The thermometer outside my kitchen window read 59 degrees on Thursday morning and opening of bow season is only a couple days away! Wow, this is looking good already!

Saturday has finally arrived and when the alarm rang at 5:30AM, I had already been awake an hour or so. I wasted no time in climbing out of the bunk and headed for the kitchen window. 70 degrees – well, I guess that’s still pretty good considering we had a couple of 100+ days this week. I’ve been waiting for this day since season closed last January and even a heat wave won’t stop me.

After a quick breakfast of awful waffles (frozen), I gathered my gear and headed to the woods. The stand I chose to hunt this morning was a new one and I would be the first to hunt it. I’ve been watching this spot all summer and have trail camera pictures of a couple of pretty nice bucks, lots of hogs, and dozens of turkey.

As usual, I planned to video tape my hunt so I arrived at the stand plenty early to give my self time to set up the camera equipment and let the woods settle down before daylight. An overnight thunderstorm had dampened the ground and my approach to the stand was silent. The wind was perfect and blowing toward the only direction that deer could not approach since my stand sat on the edge of a deep creek with vertical banks in this part of the ranch.

The clouds leftover from the storm made the sun seem especially slow to arrive but when it finally began to peek above the horizon, the woods came alive with all the sounds I’ve missed since last season. It took about a second to remember why I love this game so much.

The trail to my stand was covered in deer and hog tracks that had been made during the night after the rainfall. With no moon and a thunderstorm last night, I was hoping the game would have laid low and would be ready to feed come daylight, but the tracks proved that they had been on the prowl during the night.

Apparently, they got their fill and were using the morning hours to catch up on their sleep as I didn’t see a single animal all morning.

At the predetermined time, I switched on my walkie-talkie and waited for my hunting partner to call and check in. Right on cue, he called and let me know that he had just shot a doe and was about to get down and look for it. Since nothing seemed to be happening at my stand, I decided to join him in the search and headed toward his stand.

After finishing the tracking job we headed to camp for some lunch and then off to another spot on the ranch where my partner had seen some nice bucks in the distance from his morning stand.

The ground under the oak trees where he had spotted the bucks was littered with live oak acorns and deer tracks. Since we already had a stand in place from previous years, he quickly decided this would be the place for his afternoon hunt.  We left there and went a short distance to another stand along the edge of a grain field and an abundance of tracks there too gave me all the reason I needed to hunt there this afternoon.

I climbed into the 12 ft ladder stand at 5:00PM and set up my gear, nocked an arrow, and hung the bow in place to wait out the rest of the afternoon. It didn’t take long for the show to start as I watched several deer and turkeys filter into the grain field, but unfortunately – all at a distance.

As I watched the parade, I caught movement to my right along the trail below my stand. It was bobcat! A big beautiful one with wonderful markings! The cat was on the opposite side of the stand where I had expected anything to approach so both I and the camera were out of position.

Luckily, a steady wind was making enough noise to mask the sounds of my movements and I managed to get the camera turned and trained on the trail and reached for my bow.

A quick glance to make sure the bobcat was in the viewfinder and I came to full draw and made a little “mouse squeak” against the back of my hand with my lips and stopped the cat.  As the cat moved his head to look for the invisible mouse, I settle my sight pin on him and touched the trigger on my release. The hit was perfect and the big bobcat dropped in his tracks!

I took a moment to let my heartbeat and breathing get back near normal and then descended the stand to get a closer look at my trophy. He is beautiful! One of the best marked cats I’ve seen.

By John Shelley

BHNA Pro Staff

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