ND Early Season Buck

[Prairie Sasquatch]

This turned out to be one of my shortest ND seasons ever. I spent a lot of time spring scouting some new public ground and made a plan this summer how I wanted to hunt different parts of the season. Where I hunt the landscape is a mix of crop, pasture, wetlands, and a few shelterbelts and farmsteads with trees.

The early part of the season I decided to concentrate on scouting areas with large cattail marshes as this seems to provide the cover bucks need to survive. I find bucks in other areas but they never seem to get any age. I spent a lot of time glassing four or five large wetland areas and found three bucks I was interested in hunting.

I had also made up my mind that I wasn’t hunting unless I had good intel from cameras and glassing that one of these bucks was using the area. I didn’t hunt the first two days of season. I just sat on my spotting scope for three hours each morning and evening and glassed. Saturday night I saw two of the bucks in the bachelor group who were running with a target buck. They went into an area with a wetland that had one single tree in it I could hunt. It was a small wetland maybe 60 yards wide and 100 yards long which connected to another larger wetland. I needed a strong wind from the south to hunt it. I glassed again on Sunday morning and noticed some other bucks going to this wetland.

The afternoon weather called for southeast wind at 25 mph which was perfect. Plenty of noise to get in tight. I snuck in at 4:30 and finally got fully set up at 5:30. At 5:45 a doe stood up at 40 yards and started browsing. At 6:00 a 4x4 in velvet started feeding at 80 yards then two more small bucks came out to feed with the 4x4. 15 minutes later another buck stood up and then two 5x5 shooters walked over from the larger wetland. At this point I had 6 bucks from 60-80 yards.

They all fed for awhile and then bedded back down. Eventually the two little bucks got up and went to the larger wetland. At 7:00 I noticed tines in the cattails and could see it was one of the 5x5’s. He eventually came out and browsed around for almost 45 minutes. He was at 50 yards twice but it was so windy and the tree was shaking. I figured I still had lots of time and the other buck still wasn’t on his feet yet.

After watching him for nearly an hour he started moving down the trail towards my tree and stopped broadside at 32 yards. The shot looked perfect and he mule kicked and tore out into the cattails. I heard some rustling but then it stopped not long after the shot.

I watched for about 30 minutes and then started taking my platform and sticks down. I found the arrow and it was covered with blood and full of bubbles. I took up the track which was easy to follow and found him piled up 40 yards from the shot.

He’s a real solid deer and might be my biggest archery. Overall it was a great hunt. I always enjoy the hunt when the planning and strategy comes together. I especially like it when you put one right in the pocket. Tracking rodeos are never fun.

[Lockdown]

Great deer and great story! Congrats!

[WV Bowhunter]

That’s a dandy, congrats!!

[Edcyclopedia]

Congrats Cowboy!

[upwind predator]

Congrats Prairie heck of a buck

[backstraps]

Awesome job! Congratulations

[Ghost Hunter]

We got 19 days to go down here.

Hunting Beast is off to good start. Congratulations everyone!

[UncleBuck3268]

Congratulations Prairie! Great buck!

[Lowcountry]

Awesome congrats!

[seazofcheeze]

Congrats!!!

[greenhorndave]

That

Is

Awesome!

Congrats and great job putting the puzzle pieces together!

[Dpoole90]

Great story, awesome buck!

[Findian]

Congrats on the nice buck.

[Wihunter95]

Congrats. Nice shot!

[Putt400]

Great spin up to the actual hunt…Congratulations!