Contest! 2008 - NEFGA Buck Bash - Archery Division - Post Entries Here!

[thedarkarcher]

Originally Posted by Slack Jaw

Nice buck! The story about the amish kids kids going rodeo made me lmao! You ever seen that movie king pin? How old do you think that buck was?

i have not seen it......
i'm no biologist but i'd say 5 1/2 probably older, maybe way older.

[Phishful Thinking]

2008 = The year of Kevin!

2009 = hopefully the year of Kyle!

good job buddy, great story behind it as well... see ya in a couple hours for the Husker game GBR!!!

[Catfishsteve]

The Buck Bash archery division is now open again.

Here is the NEW control item that must be used to enter any deer in the Buck Bash archery division from today, Nov 24, 2008 going forward until the end of the archer season on Dec 31, 2008.

Thank you, be safe and good luck!!

[buglem]

Here is my entry for the buck bash. Not a monster, but a nice deer and a fun hunt.

I saw the deer about 80 yards away, right after first light. Tried grunting at him with no luck. He finally turned away, tail held straight up and walked back where he came from. After a little while, I saw him and a couple of does looking like they were headed my way. I turned, hung up my grunt call and grabbed my bow. As I was doing this, I could hear the buck grunting and deer trotting up the hill towards me.

By the time I turned around and got my release on the string, the first two does were already past me! Things were happening really fast! Luckily, the buck was trotting in hot pursuit a few yards behind them. I drew the bow as quickly as possible, put the pin on his front shoulder as he was trotting and let it fly.

The shot was about 10 yards and looked to be a few inches behind the shoulder but I thought it should still be in the lungs. He immediately took off with the does and headed out in the pasture. One of the deer stayed behind when they ran off. It turned out to be a button buck. He was soon joined by a small 3x3 and a buck with both antlers broken off. They hung around within 15 yards for about 20 minutes. The button buck actually walked up to my arrow and sniffed it a couple different times.

Finally, the deer walked off and I got down to start tracking. It had been an hour since the shot so I figured I would get right after him as long as the blood trail looked good. The arrow had blood, looked bright but no bubbles. Unfortunately there was no blood on the ground for the first 10 yards. I finally found blood and started to track. It looked good at first but after another 10 yards it almost completely disappeared.

The place I was hunting was a small patch of trees about 250 yards square, nearly surrounded by pastures. I marked the last blood and did a couple of sweeps through the pasture where I thought the deer ran, no luck. I came back to the last blood and found a few more yards of the trail. The deer had turned a different direction than I initially thought. Again, the blood turned really thin so I went in the new direction and did more sweeps in the pasture. Again, no dice.

By this time it had been a couple hours since I made the shot. I was starting to worry that my shot hadn't been as good as I thought. I went back to the last blood and started looking again on my hands and knees. I was able to make about another 60 yards over the next 45 minutes. The trail was getting more sparse by the yard though. At the end it was about 15 feet between small specks of blood.

However, it appeared the deer had started back the way he came, possibly looping back into the tree patch. I decided to mark the last blood and start searching the trees. I made one pass through the far edge with no luck. After making another pass and nearly reaching the end, I was walking up a deer trail and bent down to go under a low pine branch and there on the trail was a big spot of blood! Suddenly I had new hope. The single spot turned into more and more blood. Within 10 yards I found where the deer stopped a couple times and had good puddles of blood. Walked another 5 yards and around a tree and there he was!

He was fully stiffened up and probably had been dead shortly after the shot. He covered about 300 yards and ended up on the other side of my stand in completely the opposite direction where he initially ran off. The shot was a little further back than I would have liked but still got both lungs. I think the reason the blood trail was so sparse was that both the entry and exit wound were at least 4 inches about the bottom of the chest so it had to fill up the cavity before leaving a trail.

I guess my story was more about the tracking than the hunt itself but it certainly reinforced the need to be persistent and keep tracking. The blood was such small drops, I literally had to be on my hands and knees to see it.

Anyway, here are my entry pictures. They aren't the best since they are from my garage when the deer was hanging so I included a picture of the deer taken shortly after I recovered him. In case your curious, the snow started after I found him so it didn't help me with the tracking job...

[Catfishsteve]

Nice job, Thanx for the entry!!

[thedarkarcher]

nice buck! congrats...