Nov 18/19th during that warm front that came through down in southern Ohio for a few days. Then that early morning the temps starting dropping severely with crazy high winds and I was sitting in my climber. It felt like you were living through the movie The Day After Tomorrow.
Crazy weather or sure and it changed, but it got the bucks up and moving and breeding does.. I'm sitting in a tree 100yds from our feeder while my buddy is in the ladder stand overlooking the feeder. We usually have some good mature does, yearlings and small 1-3yr bucks all day long hitting the feeder/minerals/and apples. So it didn't surprise me that I heard him shoot so quickly.
Shortly after that a mature doe came walking towards me. Its a doe that I befriended because she had a injury to her knee/leg area that kept her from moving as quickly as some, so I made sure she was safe when i was down there and she was eating as much as possible. She was doing great and looked healthy and could run crazy fast when she had to or when another big doe wanted to fight her, so I felt there was no need to take her out, but the thought definitely crossed my mind. I tried to hunt humanly, even though bow hunting sometimes isn't that way.
Well shortly after that doe walked towards me, then I see this big buck trailing her. I watch him breed her 2x, then hoped off and stood behind my mock scrape. At that point I had my bow ready and on him ready to go. Remember its cold as hell and windy, 30-40winds at times. I took my glove off my trigger and dropped it and it hit the ground.. 35 yds away the deer was standing there and heard it.. that was completely crazy.. windy as hell and this deer heard a fleece glove hit the wet ground and wouldn't take his eyes off the bottom of my tree. Side, note, that's why I like to be high in the tree.
So he finally walked around and stood directly in my scrape. Have great pics of it too. he did his thing in the scrape.. I drilled him.
I thought I dbl lunged him, because of the clean pass through, but turned out I only got 1lung and he ran 500+ yards. blood everywhere. He was one strong healthy buck!!!
My taxidermist showed me the scars on the hide from all his fighting, he had a 1/2 hi right ear ripped off too and you can see he has some damage on his rack that goes to show you he was a bad ass..
Whats crazy is, of all the bucks we have on cam, because we run deer cams for deer and for security because we don't want BS down there or trespasser either. We don't have many pics of that pic, compared to all the other shooter bucks we had prior to the rut... was amazing...
So that's my story... I cant wait to get out there again
I do know I need to find a corn guy and an apple guy down there, cuz I loost my contact... URG
It was a great hunt and I had a lot of fun.