fast,maybe 5 minutes of legal light left,so I figger it’s now or never,give a couple more soft grunts,and he can’t stand it anymore and comes in directly behind my stand,and stops directly under my left foot at the base of the tree and just stands there.Thought for sure he’s gonna wind me and bust outta there with his tail on fire,so rather then wait for him to walk away for a better angle,I leaned over and aimed straight down through his spine between the shoulders and touched er off...WOMP!,
Absolutely flattened him right into the ground,like he’d been struck by the Hammer of Thor,he never took a step.I lowered my rifle down on my haul cord and it landed on top of him,lol
Weird deformed rack too,pretty unique 4x3 buck with a normal 4pt left antler and a twisted 3 pt right side that curled down and forward like a cowhorn.
A couple of hunts come to mind, and I apologize in advance for rambling on. Back in the 1980’s, commercial tree stands were not readily available or used and were considered to be a fad by many hunters. A friend and I came to realize the benefits of hunting from high so would look for trees that we could climb and sit on branches. One place we used to hunt was an old field that nature was starting to reclaim. The soil was very moist, which made it tough to farm. Anyway the field consisted of tall reed grass and clumps of willow brush, The field was surrounded by a deep ditch with low-lying mixed wood brush and evergreen on the other side. I found a large lighting-killed tamarack tree with large branches next to the ditch. I climbed up and sat on a large limb which gave me a great view of the old field. During the morning of my second sit, behind me, I heard a deer running around in a zigzag pattern and snorting profusely. My original thought that it was being chased by a coyote or wolf, but then I heard grunting and realized that a buck was courting a doe. In those days most hunters never knew that bucks grunted, and commercial grunt calls were very hard to find. I had just learned about grunting and had purchased a mail-order call directly from Primos. Anyway, I took my call out and grunted back. In retrospect, this was not the right thing to do as the buck just herded the doe away from me and everything went quiet. As I sat there discouraged and wondering what to to next, I looked across the ditch in front of me and noticed a buck fawn starring up at me - about 30 feet away. Once our eyes locked, he turned and ran back into the tall grass and disappeared. Not long afterwards, I glanced down the ditch line and noticed a doe walk out about 75 yards away. On her heels was a mature buck. As the doe stood still, the buck gave her a few licks and proceeded to mount her. After a few thrusts, the buck finished his business and slid off. If the buck had a cigarette, I’m sure he would have lit up at that moment! I was in a state of disbelief of all of the events that I had witnessed that morning, but I snapped out of it long enough to get my gun up and shoot at the buck. At the sound of the shot, the buck’s legs folded and he crashed to the ground. Meanwhile, the doe took a hop, turned and looked at the buck as if to say “thanks for a good time” and then casually walked off. The buck was a 3.5 year-old 7-pointer. It was all surreal.
The story doesn’t end there though. The next morning, my friend sat in the same tree while I sat in a wooden tree stand about 1/2 mile away. The plan that morning was for my friend to walk through some cedars towards me at 0:930. There was no sign of him by 10:00, so I got down from my stand and followed the ditch line to meet up with him. Eventually, we met at the ditch corners and he told me that he had been watching a big buck that was bedded about 200 yards away in the tall reed grass in front of the tree that he was in.
As I had a good understanding where the buck was bedded, we formulated a plan where my friend would go back and sit in the tree and would direct me to the buck with hand signals. Remember, this happened long before cell phones and before walkie/talkies were used. What was supposed to happen was I was supposed to jump the buck out of its bed, then it would run by my buddy who would shoot it. Unfortunately for my buddy, that’s not how things played out. The hand-signals worked like a charm as he was able to direct me to the buck’s bed. The thing was that there was a doe bedded too and she ran off in the opposite direction. The buck stood up only 20 feet from me and watched the doe run off. To me, the situation was a no-brainer, so I shot the buck where he stood as it was unlikely that I would have been able it to push it towards my buddy. Needless to say that my buddy was not impressed with the outcome but understood that my decision was logical. The buck was 8.5 years old, sported an 8 point rack, and it was missing an eye. One of my more memorable bucks to date .
Holy crap! One eye. He must of ran the show around there for some time. That’s an awesome story.