After waiting for our day hunters to choose the stands they wanted to hunt on Friday, I decided to try a stand that was left open and that I had not hunted in several weeks. This stand was well hidden in small live oak tree with the help of several yards of camo netting and should give me a good chance to make a shot without being seen or heard. I had pictures of a couple of pretty nice bucks at this stand earlier in the season from one of our several trail cameras. Although none of our many hunters had spotted any of these bucks, I was sure they were still in the area.

I made my way to the stand, got settled in and waited for daylight. First light seemed to come quickly that morning since the full moon was already doing a pretty good job of illuminating the landscape. I sat quietly and waited for the feeder to scatter the morning ration of corn. A couple of young does drifted in before shooting light, but left shortly, after finding no corn on the ground. When the feeder did go off, a nice little 8 point buck came in. He was very skittish and left several times, only to return again for a few more morsels of corn.

Although it was obvious that he was an immature deer, and therefore not a “shooter”, I was looking him over closely with the binoculars when I saw him throw his head up and look to the south. I lowered the binoculars and caught a glimpse of what had drawn his attention. I saw a very nice buck making his way cautiously to the feeder. I took a quick peek at him through the binoculars to make sure he was a mature buck when I noticed something very odd about his rack. The antler on his left side was a perfectly normal 5 point, but the right antler was totally goofed up! He had a long, bladed main beam with a split G-1 and another broken point coming off the main beam as well as a broken point on the back side of the main beam just above the hair line. Another 7”- 8” tine branched off the main beam near the base - almost like a double main beam.

I quickly decided that I’d like this trophy if given the chance and moved slowly to turn on my video camera and take my bow from the hanger. The buck was very cautious in moving to the corn and almost bolted when another hunter fired a rifle shot in the distance. I’m sure it couldn’t have been more than a minute, but it seemed like an eternity before the buck stepped into my shooting lane. Even then, he took forever to give me the good shooting angle I was waiting for. “Come on boy, just one more step” I whispered to myself as I came to full draw. Finally, he moved his front leg forward and I settled the 20 yard pin of my sight low on his chest and just behind the shoulder and touched the trigger on the release.

Whack! I knew the shot was good when I saw the arrow fall out of the opposite side of his chest when he wheeled to run away. I think that’s when I took the first breath in several minutes. The buck ran about 75 yards and started to pace back and forth. I thought for a moment I would get to see him go down right there, but he regained his composure and walked off into the brush. I made a mental note of where he entered the brush and looked at my watch to mark the time and give him plenty of time to lay down.

After about 20 minutes, I eased down from the ladder stand and walked to the feeder to take a look at the arrow. Good blood from one end to the other and all 3 blades of the Rocket Sidewinder open gave me the good news I had hoped for. I went back to the stand and gathered my things and took up the blood trail. Although the buck went quite a ways, he was bleeding steadily and I never had any concern that I might not find him.

I trailed him through a small stand of post oaks and found him a few yards beyond, lying in the open pasture. I thanked God for my good fortune, took a few pictures and loaded the deer in the truck and headed back to camp.

The buck won’t make any record books, but this oddball is going on my den wall!

by John Shelley

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