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The GIFT delivered to my back porch.

finelyshedded

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THE GIFT


Last week I was helping clean around the house and in the midst of it all I got sidetracked with a "squirrel!!!" moment when my little eye spied a 8mm cassette tape with some hunting stuff. Needless to say my cleaning fell way to reliving many hunts that I recorded over the course of a couple years. One such day was November 21, 2006, a day that ended my dismal lackluster season on a highest of high any hunter could fathom, IMO. For this day I was blessed with a gift from up above and as The GIFT zigzagged his way all over the woods behind our house I ran for my Sony Handicam 8mm camcorder to record it. With his nose to the ground and throwing all caution into the wind he covered most of the 10 plus acres of timber that is surrounded by our house and 5 others at the time. All of the other homeowners are also dog owners and are usually walking their dogs at various parts of the day as well which makes this particular occurrence even less likely to happen........but it did!

How it all played out.....


After being gone most of the previous 3 weeks because I was in SE Ohio hunting our farm and other spots I was brought back to reality with a buck tag still in my pocket and nary anything close to a mature buck spotted from my all of my hunting up to this point of the 2006 season. I hunted hard and it just wasn't happening in the spots I chose and if I did have encounters it was mostly with young bucks or young ones left alone by their mothers while they were getting bred the next county over...lol Anywho, I was worn out and depressed as I exhausted most of my vacation and had just a few days left to use for the deer gun season starting the upcoming Monday.
After my wife left for work I was getting the girls breakfasts made and school lunches packed before they walked the 300 feet to our mailbox to be picked up by the school bus. Yes Brian, a long yellow one!:smiley_bril:

As they were eating their breakfast I noticed a couple does milling around a feeder I had put out just off our yard inside the woods. The feeder was just a 7 foot long homemade cobble that looked like a feed trough with boards along the top on both sides to knock loose sheds of bucks if they stopped by during shed season. I hadn't put and eared corn in it for nearly a month due to being too busy or just hunting out of town plus it wasn't put there to hunt over. I never even considered hunting behind our house due to the fact all the commotion of the neighbors and the feeder was just to bring deer in so we can watch them from our windows. I guess this particular day the local doe population of 7-8 found their way into this 10 acre woodlot dragging a wide heavy beamed 160" main framed 4x5(right G4 is around 1.5" in length) so basically a 158" stud of an 8 point! I never hunted much close to the house so I didn't know this deer existed so as the girls and I watched him go from doe to doe all I could do was try and get him on tape so I had proof it happened! Lol
As the girls were throwing on their coats Shelby asked, "You gonna try and shoot that buck daddy?" I responded, "I doubt it, but you girls hurry up and get down to the bus as fast as you can and NO FIGHTING!!!hahaha

As I continued to watch him lip curl and nudge these does I heard the bus screech to a stop and it's backup beeper going off so I knew the girls were on their way to school and my off day was off to a great start. As I studied this buck through the 2" camera screen he started looking bigger and actually more killable. Then he started making by his way towards the house closer about 40 yards out then I sprang into action. I sat the camera down, ran into the garage and dressed head to toe in full hunting clothes and even grabbed my rubber boots and my bow and release. I came in through the kitchen and grabbed the camera again and started recording some more with my bow in my left hand. Then he ran some does even closer to the house and was skirting the yard about 35 to 40 yards out with nothing but love on his mind. This is where I stopped recording and actually went into kill mode. I took the quiver off my bow and laid it on the back of the couch and slipped out onto our back stoop in just my socks with one arrow on my bow and my release. I watched him continue to work each doe but he appeared to be going on around our house 45-50 yards out so I slipped back in and put my rubber boots on and out through the garage I went to do a stalk along the NE side of our house. I got no further than half way to the far corner when I noticed a doe looking at me so I froze not wanting to bust her out taking him with them so I waited till she looked away then backtracked my way back inside the house to watch from the back door.....in my boots! Lol
As if guided by the deer gods he turned and with his nose to the ground he started backtracking some does scent left behind a few that were standing at the empty feeder. That's when I slipped back onto the back stoop and quickly and quietly went over to the far corner where I was protected by our screened in porch. When he got within 30 yards I drew back then slowly stepped forward then swung my bow over towards the opening at 25 yards and waited for his huge body to walk into my sight window. When he stopped I anchored the 20 yard pin behind his shoulder a tad above center and started to squeeze slowly. As bow bow went off he took a lurch forward but I still felt the impact was good but a tad back. It was a pass through but elected to give him till 2 to 3 in the afternoon just to be sure as I thought I got mostly the back portion of lungs and liver.
The shot was taken about 8:10 that morning but it was warming up and I was wanting to recover this deer so the meat wouldn't go bad. My FIL and I got permission from several of the landowners in the direction he went and set out tracking him very slowly. He cut through a neighbors yard and jumped their fence knocking off the top board before crossing the side road and going 300 yards the length of a picked beanfield. Incidentally this neighbor called me minutes after the shot saying, Ric, get your bow and get over here!! "There's a big buck in our yard!!!" "I told her I know, I just shot him!!!" She said, "YOU'RE KIDDING!!!" That's when she told me he was walking slowly across the road from her house in the long field with the herd of does.
After finding his blood trail and jumping a bunch a deer(all the does in our woods earlier along with him I presumed) we backed out. I tried to work it out with my supervisor at work to be off the next day but she said I needed to come in due to Thanksgiving week is busy and she might let me leave at 10am after working a 1/2 day. That's how it played out but I didn't sleep a wink that night and going to work and putting in 4 hours seemed like putting in 10 that day! I also felt terrible that that deer might have suffered or eaten by coyotes or never recovered. After getting home and meeting my FIL and BIL at my place we drove our quads to the far end of the field and went to the spot where I last found blood and spread out about 30 yards apart and headed off into the the direction the deer I jumped went the previous afternoon. We hadn't gone 80 yards when we came to a dried up creek bed when I looked across the bank and over to my right about 30 yards away and saw his big white belly. After examining him and the surrounding area it looked like I caught some lung,mostly liver and some gut. He was slightly quartered to me at the shot so the entrance hole was center chest but angling back slightly and exiting about the last rib. I was happy I found him but sad that he suffered because I found like 6-7 bloody beds in a 50 foot circle where he spent most of the night. Plus he was still pretty limber so he died sometime within a couple hours or so before we got there I imagine. It was the start of a bittersweet day and I'm still somewhat sorrowful as I type this out thinking how much he may have suffered though the night. On top of that he was also slightly bloated and being a solid liver hit the meat had a putrid odor to it as we were skinning him out we were gagging as well so I lost the meat on top of that.

Here are a few video clips I recorded that exciting morning. Right place right time.

Just filming not knowing
 
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finelyshedded

You know what!!!
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.......just how big this buck was and not even considering trying to shoot him.



Now seeing how big he was and sitting camera down to fetch clothes and bow!!! ASAP



After seeing him running towards the house I go into kill mode



That's how my season ended in 2006....:smiley_coolpeace:
 
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finelyshedded

You know what!!!
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Thanks for reading my story. It kinda popped up unexpectedly by finding that tape with the footage of that day and with the time of year being kinda a huge lull I figured I'd share my story.

The area all around my house and beyond is hunted very hard with very little safe havens scattered out amongst the farms and subdivisions.

I just happened to be in a well furnished ground blind that day and was in a woods where it was finally happening!!rotflmao

My FIL was in his stand since first light across the street till 9 and didn't see shit! We're 200 yards apart! rotflmao
 
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MoonLab

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
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Thats fuggin awesome right there, buddy. Great write up. Made me smile reading it. Congrats
 
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finelyshedded

You know what!!!
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SW Ohio
I wish I could of been a bird in the tree watching this all go down

I imagine pretty comical!

Rick, Xbowguy,a few others and I always remind those hunting to stay at it and keep alert as a bad or slow hunt hunt can change on a dime or it only takes a minute for something great or positive to happen. Well I told myself that on every hunt over the prior 3-4 weeks of hunting and it never happened. I had succumbed that the fact that my season was mostly over and I was back home playing father first and husband with going back to work the next day. My, how fast did I go from way low to being on cloud 9!!!

What makes encounters like this so amazingly uncommon is that was the only time I've seen a buck over 100" back there EVER!!! To this day even! It just doesn't happen that often anywhere especially in an area like where I live.
 

Bigslam51

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I imagine pretty comical!

Rick, Xbowguy,a few others and I always remind those hunting to stay at it and keep alert as a bad or slow hunt hunt can change on a dime or it only takes a minute for something great or positive to happen. Well I told myself that on every hunt over the prior 3-4 weeks of hunting and it never happened. I had succumbed that the fact that my season was mostly over and I was back home playing father first and husband with going back to work the next day. My, how fast did I go from way low to being on cloud 9!!!

What makes encounters like this so amazingly uncommon is that was the only time I've seen a buck over 100" back there EVER!!! To this day even! It just doesn't happen that often anywhere especially in an area like where I live.
So what your trying to say is you bitched and moaned enough that you shot a giant? Seems like it's happened more than once😂
 
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finelyshedded

You know what!!!
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Thanks for all the kind words TOOville :smiley_coolpeace:

There was no hunting prowness or hunting the wind sitting in a funnel between food and bed and any suffering of the elements during this exciting day! Imagine Tammy's surprise knowing I wasn't hunting at all that day because I was basically done and at home ready to catch up on work around the house before going to work and being off for Thanksgiving Day then her getting a call by 8:30 knowing I was to get the girls ready for school and on the bus that I just shot a giant! rotflmao

I called Ron and my BIL,Tim and gave them the lowdown when my FIL called at 9:30 to tell me he got cold and bored and quit hunting behind his house that morning just 200 yards away! That speaks volumes how awesome one hunters hunt can be while another can be the polar opposite just an earshot away.
 

finelyshedded

You know what!!!
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31,856
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SW Ohio
Here's a pic of our dad Roger with what was my highest scoring deer at that time. He always enjoyed being apart of our successes no matter what it was but he loved listening to our hunts after we got in from the field. We lost him a short 5 years later right after his 68th birthday but I'm sure glad I insisted I took a picture of him with, The Gift deer.



Miss ya DAD....:smiley_coolpeace:
 
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