After seeing Troy arrow his 9 pointer with his Traditional gear, I knew that bustin' a doe just wasn't gonna hold up!!!
SO I've been watching a 3 point piebald for about a month now and has been very regular but I'd love to see him next year so he's gotten a free pass (even with the TRAD bow)
Finally a new player comes into the game about 3 weeks ago and was not regular at all on the trail cam, some mornings, some evenings, some late nights and even some mid-days. Finally after Christmas and the heavy snow he's been regular and the past 2 nights he's been in just after 5 with a little day light to spare.
Phil steps up to the plate to video and 5:00pm comes and goes and while I've been a nervous wreck for the past 60 mins, he's like told ya he wasn't coming, let's go.......
About 2 minutes later Phil says "here he comes!", and he's with the piebald 3. After a few minutes of checking out the blind and making sure everythings okay they finally commit and in they come. It felt like hours going by as I waited (nervously shaking) for him to give me THE shot.....THE shot never came but I felt like I was able to make the shot (seeing as how earlier in the day I put 9 arrows inside a grapefruit at 10 yards and he's only at 8).
Well not only was the shot not good it was horrible, HIGH AND WAY BACK.......so we just got out of there, got home and reviewed the footage.....Jeff and CJ came over on their way home from hunting as well and reviewed the footage. No one really felt any sort of good feelings so the plan was to come back in the am.
Well 1030pm rolls around and Jeff says it's supposed to rain/snow in the am, we;d better go now....so he and I head out at 1100pm and after 330yards, and very little blood I walk to within 10 yards of him and off he goes...WTF.....
We inspect the little blood that had pooled up where he'd bedded down and it was dark brownish and stunk like urine.....I'd heard him stumbling for what seemed like 50-75yards and thought he'd went down again so we headed back home and would head out midday today....
Well all morning my stomach was churning so I had to go out myself. I went to where we'd jumped him and head where I saw him run....with an inch of snow on the ground I knew that had we not gone out last night, he would have died right there and that was the last place Jeff or I would have thought to look (so thank you Jeff for planning ahead with the snow coming).
Anyway I follwed where he'd gone the night before just looking for him as the snow would ahve covered up what little blood there could have been. After about and hour and nothing I headed back home.
CJ met me this afternoon and we were gonna head out again with a fresh set of eyes to see if we could find him.....
After about 100 yards from where I'd turned of this morning there he laid.......
What a RELEIF.....
He's not the biggest buck, not even my biggest but he's a decent 8 and MY 1st TRAD kill, and I'm soooo happy that we put in the time and effort to find this deer!!!!
Thanks to PHIL for filmin', JLH for his experience and coming out in 20 degree temps at 11pm, and CJ for coming out in the snow with what had to feel like little hope of finding him.
Im glad you found him Randy!!! Way 2 keep after em
