It was November 1. I had not been hunting in about 2 weeks and had not been to this place in over 3 weeks. I was extremely sore due to a soccer game i had played in the day before. I told my wife that I was headed out to this property on a scouting mission and wasn’t shooting anything unless it was huge.
Once out there, I walked down the path to my lock on stand. I put some corn out and went to check my camera. Sometime during the past 3 weeks, my camera had somehow gotten water in it and it was ruined.
I climbed in the stand and was really disappointed about my camera and went back to looking at some older camera pictures from earlier in the year. I had gotten a couple of really nice 8-points on camera several weeks before. I was just hoping for one of them to slip up.
I hadn’t been sitting for an hour yet and it was around 3:55. I was still messing around on my phone when i heard a grunt in the cutover in front of me, then heard deer running.
I stood up and grabbed my rifle. I started scanning and looked 30 yards to my left in some grown up pines. I could make out a deer and could see the top of his tines. I immediately thought it was one of the 8-points. I looked through the scope and the deer started to trot. I pulled the trigger and he kicked and ran about 40 yards and stopped on the overgrown pond dam behind me. I couldnt see him any more and didnt see him come out the other side or crash.
I got down after about 5 minutes to check for blood. As i made my way to the pond damn, I could see him standing there at 25 yards looking at me. I pulled up the rifle and shot again. He stumbled another 15 yards and fell over, but still had his head up looking at me. I ran towards him and stopped at about 20 yards and shot one more time. He started kicking and fell into the pond.
I ran over to him and couldnt believe my eyes. I had never had a picture of this deer. Ive been hunting this property for over 15 years and never seen anything like him.
I counted 11 points!! I immediately called my wife and told her “you know what I said before I left, he’s huge.”
The only problem was he was down the bank at the ponds edge now. I was still so sore from that soccer game, I couldn’t get him out without help. I called a couple of buddies and they had to help me get him out.
We green-scored him at 157.5 inches. My biggest buck to date. Afterwards we took him to Spencer Loftins Taxidermy.
–K Gunter
Be the first to comment