Friday...November 20, 2015 at 9:40-9:42am....
Will be a day Karissa and I will never forget! It's taken me awhile to even want to sit down and type this out as what started out to being the most epic of highs in our entire hunting time together didn't pan out as we've had liked but it was an awesome memory we both will always treasure!
This very cool crisp morning found Karissa and I perched in our favorite stand at 6:45am all ready locked and loaded. Even the squirrel activity wasn't great but the temps were in the high 20's winds were calm or mostly still out if the SW and the sun still over an hour away from cresting the tree line off the the east.
About 9:30 I looked down over my left shoulder and noticed Karissa working her hands fighting off the cold as she's been holding her xbow since we sat down so I told her to quickly and quietly hang it up till she warms herself up. So she did that and sat back down and fought off the cold and was quickly back to normal in 5 minutes or so. Both of our heads were on swivels up to this point and we were planning on sitting all day if it took that long.
It was just a few minutes later I felt the tap of Karissa's hand and I turned to see her pointing out in front of her and saw a dandy nice buck quickly walking through the inside corner that TG8 walked through last year. He had a couple corn stalks hanging off both sides of his rack and was walking as if he was on a mission with an nasty attitude. I whispered to Karissa, "Shooter, quietly get your xbow and get into shooting position as I grabbed my grunt tube and video camera which were both at the ready tucked into the front of my jacket.
I immediately threw out several grunts just to stop him then pressed my record button on the camera. He stopped and started to look around for the source of the grunts with fodder hanging everywhere. He took a few more steps down the hill about 35 yards out and I grunted again. Then he stepped a few yards closer and looked up in our direction but seemed to look right through us and back to looking down the slight hill he was on. He finally started to walk slightly angling towards us toward several big shooting windows below us out to 29-30 yards away. As he entered the first window I grunted and stopped him on a dime right in the middle of it the whispered, "SHOOT "! Karissa couldn't see very well unbeknownst to me cuz the sun that was over her shoulder at the time was glaring into her scope. He was at 28 yards at that spot and started to walk slowly to the 30 spot just a few yards away then I grunted again stopping him dead in his tracks again. I whispered, " SHOOT" and this time she shot and I couldn't have been more pleased with her shot placement and performance than I was right then!!!
I spun the camera from him running away with a xbow bolt buried up to it's fletch's into his chest to her and whispered loudly, "KARISSA, You just killed a F-ing monster!!!"
I wasn't very proud of saying that but my emotions were bottled up at this point and just came busting out all at once I guess. This is when I first realized I failed as a cameraman! I can't believe I waited till then to check to make sure the camera was recording but it was and I must not have hit the button squarely in the heat of the moment. My main goal was to get him stopped and headed towards her shooting windows which I am very happy about but not getting any of it on film still hurts badly to this day!!!!
I turned the cam on and did get out immediate reactions and emotions on film and called Ron and shared our moment with him over the phone which was cool.
We gave him 20 minutes and slipped out of the tree,gathered our stuff up and quietly headed down to where he was standing and saw blood just 5 yards away headed down into the creek bottom and out towards where I parked my truck. We followed blood pretty easily out to behind my truck at 30 yards where he crossed the road. He was not pushed and must not have stopped any up to this point so we just hung out talking about everything and started calling for some help. An hour later we resumed tracking with the help of a good friend(Dennis) and tracked him pretty easily the next 250 yards till he went onto other property which I needed to get permission to go any further.
This obstacle really hurt our chances of recovering him that day as the LO didn't want us on his property till he filled out our forms and he didn't get home till 6:45 that night. We didn't get papers signed till well after 7:00-7:15 and by then the tracking was very difficult in the dark across his bean stubble field. We looked around an hour then decided we'd come back at first light which also was first day of youth gun season(obstacle number 2).
The next morning we had two hunters hunting in close proximity of where our search needed to go so we spent 4 hours searching areas near there but unfortunately not the right areas but at least we were able to eliminate them. I told one of the hunters where we lost blood and after he hunted he and his buddy were able to pick up his tracks cutting across this big beanfield and spotted blood as well, not much but a drop here and there nonetheless. They were able to track him another 200 yards before the heavy rains set in but gave us additional information as to where he was headed and opened the door to the possibility he might not be mortally injured. This could actually be a single lung hit as he has yet to bed down after traveling 600-700 yards. The blood did have many bubbles in it but the fact that he jumped a fence and has yet to bed down in such a long distance sure started to make us wonder.
My work has done it's best to keep me from the search but I've put in a lot of time and boot rubber on the ground the last few days eliminating even more areas he could be laying in. I hope he's not laying in any of the standing cornfields in the immediate area but there's a real good probability he's still alive as well.
It's our hope he's still alive and will eventually fall to a ethical and deserving hunter but if he is in fact dead we hope to find him ourselves and learn something from this whole ordeal. We're both still not giving up our search!
Karissa and my journal
Deer Sightings 16
Buck Sightings 3
Doe's and other deer Sightings 8
Yote Sightings 0
Turkey Sightings 1
Shots taken 1
Deer recovered 0
Hours hunting 33
Number of sits 11