My story is not nearly as elegant or manly as AC's. I had to work until 5, but with sunset at 7:37pm I thought I could slip in a quick hunt if I was careful. ...but it's opening day and I'm not NEARLY as organized as I should be. Went home, packed up the Bowbat, threw it and my climbing stand in the truck and headed to the WA. Decided to hunt a little further away because (a) it's loaded with does, (b) it's reasonably close to the truck, & (c) the forecast changed calling for a weird switch to an ENE wind about an hour before dark. En route I realize I left my phone at the house. Oh well, I'm not a millennial, I can survive without my phone for a couple of hours.
Because of the wind from the East I looped way around a little block of timber hoping to avoid any deer that might be poking their head out a little early. I mean it's 86*, so they shouldn't move until last light, right? Wrong. I bump a doe less than 50 yards into my walk. But she's not overly concerned. She bounds away about 20 yards, turns to look at me, and then slowly walks away. I continue on. Right at my stand I bump another doe and her fawn. F me. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. Up the tree I go. This is a new stand for us so I get up the tree and am in the process of organizing things and screwing in my bow hanger when I look over my shoulder and a fawn is standing 15 yards away just looking at me... Not concerned, not scared, just sort of watching. I figure if there's a fawn there must be a doe... so I slip my bow out of the Bowbat, nock an arrow and get it on the hanger so I can begin the process of turning completely around with a deer watching me. Thankfully he's dumb and I do get turned all the way around, get my bow in hand and am ready to roll. I can see mama back in the timber just a bit. I don't think she saw me, but she knew baby deer had so she wouldn't come out. She did that little 2-3 bound "run" back into the timber and then slowly walked off to the East. Oh well, where there is one, there are more...
Fast forward about 10 minutes and those two slip out about 80 yards to my east into a nasty field of sericea. The deer hate that stuff because it's so thick. That's the reason we picked this tree because two sericea patches funnel the deer right in to our tree line. After watching them for about 15 minutes the doe suddenly decides it's time to move. Should be bad news for me because the food is further from me. ...but no, she turns and makes a bee line right for me. I think out of curiosity of "what did baby see over there?" So she comes in straight at me stopping every 10 yards to bob her head and peek around to see what she can see. When she's 25 yards out and directly behind a big limb I draw thinking she's going to swing to my left and up and out into the field. But no. She continues to come straight at me. I'm stuck at full draw for quite a bit before she decides she doesn't like me (I'm guessing she got a sweaty whiff of Sean) and turns to go back into the timber. Bad news babe. She has to cross a 5 yard opening exactly where she first appeared so I know it's 18 yards. She's at a quick walk but I don't stop her. I didn't settle the pin quite as low as I should have, and she ducked just a bit so I hit her a little higher than I would have liked but still very, very dead. She dashes into a thick, nasty hedge tree/bois d'arc filled creek bottom and I hear her crash about 20 seconds later. I consider sticking around to shoot another but then remember I still have to find her, clean her, drag her, drive 30 minutes home, and get her completely boned out before I go to bed because there is no letting her hang overnight.
The blood trail was a total b**ch for the first 40 yards because of the high lung shot and the fact that she ran through crazy underbrush where somehow most of the blood ended up on the bottom sides of the buckbrush leaves. Finally at about 40 yards it was just a leaky paint can trail from that point on. Cleaned, gutted, and getting ready to start the drag when my head lamp gave out. So I went to my backup flashlight. It lasted about 30 yards before it too pooped out. ...but at least I could flip it on, get enough light to figure out 15-20 yards of trail, turn it off, tromp that far, then flip it on again. I could only get about 3-4 seconds of light before it faded, but it was enough to get an idea of where I was headed.
So PSA to the OB. Change the batteries in all your gadgets in your pack because they haven't been changed in a year or more.
