KY Hunt Recap

B

Bowfreak

New member
Aug 4, 2017
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My favorite farm to hunt close to home is not very productive this year. There are a couple of reasons as to why I feel that is the case but the main thing to take from that is that I am not seeing deer like normal there and I don\'t even want to be tempted to shoot a doe there as I feel that there are not that many resident deer. So....I was looking for a time to get away to one of my other good spots. I would plan to stay a few nights in a camper on the property. I would be hunting in the mornings and evenings and scouting and hanging stands during the day in new areas/properties.

This farm is owned by one of my good friends and it is about 1.5 drive from my house in KY. It is a nice area that holds lots of deer and normally his farm produces some big bucks come late November. I love to hunt there as it is a zone 1 county, which in KY means you can shoot unlimited does (you have to keep buying doe tags). :p My plan going in to this hunt was to shoot any adult female deer and or any decent buck that I might see. I have passed a lot of bucks the past couple of years and ended up eating tags. Given that I just dabble in trophy hunting it doesn\'t take me a whole lot to go back into kill mode. My favorite farm to hunt close to home is not very productive this year. There are a couple of reasons as to why I feel that is the case but the main thing to take from that is that I am not seeing deer like normal there and I don\'t even want to be tempted to shoot a doe there as I feel that there are not that many resident deer. I am ready to punch a tag on a deer to eat. Couple this with the fact that I will continue to concentrate most of my bowhunting efforts on getting my daughter a shot at a deer this year and I have very limited time to bowhunt moving forward.....I am not going to be picky.
 
November 6, 2015

Like every other Friday I took my kids to school and dropped them off. I enjoy doing this and try to let this be our time so it was important for me to be able to drop my kids off at school. After dropping the kids off I head home and start packing my stuff. I am soon on my way to my friends farm. The plan is to arrive early, gain permission to hunt the neighboring property and hang a new stand. Once the stand is in place I can change clothes and head to another existing stand I have to hunt what should be an acceptable wind.

Just as I had hoped I gained permission from the neighbor with the caveat that I must shoot every deer I see (I knew he would say that). I soon found myself finishing up on a new stand. This was pretty much a surveillance stand as it was in a location where I would be able to see plenty of deer. I would not be surprised for it to provide a shot but my thought was this will provide me a location to check out deer movement and then hone in on them with a more precise setup.

After getting back to camp and changing clothes I am heading to my stand at around 3pm. The stand I am hunting has been very good in the past and I am not sure I have ever set it without seeing deer. Sometimes they are 300 yards away but I always see deer.



This is the location of the stand. I would be hunting it on a west wind which is an ok wind to hunt. As long as I don\'t have an east wind it is acceptable but the perfect wind is out of the south. Typical deer movement is going to come from the west where most deer bed but deer can and do show up from pretty much anywhere.



Here is a picture of the stand. The wind will be blowing from the stand to the camera.
 
Soon I am strapped into my stand and I have to spend some time clipping small twigs from this Shingle Oak where I have the stand situated. It is a great tree that always provides good cover as it seems to keep leaves on longer than pretty much every other tree for some reason. I leave this ladder stand up year round and check it to make sure it is safe every year. I change the strap when needed but this is the first time I have been in it since last fall, hence the reason for clipping the branches.

The evening proved to be very slow until about sunset when I heard a deer run into the woodlot to the SE. I listened and watched for a few minutes as many time I will see them or hear them working their way to me. This deer seemed to not be moving or at a minimum I could not hear him. I decided to give about 3 or 4 short grunts. Within a few minutes I see a buck step out into the pasture to the east of me. I can tell he is coming to the grunts and even though he is not very big I had already decided to shoot. He made his way directly downwind of me and was 40 yards and broadside. I was actually using my scent puffer as I was shocked that the deer was not spooked but seemed to be confused. I can only attribute this to the Nose Jammer I had sprayed on the tree. I have only recently started trying this stuff as I am of the belief that you can\'t beat a deer\'s nose when you are upwind. This stuff seemed to really help/work as this buck was not leaving. He did however start walking slightly quartered away from me. I came to full draw and settled my 40 yard pin a little high on his chest. I suspect the deer is now 43-44 yards, which is a long shot for me, but I had confidence I could make the shot. I continued to look at the spot I wanted to hit when my release fired and even though I could not see my arrow, I knew I hit the deer based on the sound and his reaction. The deer peeled off to the north and made it about 100 yards to a brushy ditch that converged with the small patch of woods running to the NE of my stand. I was fairly confident that I saw him go down. I waited til dark and got down to check my arrow. It was covered in blood that was dark red and somewhat watery. I was fairly confident it was a liver hit. I backed out to give the deer time.
 
This is the point where I acted like I had never bowhunted before. I returned an hour so later with my friend to start tracking. I had marked the spot of the shot with my arrow and started making my way toward the direction the deer went. I had marked the spot where he went down and because of the difficult tracking in the field I started just slowly moving toward the spot where I saw the buck go down. I was scanning for blood but not really looking hard. After making it maybe 35 yards from the arrow I see eyes right in the spot where I saw the buck go down. At this point I should have backed out but knowing that there are a ton of deer in this location and a ton of coyotes I thought that this could be another deer and that I needed to be somewhat aggressive in recovering him. It proved to be a mistake. After moving a little closer, the deer slowly started moving off. At this point I knew I had screwed up as it was obvious this deer wasn\'t feeling well and that this was definitely the deer I thought I just killed. We knew at this point we had no other choice than to leave the deer til morning.

Here is a picture I snapped the next morning from the location of the shot. You can see how well the tree hides me and how I was able to draw and shoot on a deer looking toward me from a wide open pasture:



More to come soon....I have to do some work and my workout.
 
November 7, 2015

All things considered I actually slept quite well the night before. I woke up around 6:30 and once the sun had risen to the point of offering good daylight we headed back to the track. This morning my friend\'s 10 year old son joined us. He was beyond excited and I don\'t remember him going 5 seconds without talking. It was actually very entertaining and refreshing to see someone so young be as excited about bowhunting as I am.

Soon we parked the Ranger and was at the spot where the deer had eased off last night. We picked up the blood where he exited the woods and tracked the deer through a small field. As you all know it was not an easy track job getting across this field as the blood was sparse and it is always difficult when you don\'t have leaves and or brush to provide a nice backdrop for finding blood. Once we made it to the woods again we slowly started moving through the woods following the trail. I was still telling myself that this looks just like a liver hit but I was becoming somewhat skeptical. After only about 50 yards through the woods a noise catches my attention and I look up to see my buck struggling to get to his feet. He was at the edge of death but still alive somehow. He managed to get to his feet and only made it a short distance before bedding again. The thoughts that crossed my mind were both disbelief and sickness but I quickly put them out of my mind as I went into autopilot shedding my pack and removing my bow which was strapped to the back. Once I had my bow and release I immediately started moving in on the deer for a finishing shot. This is the first time in my life I have ever had to do this so it was actually extremely weird to me.

Because of the terrain I needed to get to about 20 yards before I could shoot and I quickly got to that distance but had to situate myself in a manner to shoot a hard quartering away shot at a bedded deer. I was tightening up the string when the buck made one last move. He got to his feet and then barreled down about an 8\' vertical slide to the creek. As I approached the creek back I was ready to shoot. Moving toward the creek bank was just like approaching a sheer rock cliff with an animal bedded below. Once I made it to the edge I see the deer broadside at the edge of the creek. Immediately I am at full draw and soon the release was traveling back to my shoulder as I see the water behind the deer turn to blood. It was over but it was not. The deer rolled into the creek and was in danger of being swept away. I quickly dropped my bow and pack and slid down the bank like a beaver. I was able to grab the buck by his back leg before he was washed away.

I pulled him onto the bank and clawed my way back to the top. Before I climbed out of this hole completely I snapped a pic of the buck and the chute that he and I both came down.



Here is where the buck was laying when I shot. He was broadside laying along the edge of the water right in front of the branches in the water.



This creek bank doesn\'t look bad in the picture but it took me close to 10 minutes of clawing, falling and crawling to get out. It was like trying to walk on ice as the mud was beyond belief slick.

 
I was relieved that I had recovered the deer but like any hunter I was not at all happy about making a poor shot and causing an animal to suffer. Making quick, clean ethical kills is what we all strive for but as you guys know it doesn\'t always happen. Normally where I hunt it is fairly easy to recover a deer. On this farm the recoveries are normally easy. It is rare that you would have to drag an animal even 100 yards as most of it is accessible by truck or ATV. When I was 25 I would have gutted that buck at the creek and thrown it over my back and wrestled it up that creek bank. Now at 44 I try to work smarter. Given that my Ranger has a winch, I planned to extract the buck with the Ranger and winch combo. The trick was getting the ranger down there. There used to be a road to access this area but there are so many sinkholes on it now that it is impassable. After a quick scouting mission we were able to pick a decent spot straight down the hill to the creek. The only issue is it was going to require a little trailblazing to make it work.

After a quick hike out to the Ranger and a trip to my friends barn, we had the tools we needed to get finish our job. We had picked up a chainsaw, a shovel and a gambrel. The chainsaw would be used to clear our path. I planned to use the shovel to cut steps into the creek bank so that I could get back down to hook up the deer to the winch. The gambrel was going to be used too hook as a way to connect the winch cable to the deer as we planned to haul him up rear end first.

Here is my friend Kipp clearing a path to the creek:



Here is my point of view as I shovel my way down to the buck:



Here is a neat shot of the whole layout as I am making my way down to the buck.



Once I made my way down to the buck I quickly slit the back legs and had the gambrel in place. I attached the winch cable and we hauled this buck out like a charm.

Here is a shot just before the buck made it over the lip of the creek bank. You don\'t have to look too closely to see the evidence of my poor shot.

 
Before loading up the deer into the Ranger for the haul out, I snapped a few hero photos. You can see that the buck was soaked from his creek bath.





Once I gutted the buck I found that I had actually severed a chunk of the liver off that was nearly the size of my fist. I have probably made 4 liver hits where I didn\'t get any lung in my life including this one. This was the first deer that survived more than 1 hour. It just goes to show you that with bowhunting or hunting in general you never know. You simply can\'t underestimate the will to survive in some animals.

Here is a picture of Kipp\'s son Brody and I backing up to the buck to load him up. Yes....Brody was still talking and was really focusing on the fact that I offered him the buck\'s package for his to keep. :upthumb:



Here is a picture of the buck loaded and ready for the trip out. I think Brody is still talking about me offering him the buck\'s package here too.



Finally.....we get to what has grown into my favorite part of hunting and that is the meat. I love to bowhunt and originally started because of the thrill of the hunt but the older I get and the more my family enjoys wild game it has mostly become about the meat. Honestly....there is nothing more enjoyable than butchering a deer with my 2 daughters. They are so inquisitive and love to help that it is actually one of the funnest parts of the hunt. My 7 year old was packing quarters to the basement refrigerator in her soccer uniform and cleats. Lol!!!

 
Hopefully this thread provides a little entertainment to you western guys who may be out of tags. I also hope that it serves as a reminder to all of us that sometimes we make stupid mistakes. Sometimes we make poor shots and sometimes things go south but with perseverance and determination many times we can make our own luck. I have been bowhunting exclusively since 1988 and sometimes I think I haven\'t learned anything as I will make mistakes that I did 25 years ago. While my mistakes have been greatly minimized over the years, this is a perfect reminder as to the fact that we never stop screwing up and hopefully we never stop learning while we are playing this game we all love.
 
Thanks for sharing your story. I hope someone can learn from it. It sounds like you did everything right. I have made liver shots that had the deer down in 40 yards and some where I tracked it a mile and no recovery. I have started shooting above the front leg instead of behind it and that seems to help.
 
\"bowhunter\" said:
Thanks for sharing your story. I hope someone can learn from it. It sounds like you did everything right. I have made liver shots that had the deer down in 40 yards and some where I tracked it a mile and no recovery. I have started shooting above the front leg instead of behind it and that seems to help.
Click to expand...

I agree. A trip to Africa and hunting with a good friend in Wyoming for antelope taught me to shoot straight up the leg too. My friend was a big proponent of that and I am a believer too now. This was just a crappy shot.
 
Congrats Mark. I\'m glad you had a good outcome.

I know what you and Terry are taking about on the liver hits. It still amazes how some times they go down fast and others they go a long ways.
 
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