Deer Hunting Stories | Whitetail Hunting

Whitetail Hunting: The Buck That Got Away

Reader Submitted on 10/3/09

I headed out bowhunting thinking that the cool weather might make for some great whitetail hunting. I had a 2.5 year old spike buck come in Saturday morning walking down a cross-fence on our property. He walked within bow range and shot at him at 18 yards. As luck would have it, I hit a wire on the fence and the arrow went straight up into the air!

At this point, I’m thinking, “Man, what’s the chances of that?” Well, the young buck calms back down and starting feeding on some protein pellets I had thrown out. He then gives me another shot, this time slightly quartering away and 30 yards out. The shot looked good, so I let one fly! Just before the arrow gets there, the spike jumps and it sticks him about half way back and high on the boy.

I watched him run across the pasture and into the woods along the creek, with my arrow sticking out of him. I knew it was not a great shot, so I gave him 2 hours and then me and my hunting buddies went looking. We found my arrow where the buck went into the creek and followed a blood trail for about 75 yards. The blood trail was pretty steady, but then it just stopped at the creek bed where he crossed.

We looked most of the day Saturday for that spike and never found anything. I have felt like crap the rest of the weekend just wondering whether he is still alive or not. I assumed it would happen sooner or later while whitetail hunting with a bow, but it sucks losing a buck. I just wonder if he will be able to shake it off or what.

Deer Hunting Joke: Search for the MONSTER Buck

We used to deer hunt with a guy that always went way overboard with what ever he was doing, and whitetail hunting was no different. To make matters worse, this guy would talk non-stop about the huge bucks that he was hunting, yet he never killed anything. A good friend of mine had found a mule deer shed in Colorado with an astounding 34 inch main beam and a 16 inch tine and a 12 inch tine on it, so the idea was hatched.

A fellow hunter in our camp was very good at carving, so he carved us a huge deer track that was attached to a long pole. You can see where this is going. The footprint was an inch longer than any whitetail buck track that anyone has even seen. So we had the huge antler and the huge track, our deer hunting joke had legs (literally).

So the huge shed was left within 20 yards of his deer stand, and it took him several hunts in that stand before he even noticed it. I mean, really? Open your eyes, dude! To sweeten the pot, we made rubs on trees that were 18 to 20 inches in diameter and several scrapes that were 4 to 5 foot across. And, we of course lots of HUGE deer tracks.

This guy obsessively hunted what he called the world record 6 point the entire season before he received a tip on where his monster whitetail buck could be found. Needless to say, he got a lot of whitetail hunting in that year, and we got a lot of laughs. And he took it pretty good, too. That kept him quiet for a little while.