“A farmer once said “I ploughed and planted but God brought the rain.” - Robert Morris
At church I heard a message a few weeks ago that did an incredible job of how God honors work. I’ve been guilty of saying “it’s all God” but that isn’t true or it would’ve been perfect! But it’s not all my effort either.
Somewhere in the midst of it, God honors the work and effort and blesses so it’s a mixture of both that I can’t fully understand, but hope to when I see Jesus face to face.
That being said, yesterday God blessed me and gave me my second best public deer.
I got up around 4am to make the drive and had a nagging cough. Nothing aggravates me more than coughing in a tree! I was running late but decided to stop and buy non drowsy cough syrup.
The forecast called for varying winds yesterday to be out of the north, yet the forecast changed completely to being out of the west, then shifted to East/SE. The normal way I would access this place would be from the south but I was paranoid that buck would be bedded somewhere along my access route so I parked at the other end of the WMA so I could make a north access to where I wanted to be.
With the drought, I had thrown a game camera up over a water hole in September and had some pretty good bucks on camera, but not the deer I wound up taking.
Anyhow, as I started my hike in the sun was up and luckily with it being midweek the parking area was empty because I was bumping deer like crazy. It was a 2 mile hike in, one way, according to OnX and after about a mile I was freezing! My truck read 36 in the parking area, but I swear it felt colder than that!
I wanted to wait for the wind to settle a bit and let morning rising thermals for their thing, so I sat down under a tree to glass a field. As the sun came up I started to warm up and thought “well I’ll just take a little nap”.
I woke up and looked at my watch… 11:45am [emoji23]. I felt like the laziest hunter ever. I dropped the milkweed at that point and the wind was still swirling some so I headed to my intended spot. Once I got in there, I couldn’t decide where to setup. I had a bowl, a terrace, and a dry creek bed. The creek bed had log jams on each end and the bowl formed a natural funnel, so I figured at the very least I could turn this into an observation sit if nothing else because I had a field I could glass. I knew does had been using that field for bedding in the past and figured a buck would scent check it from the downwind side. I didn’t have any scrapes or rubs to go off of that really told me to hunt there.
So I finally find a hackberry on the terrace. After using my little hand saw to carefully remove the poison ivy on it, I climbed it with a single climbing stick. So I’m a whopping 8-10ft high, at most. But the terrace helps. I got setup right at 1pm.
2pm rolls around and I get an armadillo hanging out. No matter, I like the cover noise for my danged cough!
At this point I’m jacking with my camcorder and my camera arm when I start to hear something besides that armadillo. Also, I am nearly deaf in my right ear and I wear a hearing aid but I cannot locate sound since I have high frequency loss in both ears.
3:30pm I look to my left at that sound, and there it is. Tines! I start getting amped! But the thing is, my camera arm is so far on my right I can’t swing it around to film him so I literally just turned the thing on and pointed it in that direction and hoped for the best!
I grab my bow in my left and my rangefinder in my right and I am ranging like crazy. The bottom of the terrace is 22. The opening I want is 35.
He stops and scent checks a spot on the ground and does his lip curl while scanning as he moved through the briar patch and cottonwood saplings.
At this point I came to full draw while he was facing away.
“Oh crap” I thought. He didn’t turn to go broadside, he’s coming straight at my tree! I didn’t realize it but there’s a super faint trail under the tree and I’m directly on it.
He comes up the trail and as he starts up the terrace, we lock eyes. It’s now or never. I aimed for the white patch of the throat and let it fly.
He wheeled at the shot, and gave a half-hearted bound as he ran off.
“What in the heck just happened???” I thought to myself. I told myself I’d give it 30 minutes. I wanted to celebrate, but I knew that shot could end very badly if I didn’t hit the vitals. I immediately texted friends and asked that they pray for the situation. I know prayer sometimes gets dogged for being a last resort, but I think God wants it to be our first resort. I’ve lost several animals over the years, including 2 nilgai cows, and it’s the kind of stuff that eats at me and keeps me up at night.
I finally get all my stuff packed up and start to bloodtrail him. Luckily I had a drop of blood early on so I was hopeful it would be short.
As I got to the edge of the dry creek, there he was. He probably went 80yds total. The mark you see on his neck was the entry, and the arrow went all the way into his guts. At the shot, I think he broke the arrow when he dropped his head to run. The hunt was over, but now the work began!
I called my dad to celebrate and to my surprise, he offered to come help drag him out! He’s in amazing shape for being 72!
I hiked out to meet him and got the cart. I got the deer field dressed at 4pm. I got back to my truck at 6pm. We started hiking back in at 7pm… and we got back to the truck at 10:45.
2 miles of high grass fields, creeks and river bottoms is a butt whoopin but it’s worth it when you get to have those kinds of moments with your dad.
My dad isn’t a big hunter. He was a professional bullrider and bareback rider for 22 years, but he’s tough. And though I didn’t wind up being much of a cowboy myself, my dad said he sure was proud of who I’ve become as a hunter.
I don’t know score but I’m guessing 140s? I’m not great at scoring. This would likely be my second best bow buck.
He field dressed out at 171 lbs.
If you read this far, thanks for being a part of my story and God bless you!
At church I heard a message a few weeks ago that did an incredible job of how God honors work. I’ve been guilty of saying “it’s all God” but that isn’t true or it would’ve been perfect! But it’s not all my effort either.
Somewhere in the midst of it, God honors the work and effort and blesses so it’s a mixture of both that I can’t fully understand, but hope to when I see Jesus face to face.
That being said, yesterday God blessed me and gave me my second best public deer.
I got up around 4am to make the drive and had a nagging cough. Nothing aggravates me more than coughing in a tree! I was running late but decided to stop and buy non drowsy cough syrup.
The forecast called for varying winds yesterday to be out of the north, yet the forecast changed completely to being out of the west, then shifted to East/SE. The normal way I would access this place would be from the south but I was paranoid that buck would be bedded somewhere along my access route so I parked at the other end of the WMA so I could make a north access to where I wanted to be.
With the drought, I had thrown a game camera up over a water hole in September and had some pretty good bucks on camera, but not the deer I wound up taking.
Anyhow, as I started my hike in the sun was up and luckily with it being midweek the parking area was empty because I was bumping deer like crazy. It was a 2 mile hike in, one way, according to OnX and after about a mile I was freezing! My truck read 36 in the parking area, but I swear it felt colder than that!
I wanted to wait for the wind to settle a bit and let morning rising thermals for their thing, so I sat down under a tree to glass a field. As the sun came up I started to warm up and thought “well I’ll just take a little nap”.
I woke up and looked at my watch… 11:45am [emoji23]. I felt like the laziest hunter ever. I dropped the milkweed at that point and the wind was still swirling some so I headed to my intended spot. Once I got in there, I couldn’t decide where to setup. I had a bowl, a terrace, and a dry creek bed. The creek bed had log jams on each end and the bowl formed a natural funnel, so I figured at the very least I could turn this into an observation sit if nothing else because I had a field I could glass. I knew does had been using that field for bedding in the past and figured a buck would scent check it from the downwind side. I didn’t have any scrapes or rubs to go off of that really told me to hunt there.
So I finally find a hackberry on the terrace. After using my little hand saw to carefully remove the poison ivy on it, I climbed it with a single climbing stick. So I’m a whopping 8-10ft high, at most. But the terrace helps. I got setup right at 1pm.
2pm rolls around and I get an armadillo hanging out. No matter, I like the cover noise for my danged cough!
At this point I’m jacking with my camcorder and my camera arm when I start to hear something besides that armadillo. Also, I am nearly deaf in my right ear and I wear a hearing aid but I cannot locate sound since I have high frequency loss in both ears.
3:30pm I look to my left at that sound, and there it is. Tines! I start getting amped! But the thing is, my camera arm is so far on my right I can’t swing it around to film him so I literally just turned the thing on and pointed it in that direction and hoped for the best!
I grab my bow in my left and my rangefinder in my right and I am ranging like crazy. The bottom of the terrace is 22. The opening I want is 35.
He stops and scent checks a spot on the ground and does his lip curl while scanning as he moved through the briar patch and cottonwood saplings.
At this point I came to full draw while he was facing away.
“Oh crap” I thought. He didn’t turn to go broadside, he’s coming straight at my tree! I didn’t realize it but there’s a super faint trail under the tree and I’m directly on it.
He comes up the trail and as he starts up the terrace, we lock eyes. It’s now or never. I aimed for the white patch of the throat and let it fly.
He wheeled at the shot, and gave a half-hearted bound as he ran off.
“What in the heck just happened???” I thought to myself. I told myself I’d give it 30 minutes. I wanted to celebrate, but I knew that shot could end very badly if I didn’t hit the vitals. I immediately texted friends and asked that they pray for the situation. I know prayer sometimes gets dogged for being a last resort, but I think God wants it to be our first resort. I’ve lost several animals over the years, including 2 nilgai cows, and it’s the kind of stuff that eats at me and keeps me up at night.
I finally get all my stuff packed up and start to bloodtrail him. Luckily I had a drop of blood early on so I was hopeful it would be short.
As I got to the edge of the dry creek, there he was. He probably went 80yds total. The mark you see on his neck was the entry, and the arrow went all the way into his guts. At the shot, I think he broke the arrow when he dropped his head to run. The hunt was over, but now the work began!
I called my dad to celebrate and to my surprise, he offered to come help drag him out! He’s in amazing shape for being 72!
I hiked out to meet him and got the cart. I got the deer field dressed at 4pm. I got back to my truck at 6pm. We started hiking back in at 7pm… and we got back to the truck at 10:45.
2 miles of high grass fields, creeks and river bottoms is a butt whoopin but it’s worth it when you get to have those kinds of moments with your dad.
My dad isn’t a big hunter. He was a professional bullrider and bareback rider for 22 years, but he’s tough. And though I didn’t wind up being much of a cowboy myself, my dad said he sure was proud of who I’ve become as a hunter.
I don’t know score but I’m guessing 140s? I’m not great at scoring. This would likely be my second best bow buck.
He field dressed out at 171 lbs.
If you read this far, thanks for being a part of my story and God bless you!
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