PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

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Wetfoot
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby Wetfoot » Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:18 am

PredatorTC wrote:This is a deer that I’ve known about for three years that I believe is 5. As a three year old, he was on camera, but I didn’t pay much attention and didn’t know what he was doing. Last year he was around and I still could not figure him out. He would be in many different crop fields in many different areas miles apart. I would get pics of him on public and private and just all over the place. I’ve learned that the bucks that do this and have a huge home range are tough to hunt and I try not to waste my time on them. Then he showed up this year in mid October and boy did he look nice. At the beginning of the year, I told myself that I needed to top my biggest bow buck and I figured he would. It’s been a long grueling season, but I kept reminding myself that if I’m going to hunt these big deer that I’m simply going to see less. It’s just a whole different game from hunting 2 and 3 year olds.
Once I got photos of him this year I started to really get aggressive and shift the cameras around to see if there was any pattern that I could make sense of. I started thinking about where I got all the photos of him and the whole spokes on a wheel theory. The further from bedding you get, the greater the range is that he would be showing up within. This told me that I was far from bedding. I just kept pushing cameras back into the direction that he was coming from and it clicked. I realized that he wasn’t bedding where most deer where. He was bedding in thick nasty crap over a mile from any road. SO, two weeks ago, I got up at 3:30 with the Kayak and went through for a little less than a mile and then walked another few hundred yards through and sat a morning sit on the back side of bedding with wet feet. He was a no show, but the sign confirmed my suspicions. Mature buck bedding tracks and rubs. A few days later I came in from another direction for another morning sit and nothing. I checked the camera that day and he headed into bedding an hour before I ever got there. I sat that night and saw a few does.
So then Monday the 6th came along. I checked my cameras (I check them a lot in non-intrusive areas to keep tabs on what’s going on) and he was on it Sunday night in the crop field 45 min after dark coming from the direction of the same bedding area that I was continually suspicious about. So yesterday at 1:45, I threw my stand and sticks on my back and strapped a trail camera around my waste. The plan was to scout my way in and see if I could figure out how he was moving through on my way. I would then throw up a camera to continue the process of trying to figure him out over the next few weeks and then pound him in the cattails with the shotgun opening weekend. It was about a mile and a half walk straight shot from the road, but I looped through a few different swamp contours to read the sign and it probably ended up being a two mile walk. I didn’t see any sign in these other places the caught my interest so I headed back further. The nice thing about where I was headed was that there were not many deer in this area so it really made the sign easier to read. I got as tight up to bedding as I could without limiting my available shooting. There was a small sliver of hardwoods and there was 50/50 chance that anything coming out of bedding may cut through. As soon as I got setup around 3pm I heard one coming. Out came a 125 class ten and a doe. He had my heart ticking as he rubbed a tree ten yards below my stand for 3 minutes. I had to remind myself that although it would be fun to shoot him, I had a goal and needed to stick to it unlike in years past. This was the biggest buck I’ve seen from the tree in over a month. They headed off into the swamp and all was hush hush for a bit. At one point, something in the hardwoods 150 yards away caught my attention. It was him! This was the first time ever laying eyes on this rack. He actually came from a different bed but same bedding area. I grabbed my grunt call and was screaming at him with it and he would have nothing to do with it. I was desperate, but knew he was the king of the swamp so I made a snortweeze with my mouth. It did nothing, so I did it again and he stopped. He was either interested or terrified so I made one more snortweeze with my mouth and he turned to come to PAPA… the whitetail whisperer. haha! Never in a million years did I think you could call a deer in with your mouth but it was really cooll! As soon as he headed my way I threw my camera around the back of the tree, zoomed all the way out and hit record. He was probably inches from getting my wind. He stopped and 30 yards and lip curd LIKE A BOSS. Problem was that halfway from me to him, there were two branches the size of a pencil that ran horizontally. One was as the top of his back and one just under his belly. I was at full draw on him like this for around a minute and I started thinking.. if I let down, he may pick me off and game over… If I keep waiting, fatigue is going to set in and I’m going to take and make a horrible shot. If my arrow would fly perfectly straight, I knew that I could thread it between the branches, but I know that when my arrow comes out of the bow it rises a little before it drops. Being full draw with your adrenaline roaring these thoughts ran through my head crystal clear. I decided that all of those options sucked, so I crunched my knees so that the bottom twig was a little higher up which would give my arrow a few inches to arc and rise. Maybe I over thought it, but it worked and hit where I was aiming maybe an inch higher than I would have liked. He ran 30 yards and looked like he was going to tip, as I was grabbing another arrow he took off another 90ish yards and I saw him go down. I could see his chin and one antler on the ground through my binocs. I stared and it for what seemed like minutes and suddenly is disappeared. I thought maybe he just rolled over.
So I waited a bit, pulled my stand down, grabbed my trail camera that I no longer needed to setup, and headed for my 1.5 mile back to the car. We replayed the video a bunch and everything looked good, except for the fact that my arrow had horrible penetration. We waited two hours and headed into the swamp with my dad, brother, and a sled. Blood was super hard to find. One hole in the deer and it was high up. We made it to where he crashed and he was not there. I felt sick. We took the blood another 80 yards and the buck dipped down into the thick and nasty. At this point I put it in my head that I would probably not get him. 20 yards into the thick and nasty and there he was, upside down below a tamarack, in the cattails, and marsh grass. I was speechless. My oldest buck… I beat the master at his own game. A long while later and we finally got him out.. it was a sun of a gun

I just have to say.. To kill these holder deer, you really do sometimes have to think a little different. They just don't do what all the other deer are doing. Its different game and takes a different kind of mental patience. When I was young I wanted the first good buck that came by and I always wanted to impress everyone. The desire to impress others in a weakness. It leads to shortcuts, failure and a lack of good woodsman-ship.

Bighunt should be posting photos up when he gets the chance. Thank you Bighunt!

Congratulations Joe, awesome buck and great write-up. 8-)


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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby bkraus » Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:20 am

8-)
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby mathews418 » Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:20 am

Congrats man!!! Many of us would mtn have the resolve to stick to the game plan!!!
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby Buckshot20 » Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:22 am

Awesome, stud of a deer. Congrats man. Way to put the pieces together
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby Jhand » Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:48 am

Awesome deer and great story. Can't wait to see the video of it all.
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Net Guy
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby Net Guy » Wed Nov 08, 2017 7:11 am

Wow! Nice buck :clap:
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Lockdown
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby Lockdown » Wed Nov 08, 2017 7:16 am

Stud! Congrats Joe!
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby matt1336 » Wed Nov 08, 2017 7:36 am

Awesome deer. Post the score if you get him scored. Not that I really care about that....but with big deer, the pics don’t do them the justice they deserve often times. Or post the spread, tine length...thst kinda stuff. When you get time of course. Congratulations Joe!
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PredatorTC
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby PredatorTC » Wed Nov 08, 2017 8:50 am

matt1336 wrote:Awesome deer. Post the score if you get him scored. Not that I really care about that....but with big deer, the pics don’t do them the justice they deserve often times. Or post the spread, tine length...thst kinda stuff. When you get time of course. Congratulations Joe!



Will do, I dont think he will score super well because of the short brows and short g4 on the one side. Nice long beams though. I hope to break my 148" record.
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby mag1 » Wed Nov 08, 2017 8:57 am

Awesome story and deer. Thanks for showing.
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby matt1336 » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:02 am

PredatorTC wrote:
matt1336 wrote:Awesome deer. Post the score if you get him scored. Not that I really care about that....but with big deer, the pics don’t do them the justice they deserve often times. Or post the spread, tine length...thst kinda stuff. When you get time of course. Congratulations Joe!



Will do, I dont think he will score super well because of the short brows and short g4 on the one side. Nice long beams though. I hope to break my 148" record.




IMO you’ll have no problem doing that. Remember, nets are for fishing not deer hunting.
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby WV Bowhunter » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:07 am

Congrats, that’s a real nice one
Luck is when preparation meets opportunity!!
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby Dewey » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:09 am

Joe you seem to have the bucks you kill patterned extremely well. What would you say is your number one method to doing this year after year? (Cameras, glassing, observation stands, shining) or maybe all of the above.

I’m very impressed how efficient you are with this. What you do year after year is something special. Every single buck I ever killed was the first time I ever laid eyes on him.
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby tgreeno » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:22 am

Congrats...great Buck!
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Re: PredatorTC Public Land Self Film.. Biggest buck to date!

Unread postby <DK> » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:32 am

Great deer TC! :clap: :dance:


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