Fastest hunt ever!!
Where to start… The past 4 days I've been hunting hard in MD with my best chance at a good deer was waking up to a 130” 8-pointer at 45 yards walking away from me. That's what being sleep-deprived can do to you. I did end up with an awesome track from my pup Reese. I shot a big mountain doe that I hit back thanks to a stick deflection right before impact. Thinking it was a liver hit we gave the doe 3 hours to track only to jump up the doe 50 yards from the shot. Went back the next day and went on a track crawling through the thickest crap only to find the doe had backtracked and parished only 30 yards from where we jumped her. By far Reeses best track to date.
Fast forward to today. While in MD my cameras were showing several nice bucks checking scrapes on a ridge top that I haven't hunted yet. I decided to go after them this am. I was planning on being a decoy since the woods were so open. That was put to a halt when the wind changed.
I got to the spot and ended up getting in a tree that backed up to some hemlocks. With it being so open I got up around 30 feet facing the ridge that was about 20 yards away and about 10 yards above me with a bluff on the other side.
It's 630 and it's pretty quiet so I decided to slam the antlers together so anything in the area could hear it. Right after I turn on the camera and start doing an intro. About four words in I hear something coming my way. Turns out to be a big doe running down the ridge. Turn the camera to me again and I hear another deer. This time I see antlers. Grab the bow and turn the camera to the deer facing east. The sun is rising and it making the buck hard to see. He's messing with a scrape and then starts down the ridge after the doe and I throw a loud low grunt at him and he stops and looks my way. I pull back guessing the yardage to be 25 and put the pin on the glowing deer and let the arrow fly and it hit the buck a little high dropping him in his tracks (turned out to be 20 yards). I grab another arrow and finish him off. This is when the buck decides to push himself over a bluff and the buck ends up crashing down the mountainside.
I was excited yet frustrated knowing that I was going to have my hands full for the next couple of hours. I went down to check out the deer and he ended up being nicer than I thought. Went home to grab Reese and to get myself hyped up for a 200-yard drag uphill. The two hundred-yard verticle drag ended up taking me half an hour thanks to me for pushing myself because I had an 1130 hair appointment that my wife made for my son. The 1000-yard drag downhill was much easier. The Big 8 being run down also helped.
By far one of my fastest hunts yet it was an awesome one.
