Well the title of this Blog post says it all. I had a mature 5 1/2 year old buck we think will score somewhere in the 150s come into my stand almost at dark. We call him Crab 10 because he has 2 crab claws on his endpoints as shown below.
The wind was right but he sensed something was not right and stepped back out the way he came in at about 40 yards. I knew he wanted to go the other way back to his sanctuary, so I immediately got my bow up in hopes he would come across. A couple of minutes later he did and I drew back. He was at 30 yards. Now it was getting dark; too dark for the camera to film. Once I found my sights, he turned and walked away from me. He got to my 40 yard marker and started quartering away at 45. Well I had 40 in my head and I did not adjust and I shot right under him and shaved off some of his hair. He ran off snorting. You can see his hair in the picture below.
We went back the next day and double checked to make sure no blood. Sure enough, no blood. He just got a free hair cut.
As described above, bow hunting is a game of inches. The next evening my Dad shot a doe at 20 yards where the arrow completely passed through her. The arrow was covered in red blood and the rage broadhead was fully deployed. We looked for over an hour and could not find any blood. We eventually jumped her out of her bed and she ran off. There were about 8 drops of blood in the bed. We figured he shot her high in that no man’s land area in a deer and did not hit any vitals since she had been lying for about 45 minutes when we jumped her.
The next night, I sat with him to film my first duo deer hunt (1 hunter, 1 camera man) and saw a doe and button buck fawn. She never came into range. I have the video of this hunt below. Remember, first duo hunt so I am practicing here.
The next hunt, my Dad redeemed himself by shooting that same doe as the evening before that we had filmed at 32 yards. It was a perfect shot even though it took us a little while to find her due to her spontaneous 90 degree turn. Of course the blood trail was slow at that turn, but we found her. We were both very relieved as you can see in the video.
Even though we had these misfortunes, I still had a great time with my Dad. These are memories I will always cherish. Besides, how can you not have a good time hunting with your best buddy.