Change of Plans

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• Medalist Apparel


• Hunter Safety System Pro Series


• Lacrosse Alpha Burly Boots


• Matthews Switchback Bow


• Gold Tip Arrows


• Slick Trick 100 Grain Broadheads


• Scott Little Goose Release


• Lumenok


• Leupold RX II Rangefinder


• Ol' Man Climbing Treestand

This archery season has been a big change for me in many ways.  My 5 year old is now in school and getting him on and off the bus was going to cut my hunting time in half.   I wouldn’t change it for the world, and thoroughly enjoy seeing him off and picking him up from the bus, but it was a change that took some getting used to.  Also through the first 3 weeks of season, I had yet to hunt with my cousin Jason.  In the past, we would usually get together for at least a couple of hunts a week, but with our busy schedules, last week was the first opportunity we would get to hunt together.  Obviously, I was excited to get 4 hunts in a row, hunting 3 of them with my cousin.

My first 3 hunts were uneventful.  No deer were seen by either Jason or me, but after our morning hunt on Wednesday, we found an extremely promising spot for our evening hunt.  In the morning, Jason was hunting a block of woods which led him along the back side of a cornfield.  I was hunting across the road and received a text at the end of the morning hunt to meet him at the cornfield.  I met up with Jason after the morning hunt and quickly realized he was extremely excited about his morning.  Jason had to walk along the edge of a cornfield to get to his stand, and said he jumped several deer going back in.  His exact words were “deer were everywhere”.  After talking a little about the morning, we went along the backside of the cornfield and found more deer sign than I had seen all year including several rubs and scrapes along the tree line.  We cleared a couple of lanes and hung our climbers back in the woods in sight of each corner of the cornfield.  I know after leaving we were both extremely confident, and excited for our evening hunt.

Last Wednesday (Oct 21st) was extremely warm and sunny, which from my experience isn’t good for deer movement.  We were excited about the spot we were hunting, but weren’t overly thrilled about the weather.  Our hopes were still high as we entered our climbing tree stands that afternoon.  We were settled by 3:30 and I had begun seeing deer roughly ½ hour into the hunt.  From about four o’clock on, I was either watching or listening to deer in the cornfield in front of me.  Even though, to this point I had seen no bucks, I was enjoying all the action.  At about 5:30 I was watching a button buck and a doe in front of me feeding, when I heard a loud “crash” behind me.  I turned in time to see a nice eight point scatter a bunch of deer.  As soon as I saw the buck, my focus was entirely on him, so I can’t honestly tell you what the other deer did, but he was standing alone behind me at 40 yards.  I quickly confirmed that the doe and button buck were still on the other side of me.  I was right in between a nice buck that had been chasing deer and a doe on the exact opposite side of me 15 yards away.  I remember thinking as the buck saw the doe “this is too good to be true”.  The buck then began a stiff legged walk toward the doe, but also toward a shooting lane I had cleared out earlier that day.  As he hit my shooting lane 18 yards away, I drew and gave a bleat with my mouth.  He stopped broadside, and as he did, I settled the pin behind his shoulder.  At the shot, the Lumenok showed the shot was true and that this should be a fairly easy recovery.

This buck seemed to have read the script on how this evening should go for me up to this point.  At the hit, the buck took 2 jumps and walked to the corner of the cornfield.  He stood for a few seconds, then laid down and rolled his side immediately.  When he went to his side on the ground and was still, I felt the hunt was over.  I needed to sit down (post shot shakes), and hung my bow on my bow hanger.  As I hung the bow on the hook, a deer behind me snorted.  I turned to look at the snorting deer and caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  My buck was back on his feet limping across the road back into the woods.  All of this transpired in less than a minute, but my elation at a nice buck on the ground less than 30 yards from me, turned into confusion and worry.  I figured I would give the buck until quitting time, to let Jason finish out his hunt and give the buck time to expire.  As light faded, I decided to get down and take the grass road to Jason’s stand which was less than 75 yards away from me.  After discussing options, we decided to quietly recover the arrow and go to the corner of the cornfield where the buck first laid down.  I retrieved my arrow and found bright red blood from tip to nock.  As we approached the area where the buck laid down we found 2 large pools of blood with a nice blood trail going back towards the woods.  We marked the trail and decided to go back and get lights and give him some more time.

Heavy blood trail

After about 1 hr, we picked up my uncle for help and the 3 of us went back to try to recover my buck.  We went to the mark we placed on the trail, and immediately realized this wasn’t going to be a hard tracking job.  The blood on the trail was dense and easy to follow but he went much further than I figured he would.  After about 100 yards from where he first went down, we found him lying against a fallen log expired.  The recovery was pretty straight forward, but I am amazed at the will this animal had to keep going.

Photo after recovery

Archery season this year has again provided with yet another great memory of the PA outdoors.  It is definitely my favorite time to be in the woods, spending time with friends and family.

Jason & I very happy after a great night on stand

Uncle and cousin after recovery (thanks for the help guys)

Nathan (son), Ron (father), and myself