I feel like this article was written for me. When dad acquired our farm (80 acres) in 2005, I was well on my way to becoming a full on whitetail addict. I was certain that our little piece of heaven would enable me to become the Mark Drury of SE Ohio. I had dreams of filming hunts, writing articles and all out selling my soul to the industry in order to snag my piece of the pie, and our farm was the key to fulfilling those dreams. I immersed myself in habitat management, pouring time and money in to our place at a feverish pace. Although I only had one mature whitetail to my credit, I started passing deer that were mature (3+) in an effort to kill what I deemed an acceptable buck: 4+ and 140+. As the years passed, I lost track of what hunting was all about. I was measuring my “success” in the inches of antler that were not on my wall. By 2012, I was fed up with bowhunting despite what is really a solid track record. In an 8 year period, I killed 3 bucks that were 6.5 years old with scores ranging from 110-139’. In the highly pressured hills of southern Ohio, I had done well for myself and yet, I forsake it. Instead I was fixated on the should haves, could haves and would haves; a wall that is FAR more impressive than my actual wall. I considered myself a failure because I’d failed at putting a deer on the ground that met an arbitrary number.
The reality is I am a good bowhunter. I should be proud of what I have accomplished. And I’ve had multiple opportunities on deer that I banked which would tickle the vast majority of bowhunters. Now with a career that demands much of my time and a family that demands the rest, my hours on stand are limited. As my daughter continues to grow, so will her interest in hunting (so I hope) and my time on stand will diminish even more. I’ve reached a point in my career where I too have to stop banking bucks. Deer that are 3 years old ARE mature in my neck of the woods. Deer that are 3 AND reach in to the mid to upper 130s ARE shooters for the new version of me as a bowhunter. Where I live and hunt, if I am consistently killing 3 year old 130s (which I could have done in 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2014, but did not) I will have reached a level of success that I can be proud of. The new me will be proud of that. I also believe that after a few years of success on that level, the dam will break and I’ll finally kill that big one I have been after all along.
My bowhunting career has been as much a mental struggle as it has been a struggling in killing target deer. I’ve formed “relationships” with deer that were unhealthy; they took a toll that should have never been extracted. Those same deer died at the hands of other hunters, vehicles, poachers and probably disease. I tried too hard to control the things I could not control. Joe stated he would rather pass a barrel full of 156s to shoot at a few 180s. I tried that with deer relative to my area (130s for 160s) and it sucks. To that I say: Fuck It. Time to start kill the bird in the hand; screw the two in the bush.
