My first buck.

It was Saturday, and I was busy getting up the Christmas decorations for the outside of the house. Bret was home so I was taking advantage of him and had him help me with the lights on the roof. I can do most of it myself but I don't like crawling up in the highest peak. I was wanting to go hunting with Bret also in the afternoon. It wasn't extremely cold and I thought it would be a good night to go out, as I'm not a fan of sitting in a tree stand in the really cold. It came time to go and I was really wanting to finish up the decor outside, but decided to go hunting. So we got on all of our scent lock hunting garb, and I picked up my bow ready for the hunt. I really enjoy these times with Bret. It's just us, no kids.

We drove to our property called Rivendale, about a mile south of a little (and I mean little!) town called Irwin. It's a beautiful place, with a pond that we put in a few years ago, and a small forest, with some pasture land with lots of CRP. Bret has put in a lot of work and money into making this place a great place to hunt and just hang out. We park the truck at the Benson's house, a guy who lives close to the property, and we put on the rest of our hunting clothes to stay warm, and have our last spray down of scent block on our feet and our whole body, then we head out to the timber where our double tree stand is. We walked about a quarter of a mile and we see a couple of does bedded down on a nearby hill side. We duck down and start crawling so we don't spook them. Umm, crawling on the ground in full hunting gear, and carrying a bow is not easy. I also had to roll under a barbed wire fence. I felt very military. Anyway, we're almost to the stand and we scare up another doe. Bret was a bit miffed about that. But she wasn't extremely spooked so she didn't sound an alarm or anything and she didn't go very far away. So we're still good. We get to the stand and I tie my bow on the rope and as quiet as a little mouse I climb up slowly to my seat. Bret follows and I pull up my bow, load it with a nice sharp 100 grain Muzzy broadhead arrow, and sit back and wait. Bret is hoping those does we saw coming in will head our direction and walk right by the stand to a field they like to feed in. We see a deer quite a ways off on a hill side that is a nice big buck but he heads off in he opposite direction. I'm looking in front of us in this high grass and I see some movement. It's a buck but a very small one, coming right towards us. I elbow Bret, and he says "what are you looking at?" I say "A deer" and then he sees it. We watch it for a while and it walks around our stand, and he ends up going up the hill behind us where we first saw those does. It wasn't a shooter. He was only a couple years old, so we let him go. So time goes on and the sun is going down, and it's getting colder. We see the big buck go up the hillside away from us and then we see about six does up on the top of this hill right on the edge of some timber. We watch them through the binoculars, and they aren't really going anywhere. Later, two of them slowing make there way down the hill towards us. I would be happy with a doe, but I really wanted a buck. Didn't have to be huge, just a nice buck. More time passes, and my fingers are really getting cold. Then I see Bret look across me in a strange way. He looks like he sees something but isn't sure. Then he tells me to slowly stand up. So as slow as my legs will let me I stand up. Then we hear a deer walking behind us so we slowly turn around and we see a doe walking down the trail. Bret says "It's the broken leg doe. I don't want to shoot her, she's kind of like a pet." I guess they see her a lot. Her leg had been broken and healed funny, so she walks a little crippled. She gets like 10 yards from us and just stops and stares as us, like she isn't sure what we are, but she knows something isn't right. I didn't dare blink or move a muscle! Bret was behind me frozen as well. She watched us for a long time, and decided we weren't anything dangerous because she started nibbling on something under this log. Then we see this buck come up out of some bushes. It's not a monster buck, but it had a weird rack. One side was a nice 5 point but the other was a bit deformed it only had 2 points on it and curved different. He was walking with a little limp on that same side too. He sees the doe, and starts slowly up the hill towards her. He gets about 10 yards from us, but I don't have a shot because of some branches that are in the way. We keep watching him, and the doe turns around and heads back up he hill, we figure he's going to follow her and not get a shot, but he makes a right turn and goes right behind the tree we are in. I'm slowly turning around trying not to hit my bow or arrow on the tree trunk as I swing around to the other side. Bret is trying to get out of my way with out spooking the deer so I can get a good shot at him. He clears the tree trunk, I pull back my bow, and Bret says "put the top pin right in the middle of him." So I pull back and get set, I wasn't sure what it would feel like to pull back an arrow with thick gloved, very cold fingers. I was worried about my accuracy, because I'd never practiced with full hunting gear on. I put the pin on him through my site, and it was hard to see him really well just because I hardly had any light left. But I could see it good enough, and I didn't want to wait to long because I was afraid he would start moving. As he was quartering away I let the arrow fly and saw and heard it hit the body of the deer! He did just what they do on TV too. He hunched and his back legs kicked up and he took off running. We watched him run off and turn a little down the trail. Then Bret said,"You just got your first deer!" I was really excited and shaking and couldn't believe it! I was so worried about missing or just wounding it or something. But I new it was a good shot. I had done it! Bret was hugging me and quietly whooping and just showing general overall excitement! You don't want to be to loud because you don't want to scare your deer off any farther, or let any other deer know you're there. We waited for a few minutes and decided to head back to the truck and go to Irwin and grab a bite to eat, (We had some calzones at this little eatery in the gas station, pretty good too I might add) then come back and track him, just to give him time to lay quietly and die. You shouldn't go to early because he might jump up and run off, and that kind of taints the meat a bit also it makes it harder to track. So after about a half hour we go back and begin the search. It's dark so we've got our flashlights and instead of starting where I hit him we started where we think he went. After about 10-15 minutes, Bret calls me over and I see some blood on the ground. He said he saw a pair of eyes looking at us that got up and ran off. We were worried that it was my deer and not dead yet! I was worried that we would never find him. But we followed the blood for a little ways and found him laying in the grass just off the tail. He was dead. The eyes must of belonged to a doe that we scared off, thank goodness! But he was there and he was my first! I watched Bret gut him, because I'm not ready to do that. I wouldn't even no where to start. But Wow, what a mess of organs. He hadn't gone far after I shot him, and was probably dead by the time we had made it back to the truck. Which I'm glad because I didn't want him to suffer to much. We got him back to the truck, and tried to take some pictures in the headlights of the truck. I sent some to some friends and family and was so happy to have that first buck. After watching, and taking lots and lots of pictures of people with deer that they have shot around here, it was finally me. I can't wait until next year!