Our Outfitter

This deer came in shortly after first light

I hunted a new area this morning. It was a small patch of trees in the middle of the sandhills. Right at first light a doe followed by a little 8pt were within 50 yards of my stand. The doe winded me and that was the precursor for things to come. Every deer from that doe, until 10:00 AM came from my downwind side, hit my scent, and whirled away. Nearly every doe snorted which didn't help matters. At 8:15 AM three does caught my scent, blew, and ran away. As they ran I caught a glimpse of a superb buck leaving with them. He must have been following them but I never did see him until he busted out. If the wind was right, they would have came in.

The wind blows it for this nice high-racked buck

All in all I saw about 30 deer this morning, several decent bucks and that one real nice buck. The wind was all wrong for me and only a small buck with 2 broken horns came within shooting range. They are really starting to rut hard now and the next few days are going to be good.

A nice view from my afternoon stand

For the evening hunt I went back to the same spot I sat in yesterday morning. At 5:00 PM a buck tending grunt caught my attention and I watched a pretty nice 8pt chase a doe several hundred yards out. Nothing happened after that until 2 immature bucks came in beneath my stand. It was right at the edge of shooting light so I started to get my gear together. The two bucks were 20 yards away and they started to get nervous. A bigger buck came out of the trees in back of me, then a doe, then 5 more bucks. Like 0-60 in ten seconds I went from no action to deer chasing deer everywhere. It was like nothing I had ever seen before! In ten minutes I watched two bucks spar, a buck break a small tree, a snort wheeze, and nonstop chasing of these two small does, and every buck in the vicinity. It was mayhem. At one point a small buck caught my movement in the tree and began stomping and snorting. Instead of clearing every deer in the area, a bigger buck seemed to get mad at the commotion and ran in to kick his butt. It was fun, but it all happened too late for any shots with the bow or camera.

Dan fared a little better - sort of. He had a magnificent buck come in just under his stand and began feeding. Dan believes the deer would go 170 inches. But there was a little branch in the way so Dan tried to compensate for it and repositioned himself to clear the obstacle. That caused him to shoot high and his arrow narrowly missed right over the top of the great buck's back.

Dan's Buck shortly before the shot
Watch a video of Dan's Shot

Walking away view of the great buck

That's L for "Loser"