Thread: 12 - 12 - 17 the return for the one that got away .....

Well I was encouraged a bit the other day when I saw what I thought was a mature buck . Of course if you follow my adventures you know it was the one that got away . So here we go with a new adventure.
I go west on Tuesdays to a customer about 45 west of ft. worth , the place I hunt is about 45 minutes further past there . So I devised a plan that has worked before knowing I had a nice little north wind and around the high 30 degree temperature range on Tuesday morning .
Get up at 4 am and travel fast to make the bling by 6 am . I know I only have about 3 hours to hunt ,but you never know and wont for sure if you don't go . I get situated about 6 am and wait for shooting hours to begin at around 6:30 am . By 7:30 I have only ONE deer in front of me , a limpy little 4 point I see frequently and think well for sure I picked the wrong day
I told a bud that was fishing close by that I would try to get a big doe for his freezer and sure enough about 7:45 here comes 2 doe that I saw the other day , one being for sure a doe that was good to harvest . So I mull over should I wait a bit and see if something else comes ? Well sure enough here comes a doe group with about 8 to 10 in it headed straight for the 3 deer in front of me .
Then wouldn't you know it , the whopper doe in the lead gets all freaky and turns and runs back the way they came and of course my 3 deer run away with them .
So there I sit thinking well fine just fine its over and I should have taken the one I had rather than waiting on something else ,pretty sad to say the least . Then right at 8 am sharp out comes 2 doe from my left running across the field , then 2 more and then 2 more and for sure I am trying to get a bead on one . Next thing you know there "he" is trotting out into my area at about 110 yards out and slams on the breaks kind of quartering towards me . I think for about .001 of a second and settle my crosshairs on the base of his neck at his shoulder and squeeze ...KABOOM and down he goes !
Then it gets real , does pour out of the woods fast as fire and in numbers so fast I lost count around 20 and none slowed down enough to even think about a shot . So it seems he must have been running the show out there and I have yet to see numbers like this this year . It was common place to see herds like this in years gone by ,but not this year until today .
I dressed him took him to the locker plant and off to work I went with a jim dandy of a smile and a little something interesting as well , seems my 150 grain core lock ammo hit him right where I was aiming and traveled right across the top of one lung and hit the bottom of his spine and a rib on the off side and then came to mushroomed halt just under his thick old buck hide ...
pretty nice heavy bodied 18 inch wide 9 point he was ....
hope you enjoy the read and the photos

I don't know guys, I think tracking is one of best part of the hunt unless they die in the thicket or down a drop off. I still track my deer when they run off and die somewhere I can see them.