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Your biggest buck story?

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small? with a muzzleloader it's a trophy! (with dad it's one you'll never forget! my bestest memories and trophys(?) are from huntin with dad,he's been gone 18 years now but i can still see him actually jumpin up and down all excited when we got one up north! see him come out'a lil bunch of pines one[url] day..trackin[/url] a deer,he loved trackin em.. well i shot the buck awhile before he came into view,,i raised my gun in the air and can still see him jumpin over 100 yards away! boy he quick stepped it right over to me,,ya should'a seen the smile! (I CAN! still!) :grin: that's what it's about...well part of it anyway,,non hunters don't have a clue to what their missin..he still hunts with me everyday, and i visit his ashes where he killed his last buck in the adirondacks everytime i'm near there... (course he was a stubborn man,an just had to kill his last one on topof the biggest hill there... but it's an awesome place! looks like a church yard ferns and evergreens.. that's where i'll be..someday..(hopin to put it off fer a bit more!) :shocked2: thanks for the oppurtunity to retell that! :thumbsup: RC (Pierre's kid)
 
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Thanks fer tellin it RC!I could almost imagine it myself.I'm a gonna be spread out in amongst some of my favorite places too someday but like you...I hope to prolong it as long as I can. :thumbsup:
 
Ok, I'll try this. Painful as it is, I am still very proud of what I was able to do. I am sorry this is long but I know no other way to explain this.

In 1990 we had two either sex tags then during the muzzle loader season. I had gotten permission for a nice private 125 acres that bordered on State property that year. The land owner let me leave my "Swamp Rat" in a pasture near the house so I could come and hunt by myself if no one else was around. I scouted the area and found a nice spot between a swamp and a field that I knew a buck or two was using to come up out of the swamp and spend time with the ladys in the field at night.

Got together with a couple guys I hunted with the night before opening day and we decided to hunt a piece of State property that had been good to us in the past, the first morning. This ment the three of them had to get me and my Wheelchair about a mile in to where we planned to hunt, luckily most of it was on a dirt road. We got there and set up that morning and as the sun came up, so didn't the temp. Before long it hit 70 degrees! And by 9:00 am the guys had striped down to tee shirts and had enough. Two guys had come out to me by 9:30am and we were sitting waiting for the last guy when I heard the unmistakable sound of a running deer, close! I just had time to say, "don't move thats no squirrel" when out of the brush at 15 yards a buck appeared just in front and off to my left. I was using a peep sighted .50 White Mountain back then and one quick motion dropped the nice 6 pointer with a shot through both shoulders as he was about run by me. Wow! Not a bad opening day! I dumped myself out of the chair and dressed the animal. Then, it took over two hours getting me and the deer out to the truck, off to check it in.

All three guys had women folk on their case so I found myself a lone for the afternoon hunt. After a quick clean up I ran up to the private property and jumped on the Rat. It was 1:00pm when a rounded a bend in the Laural on my way to my stand, when there in the logging road was one of the most gorgeous animals I'd ever seen. He whirled and ran back towards the swamp. Disappointed, I continued to my stand where I sat till dark seeing nothing.

I couldn't hunt the next days morning hunt and it wasn't until 12:30 that I was able to get out. Again, I came around the same corner just in time to see him duck back into the laural. As you can imagine I wasn't very happy, I probably just blown my chances at ever getting a shot at this buck.

I went home that night and thought about what was going on here. If he wants to come through at that time then I need to get in there and setup earlier. So I got up grabbed a coffee and went down the bait shop where I figured I'd chat with the guys there until 9:00am then go hunting. While there a friend came in and wanted to know if I was hunting today and if he could come, I said sure and we headed out at 9:00. Thinking about it, I decided to put my friend where I wanted to go. He being a rookie and a smoker, I figured the buck would most likely see him and follow the laural up and away from him. So I setup about 100 yards above him watching a couple of breaks in the laural. Fast forward to 3:15pm, I get a strong rutting buck smell and actually reached into a pocket to see if my bottle of scent had broke or cap came off, it was fine. So hunkered down and scanned the area hard with my eyes. At 3:30pm I see a head and antlers just off the ground as he slowly stepped out sniffing the ground. Holy ****! At 40 yards I had slight quartering away shot and took it. He immediately stiffened up and took off out of my sight. I heard crash, crash, crash, nothing.....

When we got to the spot he stood, there was no blood no hair nothing and my heart sank as I scanned the area, I could go no further as it was a tangle of boulders, blow downs. I tried to direct my friend as best as possible but being a rookie he had a lot to learn, we searched for an hour then backed out to get help. We came back in with the land owners son and his friend and searched with flash lights for a couple of hours, nothing. They kept going to the swamp believing a wounded animal would go low and not high threw the boulders where I kept telling them he went...I went home heart sick that night.

In an effort to shorten this up, three days later I get a call from the land owners son telling me to come quick, my buck has been found. I arrive to find him and his friend. His friend hauls out a a head and hide all bundled up and says he went back in there yesterday with a dog and found the animal rotting, he figured I wanted the head so he did me a favor and skinned the animal out for me, here it is. I was like speechless and had a very bad feeling here but at the same time greatful to at least have the head. I bit my tongue and thanked him.

We found out later the buck only went 50 yards from where I shot it. They just did not look in the right spot. He had found the animal the first night, got help and they dragged it some 600 yards to the road, took it home and skinned it out. I hope he enjoyed my meat, really. :(

And if he ever comes to this forum and reads this, **** you.

tuffy10.JPG


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". They are all trophies, and the little ones eat a lot better'

absolutely, any game with a ML is a trophy in its own right, the only reason I had that one mounted is several people commented on what a nice Blactail it was and I have a friend who is a taxidermist and my better half offerd to have it mounted for a X-Mas present it was and probably will be the only deer I will ever have mounted, I had not kept the cape so he had to find a cape from another deer to fit the mount, the original cape would have been cool it was grey/white and scarred up heavily from fighting, this was an ornery old guy...tasted very good and tender which was a bit of a surprise.
 
WELL Swampy it were a GREAT story...right up to the last part..takes all kinds i guess, but at least the animal (i'm talkin about the deer here) didn't suffer and run wounded fer a long time,,sad you didn't get the relief knowing you actually made a killing shot until later..but you did get him,,,and he'll (not talkin about the deer now!) will get his.. all in all pretty good story! thanks! RC :hatsoff:
 
This was twenty years ago at least. I scouted a good spot on a local mgt area at the edge of some private land that had been recently logged. The leaf covered tree tops were left on the private land and the deer were leaving the soybean field in the creek bottom, crossing the corner of the mgt area and bedding in the tree tops.

I build a ground blind of logs about 75 yds from the private land to watch this crossing.

The 2 day hunt was on Friday and Saturday so I spent all day Thursday at the range shooting my TC Renegade from ever position and distance.

I was in my blind an hour before daylight on the first day of the hunt and thought I had the small hollow to myself, that was until about daylight when the sea of orange coming over the ridge looked like a banzai charge.

A flash of my light turned most of the hunters or at least made them sit where they were on the ridge except for one guy. He walked right by me smiling, trespassed on the private land and sat in front of me in a tree top. He spent the early morning smiling and waving at me as to say "I cut you off".

About 7:30 I heard splashing in the creek and the biggest buck I had see so far in the woods came up the bank and headed right at the tree top mister bozo was sitting in. The buck at about 100yds was further than I planned on shooting but I wasn't going to let mister bozo get a crack at him so I dropped the hammer on him 30 yds from the mgt area boundary and the creep in the tree top.

My 50cal round ball pancaked the buck. As I rushed down the hollow to get to the buck the trespasser came out from around tree top, spewed out a string of profanity and stomped off. One of the most satisfying kills ever. A good 8 point, not a monster but my best at the time.

Lots of people saw me drive out with the buck. The next morning I went back to the same 100yd wide hollow, my blind was gone, scattered down the hillside and there were at least 15 people sitting watching the crossing, some as close as 30yds apart. I went some where else to hunt after seeing the crowd.

This bucks rack is over the A/C, next to the Beck rifle I plan to complete some day. The larger rack to the left I killed with my osage bow, off the ground from a ground blind at 5 yds. Whole nother story on that one.

TCrack.jpg
 
SwampRat,
Good story but a tough one also.Good at least you got the antlers to mount.Sometimes it's tough to swallow what Greed does to a person. :shake: What up with that hole in the left ear?Looks like a roundball hole?
 
Eric,
Good one!Glad you got it and not that Doodlehead in the Tree!
I'm thinking if there is that many hunters in the area I wanted to hunt I'd sureley be moving on!
 
Funny, that same kid told me about a buck he shot at the December before. Had a head on shot, he said he aimed at it's nose and sent a 12ga slug at it, it ran off. A 12 ga slug fits neatly in that hole so I'm guessin thats the same animal.
 
Swamp Rat said:
Funny, that same kid told me about a buck he shot at the December before. Had a head on shot, he said he aimed at it's nose and sent a 12ga slug at it, it ran off. A 12 ga slug fits neatly in that hole so I'm guessin thats the same animal.
Funny!
That Buck....If he could talk now....Would have alot of adventurous storys to tell!That's for sure. :v
 
Good show Eric...and I see you have the same rack mounting system that I do...on a wall in the garage
:thumbsup:
 
I mounted the first 8point I killed, back when they made paper mache forms, looks pretty rough now. I feel I save at least $250 each by sawing the horns off and tacking them up on the wall of my shop as soon as I get them home.

Here is the buck I killed with my home made osage bow.

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I spent yesterday in a boat fishing with my father who is 73. At the dock, we met two gentlemen that turned out to be from our area. The young one was 75 and his friend was celebrating his 90th year with a fishing trip! Thinking back, Dad and I have had each others back, hunted together, and fished together for over 40 years. I watched him take his first muzzleloader deer, and he taught me to hunt, witnessing a lot of my firsts. Never underestimate the value of such things. If you understand that, then you already know what wall the biggest trophies hang on, and most of them do not have horns!
30 years later he still asks me if I want to take a real gun this time! He once cut a forked branch and attached it to my ladder stand. He hung the 264 on the fork just in case I might change my mind!
 
Opening day of our firearm season last year was one of those magic deer hunting days. The weather was nice. The rut was in full swing. The deer were moving.

The gas company had cut a clear strip along their pipeline where it runs across a little valley where I like to hunt. I had decided to sit along the edge of the clear-cut where I could watch down in and across the valley. The wind was perfect.

When I was still about 50 yards from where I was headed I saw the first deer of the day. A pretty decent buck. It was still before legal shooting time so he was safe.
The deer just kept on coming after I got situated. I wasn't sitting 10 minutes before the parade started. I passed easy shots on a couple of medium sized bucks and several does and bambis. Raised the gun on a few, cocked the hammer a couple of times before deciding to wait. Was sorely tempted by a button buck at 20 feet(I had my .44 Blackhawk with me too). Came VERY close to shooting a HUGE doe.

Then another doe ran across the opening and stopped just before entering the woods on the other side. She stood there for a second watching behind her and looking all sexy before taking off again. I thought to myself "here we go!" and brought my .50 GPR up.

Next thing I saw was this big buck hot on the does trail. I could tell he was a shooter right away. With no hesitation, I put the sights on his ribs and shot.

When the smoke cleared, he was standing there all puffed up like he wanted to know who just poked him. He actually took a step up the hill straight away from me and raised his head to look around. That's when I realized how big he really was. I thought I might have missed since he was just standing there looking... then he wobbled.

Relief that I had hit him well and disbelief that he was that big washed over me as he turned back to the trail he had been on, took 2 more steps and just folded neatly to the ground. I sat for a few minutes and just watched him before walking over.

70 grains of 2F Goex under a .490 ball had done the job at right at 100 yards. Broke a rib going in and another going out. Took out both lungs and exited the other side.

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KyFlintlock said:
Yes sir, some nice deer there guys. It will be here before we know it.

wess

Yup,
Your[url] right...Things[/url] will change here some after lAbour Day.Then the ol' juices will be a flowing.Even though there will be another month and a half before I will be able to hunt Deer...There will be every weekend spent in the camp with family and friends and that's just almost as good as hunting.....Almost.... :wink:
 
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Well I don't have much to add as far as BP kills, at least not big ones (do a thread on big BP misses, however, and I'm there :redface: ). Do have some nice archery kills on mulies and whitetails and sika, and with rifle killed a bear (first legal bear in MD in 51 years, a few seasons ago, was on every dang news coverage in the country for that one!), but my best tale to date wasn't even my kill.

My Dad has always wanted a nice mulie, in fact he's the reason I got hooked on them, but he'd never had a shot at a good one in 4 bow trips out west. The past 5 years I've been cooking for two months each season at an archery camp in N Dakota, killed some brutes, and finally got him to come out while I was there. Last November I got him in camp and had him on deer every day, he finally shot a big 5x5 on Thanksgiving evening. he and I spent the whole next day tracking it, finding it and hauling it out down the next canyon/wash and back to the ranch road. One of the best father/son moments we've ever shared.

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