Bow Season Report, Florida 2010-15, Buck #3 Falls to My Stick and String!

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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Bow Season Report, Florida 2010 -15

Wind: WNW 1-2+/- (light early)
temp.: l 62, h.82
moon: 1 day before full moon
major feed: 3:35 am, 3:55 pm

pressure: 30.00 steady

humidity: avg. 54% 39 min. 78max.

rain: 0

AM Hunt: 10-13-10

I got in the stand this morning just before shooting light with anticipation of seeing one of the racked bucks that have been showing up on the trail cam at the pond stand at night,

Well, it finally came together this morning. The high forked horn buck showed up in the 5th row to the NE. He was being a little cautious and it really put some pressure on me trying to run my own camera while trying to shoot the deer with a bow. I tell you, its not an easy thing to do. To shoot a deer with a bow you need to be fully focused on the task at hand which is killing the thing. One of the worst things you can do is take your eye the deer. You need to be fully focused on his body language. Trying to film while doing this is a nightmare! It takes your concentration away, takes your eyes of your quarry and just generally breaks you focus and flow of the situation. If it was not so unbelievably cool to have footage of yourself shooting a deer I’d throw the camera right out of the tree and leave it where it there.

As I was saying, the buck was coming down the 5 th row and I kept thinking I should pan ahead and zoom in on the spot and wait for him to walk into the frame for the shot. Then I’d think no don’t let him get out of the frame. I was back and fourth and all over the place with the camera and nearly ruined the footage.

The buck kept easing down the 5 th row and stopping to wind and check the trail he weaved back and fourth and I just was not sure where is was going to end up. He walked right past the corn and I was able to zoom in just enough to capture a great kill shot. That was absolutely awesome. I punched him right in the top of the pocket. He was dead on his feet and didn’t know it!

He charged off like a shot and looped back towards where he came from. That’s something you need to remember….a shot deer is almost always going to loop back the direction it came from. They know it is the only known safe direction to travel as they just came in from that way.

The buck made it about 60 or 70 yds tops and was down in an old woods road.

He was a really cool looking fork horn with high, yellow horns. I don’t have any pictures of him in the daylight on the trail cam so I did not know his horns were this unusual yellow color. Apparently he did not like rubbing bay trees which is where the mahogany horn color comes from here.

I let Lacy trail him before getting him out of the woods and she found him but not without some issues. This was mostly caused by me going to the deer before she tracked it which as I have said is a no, no but I could not resist. I elaborate on this in a post dedicated to that subject later.

It was a great hunt and a really neat buck and I am proud to ad him to the collection. I plan to do a European skull mount on him and will probably post that also. There are some important points to get that to turn out right that you need to know before attempting that.

Here are some photo’s from the hunt and some trail camera photo’s of him.

Best of Hunts,
Larry S.
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