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A couple years after the blowdown buck,and a few more deer under my belt,I had moved from NB to Southern Ontario,where I soon learned that not only could I not use my beloved 30-06,but shotgun season(s) required a draw and were only a week long each,either in Nov or Dec.....but I could buy an OTC tag and hunt with a bow for 3 solid months!!
Knowing that my stay in ONT was gonna be temporary and would likely move back to NB eventually(I ended up staying 5 years)and crossbows were illegal at the time in NB,I decided that I would learn to shoot and hunt with a compound.
So I bought my first bow that summer in 1990,a Bear Whitetail 2 And was self taught from reading Bowhunter magazines as there was no internet in those days....but we figgered things out somehow,lol...and I wore out 2 straw bales shooting that thing almost every day after work,and by fall was pretty confident in my ability to lob an arrow 30 yards into an apple with that bow’s painfully slow by today’s standards rainbow trajectory,but hey I thought it was pretty badass at the time,lol....
So I had been hunting this Conservation property on Niagara escarpment every weekend,then the Nov shotgun season came(no tag for me)and went...iirc it was(is?} a 5 day,M-F season ......anyhow,the shotgun season ended the day before and I was bowhunting on the Saturday immediately afterwards.I had been out all morning and was making my way back to my car early afternoon to have a snack or call it quits for the day,I dunno....and I’m walking along this fenceline in a hayfield,and beyond the fence on the forest side is a lil pond,or more like just a big puddle really,maybe 20 yards wide and 30 yards long.On the back side of the puddle,about 25 yards from me and the fence,there’s a deadfall tree lying on the ground extending out into the puddle.....and on the other side of this blown down tree,lying flat on the ground,there is this huge set of antlers poking up.
Now this buck is flat out on the ground lying behind a fallen tree and facing away from me,looks like he died right there at the edge of the puddle,he might even be in the water a lil bit.I can see all 160”+ of this beautiful 10 pt rack only 25y away,the back of his head,and a wee bit of his neck......and I’m thinking,”What a shame,somebody shot that buck yesterday and he got away and died right there in the pond”......so I of course gotta go check this out,if nothing else I’m gonna recover this gorgeous rack....so I drop my bow over the fence then climb over the barb wire fence,then take 3-4 steps towards this dead buck.and he springs to his feet and prances away in no great hurry,he only trotted another 40-50 yards into the hardwoods and nervously paced around,too far and too thick for a bow shot but I coulda shot him umpteen hundred times with a shotgun he was that close.....then finally he blows outta there and the whole patch of hardwoods exploded with tails bouncing everywhere,must been 7 or 8 does in there as well.
Worst part is,I coulda put an arrow into the back of his neck from 25 yards when I first seen him lying there,I had an arrow nocked and half drawn a few times while I stood there for almost a minute trying to get a better view and angle until I convinced myself that he was already dead since yesterday and likely some shotgunner had hit him and couldn’t find him.
Not a damn thing wrong with that buck,he just had his chin flattened right out on the ground trying to hide behind that log....argggggg!!
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Another great story..thanx
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I'll share one of my first deer hunts when I was 14 or so. I'm sitting in my dad's tree stand at the edge hardwoods overlooking a bean field. Day light comes and I see a nice buck walking down the bush edge towards me.
Dad dropped me off there and he walked 50 acres south along the tree line to the gap way to the next field. He said to radio him if anything is coming his way.
Buck works his way right under my stand, I'm shaking like a leaf and trying to keep it together and make a good shot. Buck is 20 yards away in front of me and I try to shoot but cant pull the trigger with my 870. I forgot to take the safety off so I pushed it off and CLICK. Buck looks right at me, snorts then takes off running.
I unload the gun on him and he doesn't even slow down. Now hes running down the tree line right for my dad. Dad couldn't see what happened but he sure heard me shoot so hes standing there listening and ready.
Now I'm rifling threw my pockets trying to find the radio, get my hand on it while watching the buck still run down towards my dad. I start talking into the radio" DAD, DAD?, YOU THERE?
he answers what happened?
I said "buck coming your way I missed"
Soon as I said that, The buck went past him at 20 yards then jumped the fence into the bush right in front of him.
Hes like "Why didn't you just say buck coming towards you first!?!"
Dad had to put the gun on his shoulder sling to grab the radio to answer me....or he would of had an gimmie shot on that buck
To this day, safety comes off right when I see the animal I'm going to shoot, that was a good lesson learned. He heard me slap that safety off. LOL
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Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk
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I hate to admit it, but here's two more:
When scouting the bush behind my house, I had found a mature sweet apple tree in a small clearing in the middle of the concession, possibly the result of a discarded apple core many years ago. There was a copse of cedars about 20 yards to the South of the apple tree. I cut two shooting lanes through the cedar branches, one towards the apple tree and another 90 degrees to the West. I placed a 5 foot A-frame ladder at the intersection of these shooting lanes so I could see over the small cedars in the lanes that provided low height cover for me.
One outing, I had 5 Does trot into the clearing led by a large dominant Doe. The matriarch trotted right across in front of me and past the shooting lane while the others milled around. I decided to shoot the large Doe if she presented a shot. She turned and walked back towards the others. I drew and fired when she was in the lane. I heard a thwack and they all took off but I watched my target pause, looking around with no evidence of being hit before running off after the others.
I followed her path but found no blood. Returning to the clearing, I found my arrow embedded in the trunk of the apple tree. I had shot cleanly over her back.
Another year, I was sitting on the ladder sipping coffee, and heard a twig snap behind the copse of cedars. A short time later, I heard another twig snap so knew something was coming. I pivoted to peer through the cedar branches and saw a deer coming around the backside of the group of cedars. I then saw antlers so got the bow in hand. Unfortunately, I was late in prepping the stand this year and had only trimmed the shooting lane towards the apple tree. The buck came around the cedars and stopped right in the untrimmed shooting lane within 10 yards of me. He stood looking at the apple tree and he was so close I could practically count his eyelashes. I expected him to continue around the cedars and pass between me and the apple tree as this would lead to the thicker woods. However, he completely baffled me by turning West, towards a few houses with pastures.
I found a right side shed the next spring in an agricultural field further South that I was convinced was his. It was a 4 point antler with good mass.
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The Christmas Buck
On another occasion in the same Conservation Area where the “dead” 160 got up and trotted away....might even have been the same year or maybe the following year,I dunno.......but the Buck Zipper knife with hardwood handle was brand new that year,and my girlfriend bought it for me for Christmas.So she was a bit of a Princess and liked to sleep in Christmas morning,so we opened gifts Christmas Eve,smashed back a bottle of wine and a buncha rye and went to bed early as 25 year olds do,lol....and I said good,you sleep in til noon babe,I’m going deer hunting with my new knife and hopefully gonna get it bloody with some Christmas magic,lol.
So again,we got drunk and I slept in a wee bit later then planned,but off I go hunting in the pre-dawn darkness Christmas morn about 1/2 behind schedule to get to my stand at first light.I remember driving there in my Celica thinking how traumatizing it was gonna be for lil kids going to grandmas house and see me driving down the highway with Rudolph strapped across the trunk of my car,lol.
Anyhow,it was already shooting light when I was walking in to my treestand,and I got about 75y away from arriving when I heard this God awful snorting and grunting like pigs,and my first thought was there’s cows around here,wtf are pigs doing out in the bush,then I realized OMFG THAT is a buck grunting!!
Up until now,I had never heard a buck grunting so loud and aggressively,but sure enough,it was indeed a nice big 8pt Buck grunting up a storm with his nose right up the butt of this doe,and they were heading right towards my stand,only problem is I was still 75 yards from it in the hardwoods.
So commercial grunt calls were pretty new at the time,and I had my Knight&Hale grunter hanging around my neck,and I tried grunting them over,and the doe was interested and tried 3-4x to come my way but the big 8 wouldn’t have any of that and he kept herding her away with his antlers,then they got to about 60y straight downwind of me eventually and the tails went up and gone.......but they had passed almost directly under my tree stand in the meantime,within 5-10yards of it anyway,and if I hadn’t got drunk and stayed up half the night as horny 25 year olds tend to do on Christmas Eve,I wouldn’t have slept in and I’d have been sitting in that tree half hour earlier and woulda let the air outta Blitzen,lol.
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There are some great stories here.
I don't really have a specific story of one which got away that I think about very often. That's basically because I mostly bow hunt with my recurve, still hunting on the ground and it happens more times than I can remember. I have lots of memories and I could write a book on the topic if I really wanted to, but that's the nature of the beast and really with that kind of hunting is all about, right? Haha. To me, that's what makes it special. If it were easy it wouldn't be much fun. Anyway, I have lots of five to ten-yard stories of being busted or not being able to get a shot away because of the position I was in, etc., etc. It happens every year.
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Last year moose hunting. Sitting in an old cut where the jack pines are now roughly 4 - 8 feet tall. Let out a few calls and a bull starts to reply back. About a half hour later he finally shows himself about 150 yards away, but I don't got a good view of him. He's walking through the cut towards a much more heavily wooded area. Through a couple trees I pick a spot where where there is a little bit of a clearing and I know I might only have one chance at a shot. I lift my riffle up to my chest and periodically take a look through the scope as I follow him across the cut headed right for the spot I picked out. With my rifle now resting up against my chest, and me slightly hunched over in my stand watching as he peeks in and out of view through the pines I start getting excited ! He's getting close ! Soon as he steps into the clearing I waiting 15 minutes for him to reach I pull the rifle up and set my sights on him, only to realize I can't see him. I can't see nothing ! Too excited and breathing too heavily I had been breathing right on my scope and couldn't see anything out of it when I brought it up to my eyes. Fogged it right up. I watched him walk away that day. Was a hard story to tell back at camp that night.
