c_lou

Our hunting season runs until mid January sometime, it's just my season that is over. December and January get pretty busy for me so I just pack up my gear and start getting ready for next year.

Well our gun season is over as is my hunting season. I did pretty good gun season. I got a nice 8 pointer on Monday the 21st. He wasn't the biggest buck, but he was a my first with a gun. He won't upgrade our score any either. He had every tine broken off just below the tips. I am not sure if he was a bully buck or just took a lot of abuse. He was bedded up with a doe and came busting out of our pine trees. It took me 4 shots but the last one got him. I ended up donating the meat and plan on getting a Euro mount done. He weighed in at 160 lbs.

That's a submitter right there. I love how the moon shine lights up the tree tops.

I was driving home from a meeting last night and noticed a ton of deer out in the fields running around. I did see a couple nice bucks out dogging does. I think with the warmer daytime temps, all the activity is happening at night.

Nice buck Slash. We should change our team name to "Butter", cause we on a roll.

Those are a nice series of pictures. That's the one part of the rut I haven't seen yet.

I think this has been the longest I have went without hunting. I have stayed out of the woods on purpose. Our gun season starts this Saturday and I wanted to keep the woods as human scent free as possible. I know there are a couple other big bucks roaming around where I shot my 9 pointer. I have been shooting my gun as much as possible. I think I have blown through at least 4 boxes of shells, so if I happen to miss, I know it's not the gun's fault. Although I will still use that as my excuse.

I have added my pics to the contest page. Our team really put on a clinic this past week. Congrats to those who got deer.

c_lou Team 8 - The Clique 10 pointer Tag; approved by JCWA. Deer photo plus yours truely.

I killed my buck this year in 10-15mph wind. Just hunt the wind correctly and you will see deer moving.

It's your spot for that evening. If he wanted to hunt it, he should have gotten there first. Some people are complete tools when it comes to hunting.

Congrats on a nice buck.

Congrats. Dude...widen your stance a litte.

According to what I have read, this was the hunters first buck with a bow. It is a boss of a deer.

I am waiting to get my buck back. I missed getting a picture of the tag. He should be coming back today or tomorrow, then I will update. Nice buck Mike and thanks to putting up the items. Here is a picture

Sounds like a buck you could get close with a couple of grunts. Good Luck.

Congrats on a great buck. Nice to see the kids involved.

Congrats. Great story and a great buck.

Congrats. That is a dandy buck.

My weekend started on Friday. I got to my stand around 3:30 and discovered another hunter sitting about 30 yards behind me on the property line. I decided to sit anyways, he didn't make any noise and I didn't really want to walk through the woods to another stand. Around 5 I see a small basket 8 walking towards me on my left, about the same time I notice a nicer buck walking in from my right. The small 8 walks off and over the knob to the North of me. The second deer I see making his way down the draw in front of me. When I get a better look at him, it was a small spike. I thought that was strange, he looked like he had a bigger rack when I first saw him. The spike makes his way past me at 25 yards and follows the same path the small 8 went. A few minutes after he walks by, the buck I originally seen coming down the draw makes his way past me on the same trail as the spike. He is a small 9 pointer with a cow tag in his ear. I have never seen anything like that before. He was a pretty small bodied 9, so I let him continue on. The time now is about 5:35 and I hear another deer walking towards me on my left. When I get a glimpse of him, I can see he is a pretty nice 10 with a bright white rack. He makes his way 25 yards to my left and starts working over a tree. The time now is 5:50, and as he is rubbing the small tree, I can hear another deer coming off the knob in front of me. I can see him silhouetted against the sky as he makes his way right past another stand, and down the knob. I check the 10 and he has also noticed this deer making his way towards us, so he abandons his task of destroying the small sapling and makes his way to meet this new intruder, directly in front of me at 35 yards. Now that my heart is pounding pretty good, the two deer meet, 35 yards directly out in front of me. The 10 looks like a nice buck, but that's when the new buck turns his head and looks away from me. My first thought was "What 10?". This deer was massive. The time is now 6:10 and I make my move. I draw back, making sure to get a good anchor point. I don't know how I managed to stay focused. I put my 20 yard pin on the top of the deer's back and squeeze my release. I hear nothing, no whack, no thwack, to crack. I do hear the 10 take off to my left, the big deer just stands there and then casually walks off to the east. Well to make this long story longer, I shot underneath the buck. When I stepped it off after I got down, it turned out to be about 42 yards. I was sick that I missed, but excited that I missed cleanly and he didn't seem to know what happened. Now on to Saturday... I mentioned to my father in law that there was that hunter directly behind me. I wasn't sure if he was on his side of the property line or on our side. So he, my brother in law and his 2 kids proceed to head out and check it out. They made quite a bit of racket out there but determined he is just on his side of the line, sort of a jerk move, but legal I guess. So between all the hub-bub in the woods and the wind blowing, I almost didn't go out. The memory of that monster got me off the couch though. I made the decision to head to the stand he walked past the previous night. What are the odds he walks past the same stand two nights in a row? I figured with the deer running, pretty good. We will skip forward to 3:45, that's when I notice 2 deer running off the knob from the south or to my left. The move quickly down a trail upwind and 8 yards behind me. They hang around for 10 minutes of so and then hustle there way to the Northeast, which is behind me to my right. The next hour and a half was pretty slow. About 5 I did a short grunt sequence and stand up, grab my bow off the bow hanger and get ready for the best time of the night. I am standing for about 10 minutes, when I look North, my right, and notice a rack walking directly up the knob. It was the 10 from Friday night. Now that he was coming right at me, I could see he was is really a 9 pointer. He had a broken brow tine. He has his ears pinned back so I couldn't really tell how wide he was. He was wandering around smelling where those does stood for a few minutes. He makes his way slightly behind me to the right, that's when he looked up at me. You know that feeling it sort of says "OH CRAP!", that's what I felt. However, he put his head down and kept nosing the ground. I thought he was going to walk behind me, so I move ever so slowly to get ready, in case I need to shoot. He turns back and starts making his way directly to my right. Up came his head again and looked directly at me. This time his ears were straight out, listening for my heart, which was pounding pretty good. I can now see his rack is about an inch outside his ears. I can hear my internal voice shouting "SHOOTER...SHOOTER". I made the decision to shoot. He is moving into a downwind position which made me even more nervous. With his head behind a tree, I draw back, and get my 20 yard pin on him. I held a bit low. He made his way between 2 trees and I heard a voice say "MAAAAAA". Turns out that was my voice and the deer is now stopped. Anchor set, pin set to the boiler room, I feel my finger squeeze my release. THWACK! is all I heard and I see him take off heading directly west, away from me. I notice my arrow fall out the opposite side of the deer. As I am watching him run through the woods at break neck speed, I do that all to familiar prayer that we all know. "GO DOWN...GO DOWN... GO DOWN." Well he must have heard me because he got to about 120 yards and stopped dead in his tracks, did that little wobble and fell over. All of this happened and it was only 5:20. I got myself calmed down and did some thanking to the man upstairs for allowing the sequence of events to happen. I then made some phone calls for help. I measured him right at 17" wide. He wasn't the biggest buck in the woods, nor the biggest that I have shot, but he was good enough for me. I am pretty sure he is the deer from the previous night, not the bigger one that I missed but the one that was rubbing that tree. I just hope that bigger one makes it. Forgive the pictures, I had fogotten my cleaner in the car.

Congrats. He is a nice buck. I wouldn't have let him by me either.

Congrats Rhino, that is an awesome deer. I scored myself on Saturday with a nice 9 pointer. I will have pictures up when I get them uploaded off the camera. Story will follow with the pictures.

It was pretty quite in the woods of Buffalo County last night. Not sure if that affected the deer movement, but I didn't hear anything until last light. It was a knock down drag out fight between what sounded like 2 pretty good sets of antlers. This wasn't no ticking of the antlers, there was some serious cracking and smashing going on. A few minutes after it started, I heard the loser running off behind me. This is the second night in a row I have seen or heard the big boys out and about. They have been one step ahead of me these last couple days. That ends this weekend.

Congrats. He is a nice buck.

Congrats on an awesome buck. I like the main beams.