Another warm day in the treestand, which will be my last day of rut hunting for 2021. The following day we are heading to Western Nebraska to go pheasant hunting.
Lots of todo's in the middle of the day don't allow for an all day sit in the stand.
The morning sit was very uneventful, but in the evening the action picked up.
First a spike buck came through, later on the same trail a 2.5yr old eight point buck walked through searching for does.
Then a few minutes before the end of shooting light a doe slowing crept in on the hillside in front of me. Then I saw a flash of antler behind her and heard a buck scraping the ground behind some thick brush. A look through my binoculars led me to believe it was a small yearly buck that was going to get a pass. As darkness continued to fade I was more intently listening to sounds of steps behind me, when I got a glance of the first buck as he appeared from behind the bush following the doe.
It wasn't a small buck as I'd thought, but rather a big 10 point and he was moving quickly to catch up to his doe. I grabbed my bow, stood to draw and squeezed off an arrow as a stopped in a clear lane. He must have seen me draw and been alerted, because he dropped at the shot and spun out of there. The arrow hit high and broke off as he started to run. I recovered the broken arrow to find only about 2 inches had penetrated and no blood was found on the trail he ran away on.
Several days later I got a trail cam photo of the big buck back at his routine of chasing does, leading me to believe he may make a full recovery.
If I can pattern a late season buck on the trail cam I may spend a few days bowhunting in January. Otherwise, it's tag soup for 2021.
#bowhunting #archery #deerhunting #illinois
16 окт 2024
