This is going to be a long post, but trust me…well worth it.
Dad and I spent all night Thursday debating where to go for his last morning sit with me on Friday before he had to travel back to North Carolina. I finally chose a huge red oak that is perched on top of a dog-legged ridge with a winter wheat field on the high side of the ridge and a long clover bottom along the low side.
The red oak is on the crest of the ridge and once you climb high enough in the tree you are a solid 50 feet above the clover bottom below which makes a shot awfully tricky but enables you to call deer from on top and bottom to within archery range quite easily.
I was really excited to get two climbers up the tree and have dad running the video camera, but that didn’t quite work out. Halfway through our pre-dawn trek to the designated red oak, the wind was wreaking havoc on dad’s headache and we had to adopt an alternate plan.
I was still going to head for the red oak, but he was going to sit in a covered box stand that was at least semi-protected from the wind. The cool thing was that he could see me and I could see him although a line of brush running along a creek through the middle of the field prevented him from seeing deer on my side of the branch.
It took me a longer time than usual to get my bow hung and some limbs trimmed and rearranged to make shooting lanes and a little makeshift cover. By the time I sat down to catch my breath, dad was buzzing my cell phone that he had already seen several bucks crossing the field several hundred yards in the distance. I called him back and told him I would wait 10 minutes or so before trying to rattle.
It wasn’t 5 minutes later when I saw an old familiar friend “2-Prong” cruising the field edge about 250 yards away from me (against the far woodline in the picture above). He was headed south and on a mission so I grabbed my antlers as fast as I could and smashed them together for 15 seconds or so. I hadn’t even gotten turned around from hanging them over a branch and 2-Prong had already changed directions and was staring in my direction.
I grunted as loud as I could a couple times to cover the distance and that was all it took. Not fast but very deliberately, 2-Prong began plodding towards my position. The funny thing is he was in direct line with dad’s covered stand to get to where I was calling from. This next video show you all you need to know. Keep in mind that dad was zoomed in previously trying to video the deer 10 minutes earlier that were crossing 300-400 yards in the distance.
2-Prong chose a path that carried him within 15 steps of dad’s covered stand and I was totally unaware that the 3 year old 8 point was in 2-Prong’s wake.
As he reached the line of brush when dad swings back to video the 8 point, 2-Prong dropped into the creek and grunted as he popped back up on the other side. I’ll tell you what – when you’ve got them talking back to you, you’ve got them right where you want them.
Now, here is an extra video that dad recorded as I was busy trying to get 2-Prong to close within 30 yards for the shot and I had absolutely no clue that these other bucks were in the field let alone the 8 point that was only 30 yards behind 2-Prong. I was so focused that I had tunnel vision and completely missed the fact there were 3 or 4 other bucks checking out the “big fight”.
You can hear my shot and watch the reaction of the monster half rack 8 point at about the 20 second mark of the video. Being perched 50 feet above 2-Prong, I just threw a couple deep grunts behind me up the ridge when he crossed the creek and the old buck bought it hook, line, and sinker. He stepped just inside the hardwoods off the clover bottom and I settled my top pin tight behind his shoulder to release. I had no prior experience shooting at a deer 50 feet below me in elevation, but I could instantly see blood gush from the entrance.
I got full penetration but the arrow stayed in the deer as he crashed through the brushy creek and into the pines across the field (you can see the start of the pines in the far left of the above photograph). I couldn’t see him fall, but I knew from the reaction of the other deer that I had now become aware of that he hadn’t made it far.
What a rush choosing the absolute perfect set-up to call deer and have an old cull buck like 2-Prong to read the script from beginning to end. I called dad to share in the excitement and he told me had gotten great video of the deer as they marched past him but had not seen the buck go down. It was truly an awesome experience to share with him and I was thrilled to have spent the past 4 days chasing whitetails as hard as we possibly could and finally having it come together.
Just to remind all my readers – if you aren’t shooting Slick Tricks, you are missing the boat! Needless to say, it wasn’t a difficult track job.
I had more encounters with this buck than any other deer this year. I think I had seen him 4 times previous and had even reached full draw one evening before letting down because I wasn’t completely confident in the shot.
I believe 2-Prong was a 5 year old this year and had shed his left antler off last year with a chunk of skull attached, hence the reason for his crazy double prong points. I always thought him to have a tank of a body and although he had big proportions, he just wasn’t a big bodied deer in the absolute sense of the words weighing in at 168 live.
Dad thought this would make a good picture so we snapped a few action photos of the cart making the drag easy. I thought this was a great idea even though I generally hate 4-wheeler/truck bed shots.
I’ll wrap up the post with an autopsy report. I reinserted the arrow to give you an idea of how steep of an angle I was dealing with. I hit the deer about midways up on the entrance and exited the center of his brisket before anchoring in the off knee joint. Not exactly a common shot trajectory.
As you could see from the above picture, the blood trail was unbelievable and that was because I severed the brachial artery as it runs through the deer’s armpit.
