Public Land hunt

[Gerald]

Friday Oct 14….

Another cool front had come through the day before and the temp.was in the low 50’s that morning. The winds were calm and the overhead moon was just past full, so walking in before daylight was fairly easy.

I climbed up my tree and got settled in just as it was getting light….a little later than I planned. About 7:30 I heard an acorn hit the ground and the first squirrel was feeding in a nearby oak tree. All was quiet as the sun started to rise higher in the sky, until a squirrel started barking off in the distance. A little later I heard a Deer blowing….. ~ 300+ yards away. Then after a few minutes I hear the Deer blowing again ~200 yards away. Hummmmmm! I turned the “Can” call over a few times…. You never know, it might work.

The next hour passed with another squirrel barking and a “screech” like noise that I think was from an Owl. The wind started blowing a little, but then would stop for a while.

Then at 9:30 AM, I hear some leaves rustling noise coming from behind my tree. I heard the noise a couple more times and was not sure what was back in the thick brush. I stood up to look but can only see 15 yards. A couple minutes pass, and I spotted a deer headed my way. At first I could not see if it was a Buck or Doe, until it walked passed a spot where I could see that it had short antlers.

The Buck stopped just before coming out to an open spot and stood behind a large oak tree where I could only see just his head. The Buck was a 4 pt [3 x 1]. He stood there looking around and looked up towards me while I stood motionless ready to draw back my bow. When the Buck started walking, I drew back. As I aimed for the heart on the Deer, he was turning to head away from me. I quickly lined up my 20 yard pin and released the arrow.

As the Nockturnal nock flew to the deer….. I had the feeling that I had made a bad shot. As the Buck took off running, I could see the bright red light sticking out from the right hip and it looked like the arrow did not get good penetration. The deer ran 60 yards before I lost sight of it. All kinds of thoughts went threw my mind. Was it a fatal shot, would there be any blood to track the deer, would he run a long ways before it bedded down? I decided to give it 2 hours before starting the search.

After 30 min. I climbed down and quietly walked to see if there was much blood to trail. After searching the first 15 yards, I started finding some blood…. Much more blood than I expected. This gave me some hope. I then took the climber off the tree and walked back to my truck. After waiting a while, I got my cart [thinking positive] and headed back to start looking.

When I got back to the blood trail and followed it a little ways, I just had the feeling this deer was loosing too much blood from the Thunderhead’s damage to go far. Sure enough after 75 yards, there he was. I approached with arrow knocked, but the deer was dead. My thoughts went to “where was the arrow”? Then I looked under the right hip, and I could see the lighted nock and some of the fletching sticking out. The arrow flight was true to its mark [the heart] but it stopped a few inches short. The arrow just missed the leg bone going in. Two hours later I was headed home after making my second hunt of the year at Clear Creek WMA.