It was 2003 the day before New Years Eve. I remember it well, not just because it was one of my most memorable days in the woods, but it was going to be the first New Years Eve I would be spending alone (with out my wife) in eleven years. I had made it through Christmas, barely, but I was still emotionally a mess. My friend Chris was having a big bash at his house, bon fire, tons of food and booze. As much as I didn’t feel like being around a bunch of people (especially people that I hadn’t seen since my break up, only 3 months prior) I figured at least I wouldn’t be alone, I could get drunk, and I could crash at Chris’s house if needed.

            I remember deciding not to go out hunting that morning, even though the season ended the next day. I don’t remember why, but I had already spent a lot of time in the woods that season. I had been unemployed during the hunting season, and I took full advantage of it, hunting morning and afternoon. It paid off. I shot my first buck, and had many encounters with other deer. It was the most exciting and eventful hunting season I had ever had.

            It was cold like most of the days that season, but the one element that stood out that day (and probably help kept me in bed that morning) was the wind. It was incredibly 
            

strong, shaking the windows strong. I have a sliding pocket door in my house that separates my kitchen from a small room at the front of the house. If I can hear that pocket door rattle, then it is a good sign that the wind is whipping outside.

I do not like hunting in the wind for a lot of reasons. For one, it makes it impossible to hear anything moving about in the woods, second, the deer normally will not move around as much on very windy days, it makes them “spooky”, and third, it can make a cold day a hell of a lot colder! This was also one of the rare days that I actually was a little nervous about being up in a small tree stand, as the wind tossed me back and forth like some amusement park ride. It was also the end of the season, and the rut was over. I really didn’t see any opportunity to see any bucks on a day like this, so late in the season, but that didn’t deter me enough.

One of the things that gets me out into the woods every time I don’t feel like going, because I am tired, cold or just not motivated, is the knowledge that hunting is about being in the right place at the right time. There are a lot of other factors that are involved, but it comes down to being in the woods at the right time, and I always say to myself, that this could be the day a bruiser walks by my stand, and how sick I would feel if I knew I wasn’t there at that moment. That alone is usually all the motivation I need.

A lot of books and magazines will tell you not to “burn out a stand”, which basically means, hunting it too much. I think there is some truth to it, but when you are not a professional hunter, and you do not have a lot of options, you need to just be in the woods as much as you can. I believe, if a mature buck is going to come to the realization that he is being hunted, it is just going to happen. I feel that if I don’t see deer in a stand for two or three days, there is more of a chance that I will see some the next day, rather than not, especially during the rut.

I am sure that I have forced many mature bucks (that I didn’t even know existed) into being completely nocturnal, but there isn’t a lot that you can do. I try to eliminate my scent as much as I can, I am very cautious not to touch every branch and bush that I pass when I walk to and from my stand, and I am as quiet as I can be. I wear rubber boots during the archery season, to help keep from leaving tracks of scent everywhere I walk. I try and not to walk directly on the game trails, every little thing I can think of, but not everything is in the hunters’ control. If a buck sees me walking in or out from my stand a couple of times, that could be all she wrote for the rest of season. I don’t believe that they move out of their area (except during the rut) like some writers say, unless there is massive pressure, like during the gun season, but I do believe that they will go totally nocturnal, completely taking away any chance of getting a crack at them.     

After all is said and done, you need a hell of a lot of luck, and you just need to be in the right place at the right time. Staying home in bed because it is too windy, cold, or because you have already hunted the stand for three days, is not going to help your chances. Don’t get me wrong, I do try and alternate where I hunt, but if I know there are deer moving through an area more than another, you can bet that I will be planting my ass in that stand as much as I can.

It was mid day and I decided at the last minute that I would go take one more crack at the woods across the street from my cousins’, in Ashland.  I also decided after talking to my friend Todd, that I would hunt his stand, which was directly behind my cousins’ neighbors’ house. Todd’s stand was actually across the swamp from my stand, probably no more than a hundred yards. I had hunted it a couple of times during the

season, and had seen deer both times. Normally I don’t like hunting someone else’s stand, but it was the end of the season, and Todd wasn’t going to be hunting it anymore. I think he actually convinced me to hunt it, instead of my stand. Sometimes I am not sure which stand I am going to hunt, until I get there, especially if the wind is blowing. This day it didn’t matter which tree I was in because the wind was blowing like a typhoon.

I ended up getting to my cousins later than I wanted to. I almost was going to go to my stand, but it was getting late, and it is an extra ten minutes or so to walk to it, so I decided to stick with the plan and go over to Todd’s stand. Once I got up in the stand, I started second guessing myself. The tree his stand was fixed on was not that big, and the wind was blowing it around like a daisy out in a field. I didn’t feel safe at all, and I sat down in the stand instead of standing. His stand was set up so that your back was to the swamp, and you were facing Jeff’s house. You could actually see the back of his neighbors’ house. I knew that the deer would be coming from behind me, so I had to keep turning to look into the swamp. There was no way I was going to hear them coming, that was for sure.

There was a little less than an hour left of light, and I knew my season was coming to a close. I decided that I had to stand and face the swamp if I was going to have any chance of spotting a deer. It was a balancing act, but the thought of plummeting to my death was quickly erased, once I saw movement in the swamp. As soon as I turned to look into the swamp, I saw a deer moving quickly through the thick brush, and it seemed to be moving low to the ground. At first I thought it was a deer taking off because it had seen me trying to hang on for dear life, but then I saw the second deer doing the same thing behind it. As they both appeared and disappeared, I thought maybe it was buck chasing a doe. It was way past the rut, but maybe it was a second rut. Sometimes if a mature doe isn’t breed during her first cycle, she will go into heat thirty days later.

As I strained my eyes to try and pick out either of these deer through the brush, I saw some antlers.  I knew it was a buck chasing a doe. After about a minute or two, I saw the first deer pop out of the swamp about sixty yards parallel to my stand, into the open woods. It was a nice size mature doe. She stood looking back into the swamp, almost to say, “hey, what’s wrong, you can’t keep up”. As I watched the edge of the swamp, I could see movement, but he was taking his time. The doe started milling around and feeding on the acorns that were scattered around everywhere. She was starting to make her way in my direction, which started to get my adrenaline going. I knew if she came within bow range that meant the buck might as well.      

After 5 or ten minutes he finally stepped out of the swamp. “Holy shit”, I believe where my words to myself. I immediately saw that this was a mature buck with a very tall rack. It didn’t look like it had a lot of tines, or that they were tall, it was the main beam that rose way above it’s head. It seemed to have 5 or 6 points, not many points, but it was bigger than any deer I had shot. While the doe slowly made her way towards my stand, the buck seemed to be just surveying the whole area and not moving very much. As the doe began to put some distance between her and the buck, I began to get nervous that she might bust me before the buck had a chance to get into bow range. I had forgotten all about the brutal winds trying to knock me off my stand, and the reality waiting for me at home, I was just focused on these two deer, and how little time and light I had to close the deal.

            

As the doe got within thirty yards she cut to my right, and at this point, the buck made his move. He started coming right down behind her. Now the adrenalin started flowing and the intensity picked up. With the doe moving across in front of me, my only worry now was whether or not the buck would run after her and start the chase all over again.

The buck was facing me as he approached, and he seemed to get bigger the closer he got. As he got to the spot where the doe had cut off at an angle in front of the stand, something happened. The buck started acting weird. He started raking his antlers on one of the overhanging branches, and began making a scrape on the ground. He then turned his focus from the doe to the swamp. When he began blowing himself up, and grunting, it dawned on me, “there must be another buck in the swamp”. As I surveyed the swamp, I saw brown moving in the thick brush, but I couldn’t see any rack or head for that matter.

Just as I was trying to figure what was going to happen, the big buck like a soldier going to battle, started to march into the swamp. The other buck seemed to disappear a little into the swamp. The big buck stood facing into the thick brush, his head was starting to lower, his body was blowing up, and he began raking the ground like a bull preparing to charge the matador. In one exciting motion he charged into the thick brush. As he disappeared I could hear antlers crashing, and debris being thrown. The wind had calmed down a little, so I was able to hear this epic battle take place.

As I stood waiting for the buck to return, I realized that the doe had moved closer to the swamp, and was watching her Knight fight for her honor. At this point I began to realize that not only was the light fading, but so were my chances of shooting this buck. I started to panic, thinking, “damn this is cool, but it just screwed up everything”.

The battle didn’t last long, and before I could worry anymore, the buck came racing out of the swamp after his prize. Without haste he trotted over towards the doe, and they both made their way in the same direction they were heading, prior to the intruder.

I realized I had one window to shoot through, before the buck would be out of my range. I didn’t even have much time to panic. I pulled up my bow and drew back. As the buck approached the opening, I grunted hoping to stop his quick pace, but he didn’t hear me. Oh shit, “I just missed my window”, I thought to myself. As he went through the opening, I just kept grunting, but he couldn’t hear me. Now I started panicking. Finally he stopped in an even smaller opening than I had before. I tried to quickly pace off the distance with my eyes. My heart was racing, and I was in total panic mode. I almost didn’t take the shot, but the buck stayed there long enough for me to get a rough guess of thirty five to forty yards. I put my thirty yard pin right on his back, and let the arrow fly. “Crack”, I heard as it struck the deer. It looked liked a perfect shot. I saw a part of the arrow go flying, as the buck buckled and then he turned and bolted back into the swamp.

It was pretty dark but it looked like I had hit him good. I couldn’t believe it. I could have jumped from the stand all the way to Jeff’s house, in one leap, with the adrenaline I had going through my body. There were so many thoughts racing through my head, I couldn’t handle sitting in my stand any longer. After about ten minutes I got down and quietly made my way over the point of impact to see if I could see any blood or my arrow. By this time it was real dark, and I could barely see anything even with my flashlight. I didn’t want to spend too much time milling around, just incase the buck had bedded down in the swamp, so I made my way out of the woods.

            

I practically ran the whole way. It was a short distance to Jeff’s driveway, were I met up with him as he was splitting some wood with a friend, but I was completely out of breath. “…buck….huge….good shot….”, I tried to get the words out, but my adrenaline had over taken me. Jeff was looking at me trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about, but it started to sink in. “You shot a buck”, he said. “no way”. Still out of breath, I shook my head. “huge buck” I said. I am sure I used the word huge, because it was the biggest one I had yet to see in the woods, so it was a giant to me. His friend was dumbfounded, trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me, and why I was acting like I just won the lottery. What he didn’t know, was that I had.

I began calling my dad, Todd, anyone. As I began to replay every account out loud, Jeff’s friend said to him, “damn if this is what it does to you, I want to take up hunting”. Like a bride on her wedding day, he could see the glow emitting all around me.

After thinking about it for a bit, I decided to go home, change and give the deer some time before I went in after him. There were a lot of coyotes in the state forest, so I didn’t want to wait until morning, but I did want to give him some time, just incase I didn’t make a great shot. It was a long two to three hours before I made it back to Jeff’s driveway.

Todd and Jeff were waiting with flashlights. The three of us made our way to the spot where I thought the deer was standing. It took a few minutes but we found the blood trail, along with half of my arrow. We followed the blood trail down into the middle of the swamp, where we found a large amount of blood, along with the other half of my arrow. I was hoping that the buck had just decided to lay down and expire right there in the swamp, and it would have been any easy drag out to the road. Little did I know, just how wrong I was.

We tracked the trail through the swamp, past my stand, all the way into the State Forest. At times the blood trail was very minimal. We had to get down on our hands and knees in the dark, and try and find any evidence of blood. After a couple of hours Jeff had to head back home. I wanted to leave as well, thinking that we might just be pushing this deer, but Todd wanted to stay. Feeling bad that he had spent all this time helping me, I agreed to keep going. We followed it for a quit a bit more after Jeff left. At one point I know we had jumped it. Once we got to a main trail in the State Forest, we decided to mark the spot and come back in the morning. We had swung all the way over to Oak St., so we had Jeff come and pick us up on the road. At this point I was exhausted, but even more disappointed. I knew that there was a very good chance this one was gonna get away.

After very little sleep, turning and tossing, replaying every excerpt from the events of the night before, I got up and called Todd. My brother and my nephew decided to come down to join us in the search. Because we were waiting for them to come down, we got a late start on our search. We parked at the condo complex that was adjacent to the area we had left our search the night before. When we found our marked area in the path, we began to pick up the blood trail again. The trail seemed to scatter in circles. We would find one drop here, one drop there, it was beginning to look hopeless. It seemed that the deer had stopped just across the path, where we had cut off from our search the night before. Just as I was beginning to lose hope, Todd seemed to pick up the trail again. I thought he was on one of the trails we already covered, but he wasn’t. Then I heard my brother say, “oh no, what is that”?

            

As I looked down a stretch of woods, I could see a bunch of pieces of fur leading up to a large lump on the ground. The large lump was my buck. At first I was beyond excited, but as I made my way closer to the deer, I realized what my brother meant when he said “oh no..”. The sight of fur everywhere and the horrible stench, was enough evidence to make us realize that a pack of coyotes had gotten to my deer first. It was a little bitter sweet. I had found my deer, but the meat was ruined. It was probably less than a hundred yards from where we had stopped our search the night prior. I was able to salvage the rack of the deer. I actually kept the whole head and made a European mount with the skull and antlers..

I was excited to have finally shot a mature buck. To me it was a huge accomplishment, just getting the deer within bow range. I was still a little upset that it wasn’t a clean quick kill. I never want an animal to suffer, but sometimes that is just the way it happens. He was an old deer, who was probably on his decline and didn’t have much time left. He ended up only having five points, but his rack was very thick and tall, an old King of the woods.