I'm going to attempt to draw out the lay of the land and explain the thermals of the hunt michael killed his buck. First of all, he was running late as he had to make a deposited in the cookie factory...
It was a West wind 4-6 mph. Only access to this side of the property is from the west. But we were watching a couple of bucks on a cell cam as we were headed that way. I was also wanting to get a better look at a doe that was showing up regularly on a cam we had just set. She looked big, but I couldn't tell how big.
Anyways, a hiking trail cuts this crp field on the west side of the hill. Elevation change from the road is probably 40' to the top of the hill and drops 40' back down to the treeline towards the east. Hill drops another 40' in elevation down into the creek bottom. With a heavy frost and bluebird skies i knew if we waited for the sun break the top of the trees/hills we would be solid. We had no idea if the deer would still be around because it was a pretty long time between when we last seen the deer to when we would be able to see down there. But, Micheal wanted to "go look".
So we waited for the sun to do it's thing and started that way. It was crazy loud! Bumped the doe and fawn i wanted to get eyes on while walking in. She wasn't as big as she looked in the pics, so i didn't mind. As we crested the top of the hill we started looking for a bush to hide by and glass. This also let the sun get higher in the sky and expose more of the hillside so we could move down more off the skyline. I think we did this 3 times before michael spotted the buck. "BIG DOE" is what he said and then put the binoculars up and said "BUCK, BUCK, BUCK" and his breathing went out of control. With my standing behind him I could see our thermals were working against the slight breeze perfectly. I had to tell michael to watch his breathing around the scope if he was planning on shooting, lol. Deer was working a sapling and had no idea we were 110 yards away looking down on him. Deer took a couple of steps away and michael was in full target panic mode, lol. "He's walking away, call him" knowing if that deer looked up at us we were skylined and if i called it would've made michael more worked up, I was a good friend and told him to go fuck himself
. POW! And the deer went straight down. I gave him the brotherly back slap and said "he went straight DOWN!"
We started that way and if you've never hunted CRP, you can get turned around pretty easy. Everything looks pretty close to the same. And once you are in the stuff thats 5' tall, you can't see shit! I know I'm short, but still. You gotta trip on a deer to find it. So we lost it, couldn't find it. Couldn't find blood or anything. Michael went back to the hill and had to guide me to where it was.
Boom, there he laid. Biggest buck he had a shot at this year was headed towards the barn. Loaded up and tagged out with a 12 pack of bottled lattes cracked by 10. Gonna be another good day.
