Phew - I am still jacked to the nine's right now. Just flat out rocking.
Hunt was in Lenoir County NC, Friday through Sunday. All told, 18 ruminants were harvested between 9 hunters. This is going to be a long one - prepare yourself. In this particular county the state big game license allows you 6 tags. All 6 may be doe or 4 bucks and 2 doe. This varies by county. There is no daily bag limit. In other words - all of this is entirely within the law.
Youngsters - We had 4 youths and man did they rock it. A SIX year old took his first deer ever, headshotting a spike at 30yds with a 22Mag! An Eleven year old took his first buck ever and he was a big 8. You want to talk about permanent smiles all weekend, priceless!!!! We also had a 30-something nab his biggest buck, a good size 8pt and a 40-something take his first deer.
I hunted all day Friday in a creek bottom surrounded by rubs & scrapes. Gorgeous day for it but no bucks, bunch of does and I wasn't dropping them just yet. I saw a mink, you want to talk about cool, little bugger came within 5yds of me:
Saturday morning saw me sitting on the edge of the river. I saw one spike, let him walk then another came through and took 20 minutes to cross the road. Whelp, I aint proud but that was 19 minutes & 59 seconds too long. Nailed him at 70yds and he dropped 20yds later minus both lungs and a heart. His paddles will be used as new kitchen ladle handles. One 8pt, 2 spikes and a doe were the morning's tally from the group.
The rut was on and deer were moving all day. We had deer harvested at 11:30, 12:15 and 1:40. After wrapping up the processing of the mornings work I headed out for a late start at 2:15. I never got a chance to read a page of my book. I was sitting in a dang condo with a 360 degree field of view, soybean crop to the back, 270deg of pure awesome cover for the rest. The ground cover you can see over in the videos section is actually 4-8ft high and you can see their ears moving before they get to the two cuts. I dropped a 2.5yr old doe at 78 yards with a clean shot through the front shoulder and decimated the heart, dropped instantly. She was walking at a good clip and I had to time it between trees. 10 minutes later I dropped another mature doe at 92yds. My heart was still racing and it creeped up on me resulting in a shot 1inch below the spine but dropping her on the spot. I thought I was one happy camper until I spin around and see a monster at what I believe is 250-300 yds at the time, 5 minutes before legal end of shooting, rangefinder doesnt work, crap! Now I've done 300 at a range before with my 30-30 so I know I'm good out to that. BUT it's much easier when the target is metal, you know the exact distance, you have sandbags and you're there just to see what it will do. Now add in a monster 8 point with the accompanying adrenaline, mix in your heart pounding out of its chest having just downed 2 and staring at a wall-hanger. I took a shot, deer ran towards the grass, I adjusted for what I thought was a little high first shot and then deer ran into the grasslands. Now I know I clipped him good because both times his back two legs mule-kicked the air. I was not leaving anything to chance. At 248 yards (these ranges were confirmed the next morning in daylight from the blood trail) all I could see was his neck, but it was a big neck... I steeled my insane nerves, gave myself a pump-up, marked what I thought was the tree ranged earlier in the day at 260yds, envisioned myself smacking the plate at the range and let it rip. Head disappeared into the grass. What a rush. Great day right? Nope, look back and 200yds away is a silhouette. I couldn't tell the sex and it was close to the property line where there's a house 300yds behind the silhouette. There is only 1 thing that FOLLOWS a buck and that's another buck. I know the ballistics on a 30-30 from a stand would not have come into play but I deemed it not a wise shot, let alone being past legal shooting time. Hot damn! I counted the trees to where I thought the buck dropped, got out of the stand and started collecting the does. 30 intense minutes later of dragging by myself I went to grab my boy. Re-counted the trees, walked to the spot and homeboy was right there. My first shot was high, under the spine but not high enough to clip it. My second shot was overadjusted and hit him low just blowing out his sternum. Both shots would have killed him and he was probably going down but my neck shot hit DEAD FREAKING CENTER. In case you haven't noticed yet, I have a love affair with my 30-30. It was my high school graduation present and it's been the bane of whitetails for more than a decade. 300yds at a wall-hanger buck, without a range finder, minutes before legal end of shooting with a 30-30 - I am still pumping out adrenaline 48hours later.
Lucky? I won't deny you saying a little bit of that about this shot. In my eyes, there are varying degress of luck. Those that are just blind lucky all the way to those who put in the time at the range, re-loading bench, hours in scouting glasses and marking various trees with your range-finder as soon as they sit down and calculating.
The best part is when we got picked up E, a 17yr old, he had downed a 6pt and 2 does about 500yds from me. Add my 2 does and the 8pt and that was a truck-bed for the ages. Here's us and our 800+lbs of meat:
Here' my 8pt, look at that neck shot!:
Here's the afternoon work our group did:
What really makes this hunt go into the next tier of awesome is the Sunday morning bow hunt. Stupid North Carolina and their no gun hunting on Sundays. I'm sitting on the edge of a 1/4 acre plot with a creek bottom full of cypress 50yds to my right. 8:30am in walks another monster 8. Never got a shot, he walked right in front of the tree, straight at me and directly under my stand. CRAP! Until a 6 pt walked the same exact path. 5 minutes later I heard grunting and I was really pissed my cell phone was dying. Thinking I might get another shot at them I hang tight. In walks a 4pt. He does a circle around the plot that I do have a shot on and keeps posturing towards the other bucks. Then the fight was on with the two bucks behind me, rattling antlers for 4 minutes before bolting straight across the plot and resuming the fight out of sight but not sound. The funniest part was two-fold. One - I saw some does exit the creek-bed, take one ear towards the bucks and trot sweetly the opposite direction. Two - the 4pt was 5 seconds behind the other two just trotting along like "wait for me guys". So cool. Would have been awesome to have 2 wall-hangers in a weekend but those are the shakes, hell of an experience.
Here's a shot of the 4pt in one of his loops in the plot where I did have a shot but was just watching. You can see the dead tree with the vines, the 8 & 6 walked right down it. I was on an open-seat tri-beam stand with about 4 inches of clearance to either side. No way for me to "lean over". I might risk that shot with a rifle, not with an arrow.
I'm waiting on pictures from the other guys who had their cameras out. There will be a few good ones of the group and us teaching the youngings how to gut a deer.
Next week I'm headed either to Patrick County or Buckingham County NC - haven't decided yet. I'm doing something a little nifty with my DIY Skull Mounts, details to come later but those are projects for another time, there's hunting to do. With bonus permits and between the two states, I have 12 tags left to fill.
The game is most definitely still on.
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