I finally got my pics scanned and uploaded.

2005 bow deer

It was worth missing a day of work to get that one.

quote:

It was worth missing a day of work to get that one

I think they all fit that category

cool buck!

Well, that's an excellent, excellent, outstanding deer you got there.

....but i interpreted your name wrong....

i was expecting to see some poor slob with a huge ass.

congrats, on the big deer.... and the apparently normal ass, LOL.

Penny

Truely a magnificent animal!!! LOVE those freakie racks!
Congrats!

hoooo boy, great deer. Looks like your name and your deer are going into the record books!!!! Congratulations!!!! Where were you hunting etc. How far the shot?

the chef

Well done

That is really something.



Correct me if I am wrong, the palmated beam is more than rare, isnt it?

Congratulations on a magnificient animal taken.

Hughj,

That's truly an awesome buck. Any idea of his age?

The Story:

It was a morining hunt. After daylight savings time there is no chance to hunt after work. I had about an hour in the morning from the beginning of shooting hours till I had to leave. I would like to hunt longer but can only do so on weekends. I need a northwest or west wind for my treestand. My treestand is on my own property. I only own 15 acres, an former homestead but it is ringed with tree belts on all sides, with the north and west ones being especially thick and tangled. My stand is in the west belt. This particular morning the wind was blowing about 30 mph. I couldn't hear much. There was one time I thought I heard something behind me and to my left that sounded like antlers crashing, but it may have just been branches falling. After I had been there about a half hour, I heard something behind me over the noise of the wind. I turned and there was a buck 15-20 yards away. He was downwind of me and had either caught a whiff of my scent or he had smelled my tracks from when I walked in. He was behaving just like a very small buck had earlier in the year. He was craning his neck around trying to get a better idea of what he smelled. I could see that he was big enough for me, so I slowly turned around in my stand and drew my bow. He was shielded from the shot by a large weed, so I had to wait. After a while he took another step forward. I still didn't have a completely clear shot, but I was getting tired and I didn't think I would get a better one, so I released. This turned out to be a mistake, but lesson learned. At the shot he took off and quickly was out of view. My impression was that it was a good shot. I got down and found my arrow sticking in the ground. I took it as a bad sign that there was only a little smear of blood on the plastic vane. I followed his path a little ways and found very good blood after a short ways. I figured it was a good hit and he wouldn't make it too far. I followed the trail about 60 yards and it stopped. It took my about 5 minutes to figure out that he had stopped, then backtracked and cut into the trees. I then took the trail across the trees to a harvested soybean field, and started into the field. I expected to see him lying dead in the field. Instead, I saw him walking about 400 yards out. I put my binocs on him and could see entrails hanging nearly to the ground just behind the front legs. I suppose my arrow may have been deflected slightly causing the arrow to hit low and to far back. Or I could have just made a poor shot. The exit of the arrow sliced open the belly enough to allow stuff to come out.

At that point, I knew I had more of a problem than I thought, so I went to the house and called my boss to tell him I would be late, and called my cousin to get permission to follow the deer onto the neighbors land. My cousin, and my uncle and another guy, who had seen the buck before and had been hunting for it, all came to help track it. By the time we started it had been about an hour. I figured he would be dead with the amount of blood he was leaving. The area he went into was a large field that had a thick tree belt on the south side with a gravel road just south of it. There were four single-row tree rows spaced about 200 yds apart that ran east west, I had last seen him entering the second from the south row. My uncle and I drove to the end of that row, and then worked toward where I had last seen him looking for blood. We found the trail and it crossed the row of trees and went into a patch of sorghum. From there we followed the trail as fast as you could walk, through the next row of trees and then west. The bood trail was heavy enough on the sorghum that it got on our clothes. My cousin was on the west end of the tree rows, in case the deer went that way. The other guy, Mark, was on the west end of the thick tree row. My uncle and I were following the deer west and north and were just about up to the last tree row when we heard him get up and saw him run north and back east. He was only about 10 yard away when he got up. I wasn't sure it was the same deer because this one was moving pretty good, so I was looking at the blood trail trying to figure it out. My uncle was trying to get my attention because the deer was standing about 45 yards away all humped up. I couldn't see him. Then we watched him run aways and then walk back to the east and south. We following him back through the sorghum and across the harvested soybeans to the south row of thicker trees. We then followed him down the row of trees to the west and then he crossed the road. We decided to let him go for awhile. He seemed to be in tough shape, we thought he would die. So we all went to town and had breakfast on me.

Continued...........

Continued:

After an hour and 45 min. we came back. The trail was difficult to follow now because the blood was dried and black on bare dirt. We figured he went to a cattail slough but he wasn't heading for it. The trail went along beside the slough then we cut over into it. Thinking about it now, he went on that path so that he could lay down downwind of his trail and smell us when we were coming. The cattails were about 5 feet high and the wind was still howling. My cousin and Mark stayed on the road so they could see. They saw the buck jump up about 30 yards from us, but we never knew it because we couldn't hear him. Then we watched him run south and east as we walked back to the vehicles. Then he cut west and headed toward a corn field. He walked along the cornfield to the northwest corner of it then he went behind the hill. We thought he went into the corn, but there also was a row of trees going west, so we weren't sure. We drove around the section to the south side and glassed the trees. We couldn't see him. We decided to go up and look to see where he had gone, but first we were going to post me on the end of the row of trees in case we spooked him. As we drove around, my cousin saw him. He had already gone down the row of trees and was ¾ of a mile west of where we had last seen him. I would guess it took him 20 minutes to go that far. He now was in a low area with a catail slough in the low spot with a row of trees along the east side and an arm of trees coming east. I go in the trees that led east, Mark got in the trees that lead south, my uncle parked where he could watch. After a bit, Mark showed up by me, and told me to go west to where the tree rows joined. The buck was still north of us at that time. I waited at that spot for about an hour. The catail slough was west of me to my left and a row of trees came toward me. Mark and my cousin were trying to trail him. The train was pin drops through the pasture. One doe came by me, saw me and ran back. At one time another doe came running toward me I saw her out of the corner of my eye. That really got my heart going, I thought it was him. After a while, I heard my cousin and Mark talking. I went till I could see them, a walked up to them They had been trailing him down the row of trees straight towards me, when mark had seen him ahead of them. My cousin ran up the west side of the trees, but the deer was faster and crossed into the catail slough. Mark took a shot at him, and then my cousin did, and he heard a whack. He was in the cattails, so they didn't have a good target, just trying to get more arrows in him. My cousin found a bunch of entrails on his arrow. Mark and I then followed the blood trail into the slough. We quickly lost it when the deer went across an open patch of water. Mark told me there was a slightly higher point that cut into the middle of the slough. The slough was in a very rough horseshoe shape. He figured the deer was bedded on the slightly higher ground but still in the cattails. We cut northwest the keep the deer to our south and slowly worked south till I found the blood trail coming in from the open water. Until I found the blood again, I was thinking we may have lost the deer forever. It was very cold wading in the water in November. I got on the trail and Mark stayed behind a little ways watching. My cousin had moved down to the South end of the slough by the road. After going down the trail about 20 yards, I heard the deer going through the rushes. I could see the rushes moving but I never saw the deer. We continued, and I got the deer up again. This time I saw it about enough time to draw my bow, but it was gone before I could shoot. Again we followed the trail. We were now coming down the side of the horseshoe. There was open water 5 yards to my right, open pasture 20 yards to my left, and the end of the slough 20 yards ahead. We had him boxed up. As I worked down the trail, I saw a opening in the rushes to my left. I could see deer hair in there. I slowly got to where I could see the whole deer. His head was up, then he moved. I didn't waste time drawing my bow and shooting him again. My cousin thought I was screwing around, he didn't think I would have got to within 5 feet of the deer. The deer stood up, and then fell over again. Not taking any chances, I put a third arrow in him. I still took him a couple minutes to expire. The deer was spent by the time we caught up to him. At this point, we were over two miles from where I first hit him, and it was roughly 3:30 about 8 hours after I first hit him. Part of the reason we pushed so hard was because I knew I would miss a day of work, and I would not be able to go look for the deer till the weekend, three days later. My wife was very mad at my, as I work for her dad. She got over it though. This is the biggest buck taken this year that I know of in our county, rifle season included. I am sure there are others bigger, however. It was a very fun day, and quite a learning experience

Ann, people who looked at his teeth estimated he was 3-1/2 years old. This was the first year anybody saw him. Mark had him on video and was activlely hunting him. Farmers saw him while working in the fields, so the story was there was a big one around, but I never saw him. Mark had patterned him and named him "Mr. Moose" becuase of the palmated horns. The deer actually walked under Mark's stand during the chase. I figure that this deer is a half-brother to the one I got last year. Those two, as well as another a rifle hunter got, all have the typical left, nontypcal right racks. Nobody has seen the daddy buck. Unless one of these was it. My deer last year was also 3-1/2.

Great buck & story !! Congrats