I have always been a public land hunter and a meat hunter. I've always wanted to shoot something with decent horns but that always took a back seat to putting meat in the freezer. Well this year both of my daughters killed a buck during bow season. My youngest killed her buck at 51 yards! Since the freezer was looking pretty good I decided that I was going to try and shoot something with either some size or some horns.
My place is not huge and my neighbors are set up on all sides of me, within feet of the property line, so the chances of a decent buck making it through the gauntlet is pretty slim. The weekend before Thanksgiving the wind wasn't right for my food plot so I went to the far end of the property and sat all morning and saw a spike. When I was walking out a big ole buck chased a doe through my food plot at Mach 3 and I didn't even have a chance to get my gun up. I had never seen him on camera before and figured I wouldn't ever see him again. I sat and listened for the crack of a rifle towards my property line and it never happened.
The next weekend I hunted over the food plot and sat for hours without seeing anything. I was about to call it quits when a doe came out in the powerlines about 500 yards away. I had no intentions of shooting her but I dialed everything up and was just seeing if I could stay steady at that distance (that would be a hard no). While messing around I caught movement coming out into the food plot and the buck I had seen the week earlier was quickly making his way across. I frantically started dialing everything back down to 100 yards and had to mouth bleat at him to stop him before he got out of the plot. I squeezed it off and he didn't run 50 yards. Biggest buck I've ever killed.
My place is not huge and my neighbors are set up on all sides of me, within feet of the property line, so the chances of a decent buck making it through the gauntlet is pretty slim. The weekend before Thanksgiving the wind wasn't right for my food plot so I went to the far end of the property and sat all morning and saw a spike. When I was walking out a big ole buck chased a doe through my food plot at Mach 3 and I didn't even have a chance to get my gun up. I had never seen him on camera before and figured I wouldn't ever see him again. I sat and listened for the crack of a rifle towards my property line and it never happened.
The next weekend I hunted over the food plot and sat for hours without seeing anything. I was about to call it quits when a doe came out in the powerlines about 500 yards away. I had no intentions of shooting her but I dialed everything up and was just seeing if I could stay steady at that distance (that would be a hard no). While messing around I caught movement coming out into the food plot and the buck I had seen the week earlier was quickly making his way across. I frantically started dialing everything back down to 100 yards and had to mouth bleat at him to stop him before he got out of the plot. I squeezed it off and he didn't run 50 yards. Biggest buck I've ever killed.
