I had finally arrived at Buffalo, Missouri to hunt on my brother’s land. After missing opening weekend due to a back injury, you can imagine my excitement and anticipation for my first hunt of the season. Soon after I got there about 8:00 pm, I unpacked all my gear, laid out what I wanted to take out with me the next morning and lay down about 10:00 for a restless night’s sleep. My alarm went off at 4:45am and I jumped out of bed, got dressed and set out for my stand which was within walking distance of my brother’s house. Since I had arrived at my stand about an hour before daylight with the temperature in the 50’s, the cool Missouri morning temperature was much cooler than I was used to. For the first hour after the sun came up, the only entertainment was watching the squirrels playing in the multitude of fallen leaves. At 7:45, I was still hearing the sound of rustling leaves which I assumed was the squirrel’s continuation of their morning games. I looked in that direction anyway and to my surprise, I saw an 8-point and a 9-point buck walking right toward my shooting lane. Just as the 8-point got into my shooting lane, about 8 yards away, he stopped. He looked right at me for what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was probably no more than a few seconds. He quickly realized that there was something wrong with the tripod being in his woods. He ran about 20 yards away and stopped again. He was a little more than quartered away and was continuing to survey the situation. When he turned his head, I drew back my bow. The 9-point was still in the bushes, so I lined up my 20 yard pin on the 8-point, all the while trying to keep myself from having a heart attack. I squeezed the release and watched the flight of the Easton arrow as it hit it’s mark. The 8-point bolted to run and with the end of the fletching clearly visible, both deer ran off into the woods. Within seconds, a third deer that I hadn’t seen until then, ran across my shooting lane to follow them. My attention immediately shifted from watching the 8-point that I had just shot to surveying the massive horns of the third deer. The deer had a tall wide rack with 12” G2’s that forked and multiple kickers on the left side. At that point, I was extremely grateful that archery season lasts until January 15^th!!   Since I had hit the 8-point further back that I would have preferred, I knew that I needed to wait for a while before trying to track him. Within 5 minutes, I spotted three does coming in my direction. They never made it close enough to take a shot, but they did help me to pass the time while waiting to go look for the 8-point. About 30 minutes after I had shot, I came down from my tripod to begin tracking. I went to the spot where I had shot him to look for a blood trail and found no blood anywhere. I started walking in the direction that I had last seen them headed. They had ran towards a dry creek bottom covered in rocks. After I had followed the creek bottom for about 60 yards, I found a heavy trail of blood crossing the creek bottom. Forty yards later, I found the buck.

He weighed in at 170 lbs. with 8 typical points. 

What a great way to start the 2004 deer season!!

Ronnie Bakkum

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