A Hot and Windy Situation Pt. 2

I only had about 150 yards worth of woods to cover the entire still-hunting route. Still-hunting is probably my favorite way to hunt on a windy afternoon, even with a bow. Typically, I carry a little fold-up tripod chair, which I can easily snap to a belt loop until I need it. If I hunt my way through a likely area, I can stop and sit a while before moving on.

That's exactly what I'd done Saturday afternoon. I'd been hunting a couple hours, covered about 100 yards, and stopped to sit twice. With the last magic hour of daylight approaching, the standing corn bordering the back side of the wood lot began to take on an amber hue. I eased my way a little closer to it, where I could watch the small, open area between the corn and the trees, and took a seat for a third time, planning to sit there for the duration. Perhaps a nice doe would step from the woods to the corn, or the corn to the woods, and I could at least get some meat in the freezer. At this point, I assumed Michelle was watching deer in the picked portion of the field.

It's funny how fast things can happen in the whitetail woods, particularly given the agonizingly slow pace I'd experienced the week before. But I no more than settled into the seat when I realized a tiny, leafy limb was blocking a good shooting lane to the edge of the corn. I reached up to break it off, and just as I broke it, a buck walked across the opening, out of the corn and into the woods, not 40 yards away. I didn't have time to see much, but I could tell his antlers were well past his ears if nothing else.

Since I'd been sitting for all of 30 seconds, my old Mathews was across my lap, and my hip quiver was pushed behind me, out of the way. I debated briefly on what to do, but, with a hard breeze in my favor and a relatively small area in which the buck could go, I decided to slip forward to try and get a better look.

The deer had stepped into the woods and, lo and behold, behind a nice, green thicket that ended about 50 yards up the trail. I was on one side of the thicket; the deer was on the other side. So, I slipped to the end of it and knelt down to see what would happen. The buck soon stepped into sight, well beyond the other end, but still only 60 yards away. He began feeding under a black oak, oblivious to me.

I took a couple steps forward, and decided to unbuckle my hip quiver, since it was flopping about and generally in the way. With the buck's rear end to me, I waited for him to put his head down before easing into a better spot, dropping to my knees and waiting.

Carefully, I pulled my binocular up for a better look at the buck's rack. He was well past his ears, maybe 16 inches wide, and had what appeared to be decent tine length on one side. His left side was a little screwy. I could tell he had at least one broken tine, maybe more. In classic bowhunter fashion, I debated with myself, "Is that really what you want to fill your one Kentucky tag with? You know there are nicer deer around." Then, it was, "Dude, be realistic here. You messed up a huge buck right out of the chute last year, and then scrambled around all season just to get a couple does for the freezer. You've got Tennessee deer to hunt in two weeks, and it's a long drive up here."

It doesn't take a whole lot of argument here. I decided to shoot, should the buck give me the chance. And things were looking promising. During the course of my inner turmoil, the animal began ambling toward me, and as it crossed to within 45 yards, I clipped the release to the loop and waiting for an opening. The rest? I'll leave that for tomorrow.

-Will