Instead of making another thread, I'll just add to this one.
My Son-in-law got a nice one.
Here's the story........
He got in the woods about 2pm. He sat in the stand for a couple hours, seen a few does and fawns, a 5 pointer came in around 4pm. He thaught that would be all that would come in so he took a shot at him and shot low missing him. He was getting ready to get down out of the stand about 5:45pm and caught a glimpse of deer through some brush, working their way towards the stand. He sat back down to wait, and sure enough, 2 deer came in. An 8 point and a 10 point. He noticed the 10 was one that he had seen on his camera from pre-season scouting, as it had a broken tine. He was watching the deer and started to stand up but the 8 pointer caught some movement and looked straight up at him. He had to freeze and he said it seemed like about 5 minutes before the buck started feeding again, during that time the 10 pointer never seemed to care as he was busy with the acorns. As soon as the buck that was watching him put his head back down, Troy made his move to stand up. He had to wait a few minutes for the buck to get to a good shooting spot by that time Troy said he was shaking pretty bad as this was the biggest buck he had a chance to shoot (yup, he had buck fever.) He draws back on a quartering away shot and lets it fly. Complete pass through, arrow sticking up out of the ground shining the red you want to see on an arrow after a shot. He watched the deer until it got out of site. Takes off out of the stand and SPRINTS to the house.... My wife was on the phone with my daughter Leslie when he came in, and this is what she heard.... Door slam... "LES I DID IT, I SHOT THE 10, IS YOUR DAD HOME..." So I get on the phone, Troy was breathing like he ran 20 marathons in a row LOL...... "Andy, can you come help me...." So I say wait til I get there so I can help drag it out. I looked at my watch it was 6:00pm So I get my stuff together to go help him. By the time I got my stuff and made it to his house it was just a little after 7pm when I got there. I always give the deer about an hour before tracking just in case.. We make it to the stand and sure enough, arrow still there, blood splatter on the ground about the size of a baseball right beside the arrow. We start tracking the deer and find good blood, continue on for about 50 yards blood starts getting thin. I'm thinking oh crap... So we start slowing down and see some where the deer had fell and started getting good blood again. We go about 50 more yards and here a deer running through the woods, we figure it's another deer and keep going. Still finding good blood we keep going for about 50 more yards, thats when we figured out it was the deer Troy had shot as the blood trail went towards the creek.... So now it's about 9pm. I tell Troy we need to back out and pick it back up in the morning. So I had to work the next day and troy said he would get back on it the next morning. So I go home and got to thinking, There's a road across the creek, IF it crosses the creek, I could mark on gps where it crossed and get close to it from the road on the other side, so we wouldnt have to wade the creek. So, I call Troy at 6am the next morning getting him out of the bed and tell him the plan. So I take off and get to his house, we get back to where we left and start tracking... Sure enough, it crossed the creek. I mark it on GPS and we go get the truck and hit the road. From the road, we got to .14 miles from where it had crossed the creek. I park the truck and we take off. I knew it was going to be steep, as I had checked it out on the ACME map that Jim had posted a while back. THANKS JIM! :beer: So we start searching for the blood trail or signs of stumbling/falling along the bank and found nothing. So we start doing a wider search pattern I was searching next to the cliff was going to walk back down the creek bank. I didn't know where Troy was at, and all the sudden I hear him whooping and hollering...... I didn't know what he was yelling, so I take off and find him on the creek bank pointing..... "look over there..." Sure enough... It was the 10 pointer laying IN the creek with it's head laying on the bank on the OTHER side.... Not sure if it came all the way across the creek, and went back, or just went up the creek..??? It was 400 feet from where we found last blood on a rock at creek side. This place we were at was .46 miles from the house, or .14 miles from the truck... SO, i give Troy a hi 5 and say lets go get him, and across the creek we went.... Yup the water is pretty cold this time of year.... LUCKILY it didn't come up past mid thigh.. (you guys know what I mean :wink: )
Pre season.
Sorry for the crappy cell phone pics.
So Troy does the dirty work, and sure enough, he hit a little far back, getting a gut shot, through the liver and cutting a small portion of a lung. BUT dead is dead... So now we head BACK across the creek and to the truck...
One of his tines was broken durring velvet, you can see where it grew a little more, and the other one was broken after he shed the velvet you can tell it had been broke for a while.
Muzzy broadhead, PSE bow, Carbon express arrows.
All that and I still made it to work on time...