Posted By: cameron00
I chose..."poorly"... - 11/11/15 05:33 PM
Went out this a.m. The bucks are rutting hard in my area, and though I haven't gotten anything but youngsters on my cameras, you just never know in the river bottoms...
Have 2 stands I hunt which are basically at opposite ends of my 76 acres. One is looking into the sun at sunrise, the other at sunset. So I change it up a bit if the wind sucks, but I typically hunt one in the morning and one in the evenings. This morning it was lightly drizzling and overcast, and the typical evening stand backs up to 95 acres of uncut hay that the deer love to bed in. It's also right on about 70 acres of woods right on the river, so I thought, why not? I don't hunt this stand in the morning very often.
Great hunt. Had does coming out of the tall grass all over me. Young bucks pushing them all over the field in front of me. Probably saw 15 deer split pretty evenly between bucks and does. Had a young 9-pt come out about 30 yards from me while I was glassing another buck. He absolutely saw me, but he just did not care. Walked right out and trotted straight towards some younger does out in the field. Mindless.
The only thing that really caught my eye was an old mama doe that was standing about 400 yards down the "cut line" in the tall grass that was acting really weird. None of the bucks were on her, she wasn't eating anything, just kinda coming in and out of the tall grass and when she was out, she'd look back into it. I literally texted a buddy, "I bet her man is back there and they're getting ready to make babies."
About 5 minutes after that text, this wounded crap buck comes out of the tall grass limping badly, but still angling towards some other does. He hobbles out towards my opposite feeder, which is about 500 yards from where I am and I'm watching him when I notice the old mama doe has come a good ways out of the grass. She starts for the feeder as well, and damned sure enough, the single largest framed buck I've seen at this property comes out after her. Main frame 10, I think, couldn't really tell from that distance, but he was massive and his antlers were very heavy and very tall. I'd guess 16-17 wide. That's a monster for my area. His body was also like twice the size of any other buck in the field.
Small problem: There's no way I could just creep down the tall grass to put myself into position to have the wind in my favor and get a 200 yard shot at him. There were a ton of deer in that exact patch of grass, and they'd have busted me. So I walked as fast as I could the 800 yards trying to get into position to brace myself against a tree in the middle of the field. It's not an easy sneak - basically only had 2 ft grass to try to creep through.
I made it to around 40 yards short of where I needed to get and I notice the deer are no longer socially milling around the feeder area. They're all on alert staring my direction. Wind is not in my favor. I'm just hoping they stay scared, but there for another minute or so that I need to get where I'm going.
No such luck. The first blow by one of the 5-6 does in the bunch, and all I see is whitetails bouncing. Oh, and some monstrous antlers teetering back and forth as he bounded towards the creek bottom and tall grass.
Just to put some context on it, my area is a very high pressure area and very, very few bucks make it past 3.5 if they are legal. I am absolutely sick - had I simply chosen the stand I always hunt in the mornings, it'd have been a 120-yard shot for paydirt.
Such is hunting. Hope I see him again.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, my game camera was turned off by someone and had no pictures in the last 3 weeks while the bulk of the pre-rut and rut occurred.
Have 2 stands I hunt which are basically at opposite ends of my 76 acres. One is looking into the sun at sunrise, the other at sunset. So I change it up a bit if the wind sucks, but I typically hunt one in the morning and one in the evenings. This morning it was lightly drizzling and overcast, and the typical evening stand backs up to 95 acres of uncut hay that the deer love to bed in. It's also right on about 70 acres of woods right on the river, so I thought, why not? I don't hunt this stand in the morning very often.
Great hunt. Had does coming out of the tall grass all over me. Young bucks pushing them all over the field in front of me. Probably saw 15 deer split pretty evenly between bucks and does. Had a young 9-pt come out about 30 yards from me while I was glassing another buck. He absolutely saw me, but he just did not care. Walked right out and trotted straight towards some younger does out in the field. Mindless.
The only thing that really caught my eye was an old mama doe that was standing about 400 yards down the "cut line" in the tall grass that was acting really weird. None of the bucks were on her, she wasn't eating anything, just kinda coming in and out of the tall grass and when she was out, she'd look back into it. I literally texted a buddy, "I bet her man is back there and they're getting ready to make babies."
About 5 minutes after that text, this wounded crap buck comes out of the tall grass limping badly, but still angling towards some other does. He hobbles out towards my opposite feeder, which is about 500 yards from where I am and I'm watching him when I notice the old mama doe has come a good ways out of the grass. She starts for the feeder as well, and damned sure enough, the single largest framed buck I've seen at this property comes out after her. Main frame 10, I think, couldn't really tell from that distance, but he was massive and his antlers were very heavy and very tall. I'd guess 16-17 wide. That's a monster for my area. His body was also like twice the size of any other buck in the field.
Small problem: There's no way I could just creep down the tall grass to put myself into position to have the wind in my favor and get a 200 yard shot at him. There were a ton of deer in that exact patch of grass, and they'd have busted me. So I walked as fast as I could the 800 yards trying to get into position to brace myself against a tree in the middle of the field. It's not an easy sneak - basically only had 2 ft grass to try to creep through.
I made it to around 40 yards short of where I needed to get and I notice the deer are no longer socially milling around the feeder area. They're all on alert staring my direction. Wind is not in my favor. I'm just hoping they stay scared, but there for another minute or so that I need to get where I'm going.
No such luck. The first blow by one of the 5-6 does in the bunch, and all I see is whitetails bouncing. Oh, and some monstrous antlers teetering back and forth as he bounded towards the creek bottom and tall grass.
Just to put some context on it, my area is a very high pressure area and very, very few bucks make it past 3.5 if they are legal. I am absolutely sick - had I simply chosen the stand I always hunt in the mornings, it'd have been a 120-yard shot for paydirt.
Such is hunting. Hope I see him again.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, my game camera was turned off by someone and had no pictures in the last 3 weeks while the bulk of the pre-rut and rut occurred.