Funny and/or embarrassing mistakes!

[hickslawns]

Lol at least you got down safe, I hate putting up ladder stands, that sway scares me lol, my buddy stand is at 27' it wasn't fun putting up

Holy cow! Customizer must have customized that stand to get it to 27'!

Not necessarily embarrassing or funny, but sucked nonetheless. Last year I was half way up a 22' ladder and had a shooter walk in on me. Nothing I could do. Bow in hand but I couldn't let go to draw and shoot. All I could do was freeze in the stand and stay put. Thankfully my buddy shot him later in the season. Good for him.

What did I learn? When the chasing phase is in and you go in early for an evening hunt (I went in at 1pm), you go directly to your stand and hunt. I had a drag rag tied around my boot and another behind it. One had estrous doe pee and the other had dominant buck. He came in from a direction I was not expecting. I feel he smelled it and came in to investigate. I messed around swapping the camera card 10yds from the tree and I feel this cost me a shot at the buck. Had I simply walked in, climbed my stand, and swapped the card on the way out. . . .might have killed that buck. I will never know now as he is on my buddies wall. lmao

I don't have any pictures of the buck in 2011 on this computer but here he was at the end of the 2010 season. He put on a bit in 2011. Very heavy 8pt that carried his mass all the way out. G2s were around 12" each. G3s were 8-9" and brows were 6-7". Darn nice 8pt.

 

[customizer1000]

Added a 5' extension

 

[Diane]

I'll tell one more on myself where I let my anger/frustration get the best of me.

I had been buck hunting pretty hard and was tired of not actually getting to kill anything. So that evening, the plan was to shoot a doe, then move to a different spot and wait on a buck that had been frequenting the area.

4 does came in and I took the one that was standing perfectly broadside. I thought it was a good shot, but all 4 does scattered and I didn't see a definite kick or movement to indicate that I had made a kill shot, although I felt like I had.

As I was packing up to hike to the other hunting area, I saw something odd in the side of a tree. I thought it looked like my arrow, but "knew" it couldn't be. I put my scope on it and sure enough, there is my arrow sticking out of this tree. Since I had stuck a tree just a week prior, I was totally pissed off that I had managed to stick one again.

I thought, "to hell with it, I'm done hunting for the day" and packed up carelessly and loudly because at this point, I didn't care if every deer in Licking County saw, heard or smelled me. I was so mad at myself.

I decided to go and see if I could get the arrow out of the tree. It looked completely clean, no blood, which made me even madder. But as I put my fingers (no gloves on because I'm mad) on the bottom of the arrow, I got 2 faint swipes of blood on them.

Sure enough, I had made a perfect double lung shot and the arrow stuck in the tree after the pass through. My doe was laying just up the hill aways in a thicket but I had already alerted every deer within miles that I was in the woods!

So much for buck hunting that night!

 

[Redhunter1012]

Cant count how many times I've put my sneakers back on while getting dressed in the dark at my parking spots. Honest to god a few times I sprayed them not even noticing them until I'm in the stand and look at my beautiful white Nike's. How many times have you guys left the sound on your phone only to realize it when someone text's you? I've had my Mom call me about 10 times in a row with vibrate on with a group of 4 does feeding underneath me. I had 1 small one that kept looking up but never figured it out. I ended up shooting a nice 12 point about 20 minutes later

 

[customizer1000]

Cant count how many times I've put my sneakers back on while getting dressed in the dark at my parking spots. Honest to god a few times I sprayed them not even noticing them until I'm in the stand and look at my beautiful white Nike's. How many times have you guys left the sound on your phone only to realize it when someone text's you? I've had my Mom call me about 10 times in a row with vibrate on with a group of 4 does feeding underneath me. I had 1 small one that kept looking up but never figured it out. I ended up shooting a nice 12 point about 20 minutes later

Lol yeah the dreaded cell phone

 

[Jackalope]

Got up one morning and hit the road, Got to my spot and got everything on, camo, harness, boots etc and smoked up, went to get my bow out of the back seat to smoke it and :smiley_blackeye: It was at the house on the hook. I think i said aloud to myself "How are you going to kill something without a bow dummy".. Back home and back to bed.

 

[bowhunter1023]

I've had three big blunders in my day that cost me respectable bucks and a few fist-fulls of minor mishaps that pissed me off and left me shaking my head! On more than one occasion, I have forgotten vital pieces to a hunt that essentially derailed things before they ever got off the ground. The small screw ups I can deal with, but the "big three" will haunt me forever...

The first came during my first full season of bowhunting in 2001. I had a P&Y 8-point work out an oak flat to within 18 yards of me offering a perfectly broadside shot. I was 25’ up a red oak in my climber and it offered the first lesson in bending at the waist when shooting from an elevated position. Failing to do so, I shot high in the “dead zone” but to a rookie hunter, it looked like the perfect shot. Within 20 minutes, I was on the trail and I jumped the buck twice before backing out to get help. Despite hours of searching with two veteran trackers and a dog, we failed to locate what would have been my first buck. I’m convinced I only hit one lung on that buck and had I simply walked back to the house for a few hours after the shot, I would have found him. That was a very important lesson in giving deer time to die.

The second FUBAR came during the 2008 season. I passed on a handful of deer that season I wish I would have shot, but none more than this beautiful 10-point that Greg and I had on video at a mere 8 steps! In the midst of my quest for a 180” deer, I made a piss poor decision not to shoot this deer and I took TOO long to do so and it cost Greg a shot at the deer as a result. We are both fairly certain this is the same deer the next year and he was essentially the same size in 2008. At 8 steps, you could hear his breathing and it would have made some great video. That was a lesson in taking the shot at a mature buck when you get it because that dream buck you are hunting could already be dead. And in my case, he was dead…

The third screw up is the one that taught me attention to detail is SO important when it comes to killing deer at crunch time. In 2010, I was hunting a deer I called Crazy Rack and I was fairly confident I could kill him early. This was the first mature buck I felt was killable early in the season and he showed me my thinking was spot on when he nearly gave me a shot on opening night. Although I may have screwed up that night by trying to make him stand at last light (he was bedded at 30 yards for several minutes), I would do that same thing again. However, the big mistake came 3 nights later when I made an adjustment to my stand location and put myself right in his wheelhouse on a rare, cold early October evening. I was putting my jacket on when he showed up at 45 yards and in the rush to get ready for the shot, I forgot to zip up my jacket and tuck in my collar. When I came to full draw, my hair trigger of a Stan Shootoff release caught my jacket and slung an arrow in to the tree 15 feet from me at eye level. I never had a chance to recover for a second shot. This deer was within 30 yards of me on the first 2 hunts of the 2010 season and I couldn’t get it done. I never saw him again after that. It was a great lesson in paying attention to detail…

 

[customizer1000]

Got up one morning and hit the road, Got to my spot and got everything on, camo, harness, boots etc and smoked up, went to get my bow out of the back seat to smoke it and :smiley_blackeye: It was at the house on the hook. I think i said aloud to myself "How are you going to kill something without a bow dummy".. Back home and back to bed.

:thumbup:

 

[Diane]

That was a lesson in taking the shot at a mature buck when you get it because that dream buck you are hunting could already be dead.

Good point.

 

[Jackalope]

:thumbup:

I knew a guy once who left his quiver at home but decided to sit in his stand anyway. His target buck walked right under him that morning.

 

[buckbuster217]

My biggest screw up was from being "lazy" at thanksgiving time last year, me and my hunting buddy had hunted that morning in the rain and hadnt seen a thing, we went home to eat thanksgiving dinner and was planning on meeting back up in the afternoon to hunt, he called me around 2 to see what I was doing. I answered watching football and trying to stay awake after stuffing myself, asked him and he said the same, lets just take the afternoon off and start back after it in the morning. I was fine with that and proceeded to slide into a turkey induced coma. Well as you can see from the pics one of the bucks we had been after all year deciced to stroll right in front of the ground blind at 5 in the afternoon and stand there broadside at 18 yards for about 5 minutes!!!! Instead of layin on the couch if one of us would of been in that blind things might have turned out different.

 

[bowhunter1023]

HA! Tad, that sucks man! Been there TOO and tried to forget all about it!!! When Deuce was a 3 year old, I spent all fall chasing him around with no luck and it had been a couple months since I had a picture of him. It was the first year of the bonus gun weekend, so I hunted Saturday with Swantucky and his boy Hunter, then stayed up and drank beer with Tucky that night. Tracie was home and I hadn't seen her for 3 weeks, so after Tucky and Hunter left, I laid down on the couch with her. The wind was blowing 30+ mph and it was sleeting sideways. I decided against hunting over my winter wheat plot and stayed home with her. About the time I was pounding the fur off of it, old Deuce waltzed right past the stand I wanted to hunt that day...

 

[customizer1000]

I knew a guy once who left his quiver at home but decided to sit in his stand anyway. His target buck walked right under him that morning.

Lol no way

 

[dante322]

I think that has happened or will happen to all of us.

one of the few times Turk showed himself during daylight, and one of only 2 times he stood within bow range of my stand, i was hunting a different property that day.

 

[bigten05]

ive had a couple one that really bugs me, too seasons ago i had been seening a good ten point that i had pretty much figuerd out. the day before i went in to hunt him i was hunting a a different property, as i was climbing down the tree my release got caught on a branch i yanked on it and climbed on down got back to the truck to see my trigger was broke, fugg me i didnt have the money to buy a knew one. i went home and decided to try and shoot it had just a little tiny nub sticking out that i could run my finger acrossed, so i went the next day to my stand and sure enough here comes the buck, 30 yards broadside, i draw back and center my pin, go to touch the realsease and somehow i miss the trigger, i was ready for the bow to go off but it didnt. in thinking the bow was gonna go off i must of relaxed my arm which had my all screwed up and trying to recover but never did he walked off and never got a shot at him again.it didnt take me long to throw that damn thing away and get a new one after that.

 

[rgecko23]

Last year I had the buck of a lifetime 30 yds away, if i would have just waited 2 more seconds and let denny push the button on the rangefinder I wouldnt have misjuged his yardage and shot over his back. Denny should have shot the buck 15 times, but let me get a shot since it would have been my first buck. He was easliy a 155.

The next wekend him and I argued over me shooting a good 120s buck and I passed cause I thought that other buck would have came back. We had amazing footage of this buck and I just let him walk. I never saw a decent buck after that, they got smaller and smaller.

Word to the wise....never pass on a buck in October you wouldnt shoot in january. Hard lessons learned the last couple yrs. From falling asleep, to being impatient, to being selfish.
Never again will I make those mistakes again.

 

[rgecko23]

My second time ever bowhunting, I had probably a good 120" deer 25 yds away from me. I raised my crossbow up, looked through the scope, looked back at the buck, looked at the scope, looked at the buck..repeat about 10 times... and watched him walk away....

I never shook so hard as I did that morning.

 

[Dannmann801]

Anybody ever pull the trigger with the safety still on? :smiley_depressive:

Anybody ever shoot over a deer's back with your compound bow at 10 yards? Then not be able to find the arrow? :smiley_depressive:

 

[aholdren]

While putting my climber on a tree in the dark and rearranging it on the tree, I accidently stepped on my bow string and didn't give it a second thought. A couple hours into the hunt I had a 120's 8 point walk broad side and stop at 12yrds, come to full draw only to not be able to find my pin so I move my string to the side only to find my peep sideways in the serving. Never seen him again. I will never climb in a tree again without drawing my bow.

 

["J"]

Lost track of how many times going in on a afternoon hunt and have a deer walk right by me as I'm going up the tree and the bow on the ground..... Back when I first started hunting deer it was a big thing too see a deer let alone get one in range..... So yeah that got frustrating.....