Tagged out in Michigan on October 30th. Planned to hunt public ground in Ohio. Had a friend headed to Southern Ohio to hunt private farm land/hill country that he had permission on. Ended up hunting private land and taking my first Ohio buck, which is also my biggest buck to date, and capped off an outstanding 2015 season for yours truly.
Full Story:
2015 is only the second time since I started to take bowhunting seriously in 2009 that I have punched both of my Michigan buck tags with a bow. It's the first time that I was able to bag two 2.5+yr old bucks in a single season with my bow, which was one of my goals coming into the season, along with shooting a public land buck, which I was also able to accomplish this year on October 11th. I told myself that I would head out of state if I had two bucks down by the end of the first week in November. Well, I was tagged out on October 30th, so I started game planning to head to Ohio.
My original plan was to hunt some public land around Cadiz, OH that I hunted last year with fellow beast member jmaas07. We got there a little early last year and found out the hard way that there aren't P&Y bucks behind every tree in Ohio. In fact, last year, I saw one (yes, one) doe in 3 days worth of hunting. I also looked into hunting a larger tract of mostly forested public land near Chillicothe, OH. While I was game planning, I found out one of my friend's was headed to southern Ohio the same week as I had planned to head down and he would be hunting some private land that he has permission on. We decided that it would be a good idea if we went together, and a third guy joined us for the trip.
We left southern Michigan around 7:45 p.m. on November 5th (I had been up since 4 a.m. for work) for the 5.5 hour drive to our destination just north of the Kentucky border, along the Ohio River. We finally rolled into the hotel around 1:30 a.m. in the weeee hours of Nov. 6th. We took what amounted to a very unfulfilling nap and woke up around 4:30 a.m. and headed towards the property. This was my first time on the property, and I had never even seen a map of this place
We rode three wide on the ATV which was a sight in and of itself about 10 minutes towards the back of the property. At that point, my buddy said "my stand is that way, you guys can go anywhere in that (opposite) direction." I fired up my GPS, which has the crude 100k (almost useless) topo maps and headed towards a draw. About 10 minutes into the woods, I ran into the intersection of two trails and saw a few rubs. I decided this was a good place to start off the hunt. Plus, it was 70 degrees out, and I was already sweating in just a long sleeve shirt.I started to setup and just as I started hanging the stand, it started pouring. By the time I got down my clothes were already soaked. I had rain gear, but it was on the ground. So I put on my wet clothes and covered them up with rain gear...I’m not sure if I was keeping water out or in at that point. Dawn broke shortly afterward, and before I knew it, it was ten o’clock and I hadn’t seen a deer. At least I think I hadn’t, my glasses were so foggy and rain dropped I probably wouldn’t have seen one if it climbed up the sticks and sat next to me in the Lone Wolf.
The rain let up just after 10, so I broke out the smartphone and got on caltopo. Between the Garmin and the phone, I was able to figure out where I was on this new property, and I picked out a new spot to go. I punched in the coordinates and the Garmin told me it was .6 miles away. I packed up my stand and soaking wet clothes and set off for the new perch thinking about what a terrible idea it was to be hiking around in 70+ degree weather soaking wet on no sleep. As I climbed a sidehill on the way to my new waypoint, I walked across a bench about 1/3 of the way down from the top of the ridge. I started seeing a few good, tall rubs, and one that looked really fresh. I decided to setup on the hot sign. The bench was only about 6ft across with a good incline above it, and a really steep drainage below it. I went down the hill a few feet and setup 5 sticks high, so I was still about 15ft above the bench. Right away, I wasn’t in love with the setup...hill country rookie mistake. I should have setup above the bench, since it was now around 11:30 a.m. Plus, I had just walked across the main part of the funnel above the drainage...that was dumb. With that in mind, I set up my stand facing the unpolluted part of the funnel and prayed for movement from that direction.
I wasn’t in the stand 20 minutes when I heard a stick crack very close to me. I looked over my left should back towards the bench where I had walked across just in time to see a heavy beamed mature buck bolt back up the hill. My wind was blowing that way and I had ground scent over there as well. Two strikes, he’s out of there. “Well, at least there’s one good buck here,” I thought. About 20 minutes later, I look up and see a pretty good buck walking right down the bench closing in on me. I pulled up my range finder to take a better look because it has 5x magnification. I see a good left side with 4 points and long tines, but I couldn’t make out the right. Now I’m thinking “Holy cow, this hunt is going to be over quick!” because it looks like this buck is bigger than anything I have shot in Michigan (100”+) and I’m not super picky at this stage in my hunting career. I stood up and got ready to shoot. Well, as the buck closed the distance, I got a better look at his right side, and it had a brow tine with a big fork, so it was a 7pt. If the right side had matched the left, it would have been a 110-115” 8pt, and my hunt would have been over. It was the first day of the hunt and pretty terrible hunting weather, and I had just seen two pretty good bucks, so I decided to pass this buck and I really, really hoped that I wouldn’t regret that decision later in the weekend. The 7pt ended up coming as close as 10yds before he caught my rising thermal (I should have been on the high side), and busted out of there. 20 minutes later, I look up and see another buck! At this point, I am thinking Ohio is the greatest place on earth, and any minute I’m going to slay the big one, hahaha.
Well, over the course of the next 4 hours, I don’t see another deer, but I do get a crazy rumbling in my guts that culminates in a “code brown” at primetime. I decide with the heat and that area effectively “stacked” by my code brown. I might as well pack it up, and get back after it tomorrow.
My plan heading into day 2 was to setup in the a.m. about 200 yards sooner than I had the day before. I figured any deer coming across that bench above the drainage would end up on a small point I had crossed the day before. This point dropped down into a valley and semi-connected the next ridge over. The wind was supposed to be right in the morning for me to be able to setup on the downwind side of the point just where the sidehill flattened into the top of the point, with my scent blowing safely from where I planned to enter the setup from below.
The next morning, we got a little bit later start as we were all still exhausted from the long drive and lack of sleep the day before. The weather was better at around 52-55 degrees, and I was optimistic after having good midday action the previous day. I departed the ATV at followed my GPS track up the big side hill towards the point I planned to setup on. I got my sticks all set and was just setting my stand as grey light broke. I shut off my headlight as I finished hanging my stand. I climbed down and put on my camo pants and jacket and hooked up my bow to the bow rope. I climbed back into the stand and settled in, jacket unzipped, no hat, and no gloves. I planned to cool down for 5-10 minutes and then put on the rest of my gear. Well right as I am contemplating pulling up my bow, I look up and see a deer coming my way. It’s coming right towards me from the bench trail that goes around the steep drainage I was set up on the day before. When I see the deer, it’s about 55-60yards away and I can already tell it’s a buck.
At this point, I get a little panicked. [glow=red]“Oh crap! My bow is still on the ground!!!”[/glow]I grabbed the bow rope and kept an eye on the buck, when he turned his head the other way, I got the bow off the ground with minimal noise, but he did look in my general direction. I’m thinking he is going to bust me at any minute, or see the bow twirling around at the end of the rope 2 feet off the ground. A flick of the tail later and he is completely oblivious and back on a steady walk. I think I reeled up my bow like the way a starving man on a desert island would reel up his first fish in a month. I mean, I got that bow up in record time! At this point, the buck is probably 45yards away and closing, and I still have to get an arrow out, nocked, drawn back and aimed. I’m thinking [glow=red]“this is a disaster, this is never going to happen.”[/glow]Somehow, I manage to get an arrow out of the quiver and knocked. At this point, I still don’t even know if this is the 7pt from the day before, and if I even want to shoot this buck, and my bow rope is still tied around my riser. I fumbled with the rope for a second and decide that is a lost cause and I have to shoot with the rope still on if I am going to shoot at all. The buck is 35 yards away and still walking. Any minute he will be broadside at 25ish yards. Right around that time, [glow=red]I try and flip up my QAD rest into the locked position. It won’t stay up, or I am now fully panicked and I’m not flipping it far enough, but something isn’t going right!!![/glow]I look down to make sure the cord that runs from the rest to the cable is still attached, and it is. I decide that I have to draw RIGHT NOW, and hope that the rest comes up the way it is supposed to. I draw back and almost flop the arrow off the rest, but manage to get it in the prong. It’s at this point, full draw, that I see this buck has a G4 on the left main beam and I know for a fact that the 7pt from the day before did not, because I got a very good look at him the day before. At this point, I think “SHOOTER!!!” The buck is at 30 yards, and I have a 2ft wide window to shoot through at what I guess to be 25 yards (I never did have time to get my range finder out). A second later and he steps into the shooting lane and I simultaneously let out a “meeaaaahhhh.” The buck stops textbook, broadside in the lane. I aim for the heart in case he jumps the string, and in a split second, I let it rip. I see the nockturnal bury and then come out the other side, and the theme of the next 48 hours is born [glow=red]“I can’t believe that just happened.”[/glow] I must have said it 150 times over the next two days, hahaha. The buck took two big bounds, and I lost him in a thick tangle just off the side of the point. From the time I first spotted the buck to the time I shot had to be less than 60 seconds. Everything happened very fast.
At this point, I have no idea how big the buck is. I text my hunting party and tell them I just shot a buck. We are a whole 20 minutes into the morning sit. It’s about 5 minutes after sunrise and 35 minutes after dawn. That’s when I hear the weirdest noise I’ve ever heard in the woods. It sounded to me how I’ve heard people describe a black bear death groan, a big “wwwoooofffff”. Then I hear what I think is the deer still walking, and now I’m not excited at all...that’s not the sound a deer on a death run makes is it??? I’m not sure. I text my buddies and tell them I’m going to give it two hours before I get down and check the arrow. Then I hear the woooofffff noise again a little farther off, and I think I hear more deer walking, WTF?!?!
After a long two hours, I climbed down and crept over to the arrow. There was decent blood all the way up the shaft, and it smelled clean. I followed the kicked up leaves for about 15 yards to where the buck jumped over a deadfall into the thick stuff. I found a pencil sized blood drop on the deadfall and started slowly down the track. The blood was spotty at first, but about 30 yards past the dead fall, I found a very large area of blood that looked like a bed. I followed heavy blood from the bed for another 40-50 yards to another spot where it looked like the deer crashed. There is blood everywhere, and now I know he is in big trouble. He cut up the hill for about 10 yards, and then turned abruptly downhill. About 30 yards later and I find another big blood bed, except this one looks like a well worn hill country bed (see pic)
and now I’m thinking, this tough . has to be around here somewhere. I lookup to start following the blood trail and I see him laying stone cold about 20 yards away. That’s the first time I get a real good look at the rack, and man, this flatlander is through the roof!!! I know right away this is way bigger than any buck I’ve shot in Michigan. I get over to it, and it’s a main frame 10pt with 5 or 6 stickers/splits off the brow tines (two of which I later measure at 1”+). I say to myself “I don’t believe it” about 53 times, as I’m marking the location on the GPS and texting everyone I know in my deer hunting universe. When I grabbed the buck to roll it over to check out the shot, out came a big “woooooffff” from the cavity. Apparently, the hole in the diaphragm was in a such a way that when the deer hit the ground those two times (where I found the big blood spots/beds) it must have let air escape in a way that made the “woooofffff” sounds. That’s a first for me.And that’s it, as quick as it began, my Ohio hunt was over. 15-20 minutes into morning number two and I was done. I couldn’t believe it, and I still can’t. The buck green gross scored 139 ½” which is about 38” bigger than my previous best. I want to thank the BEAST, because without the hill country DVD and all the hill hunters on this site, I would have had NO IDEA where to set up. I attribute 95% of the success on this hunt directly to the BEAST and all the great members that make this the best hunting forum/community on the internet. Thanks to all who contribute!
Pics, because everyone just wants to see the pics!!!
Heart shot. How I ever pulled this off with all the stuff that almost went wrong is a legitimate miracle
