I have been a member of the Women’s hunting club for 3 years and love reading about everyone’s hunting stories, ideas and wonderful friendships which have been acquired during this time.
I am sending in a picture to the club of the buck I shot this year.
Since the beginning of October I have been evening hunting a lot. We have a small forest that is close to city limits which makes it a passing zone for the deer to go from bedding area to feeding area. I have many ladder stands set up so that I can move from stand to stand depending on wind direction or movement of the deer. I have been following the doe’s, not seeing any mature whitetails, complaining to my husband that I haven't spotted anything worthy of shooting, he told me to continue hunting where the doe’s are. So I followed his advice (which I learned along time ago to do) and continued to sit in the stands with doe movement.
Our
Ohio
weather has been excellent this year, being warm and comfortable. On November 4, my husband was leaving for his annual golf trip to Santee South Carolina and I was heading out to the woods to hunt. Before I headed out we talked on the phone and he told me to shoot the big one and I told him with conviction that I would, never dreaming that evening this buck would grace my stand and give me a broad side shot.
Before heading out I talked with our son Corey and told him where I was going and he reminded me that he had a school dance at
6:30
and I needed to take him there. No problem, I can do this ( Nathan is at Wright State and not home from College yet so he is not able to take him) I am believing that this evening will be spent glassing the area's looking for the big one to hunt the next day so I don't imagine any complications.
I walked into the forest and set up in the old crossbow stand, for the youth hunters who can't pull back 40 ponds yet. I like this stand but you have to be extremely careful when hunting out of it because it has cross bars on the sides and in front, I have to hold the bow over the bars when making a shot, you can't even allow your arrows to touch the metal or you get a metallic sound which can be heard around the forest. Most men are tall enough this doesn't affect their shot but for anyone 5'6" and under your degree of difficulty is high.
The evening was very productive and I started seeing deer as soon as I entered the forest. Doe's and small bucks running together, the movement of the deer was different from the days before. I continued to let small bucks and doe’s accumulate around the stand then they would just run off. This went on for and hour or so. I tried to make a visual connection with these deer just incase I saw them again. As I was watching a small buck and 2 doe’s ran pass my stand and headed down the hill, they turned around and ran pass me, I looked and saw a basket rack 8 point behind me and watched it come under the stand, as it was walking passed I heard a crack, so I assumed there was another deer with him I couldn't see. It wasn't 5 minutes later when this big buck presented himself to me following the same trail as the 8 point. My heart was pounding and I watched him turn broad side, I pulled back the bow and released my arrow, watching his every movement looking for possible sigh that I had made a good shot. He jumped, ran 30 yards and stood still, I watched him at that spot for what seemed a long time then he just slowly walked around the ridge and I lost sight of him. I sat till dark then climbed out of the stand looking for the arrow. It is amazing that you are so hyped up that you have such a difficult time thinking straight that you can't locate the arrow you shot. I couldn't find it. It's dark, I have a big buck in the woods that I am hoping I can harvest but can't locate the arrow and I remember that I have to take my son to his school dance. Ok I put my priorities straight. First get out of the woods, second take Corey to his dance, wait for dance to be over then pick up Corey, go to my parents house and ask them to help Corey and I track the buck, go back and start with the shot and find the arrow if possible. So this is what I did.
I was running on nervous energy. My parents thought what they were doing was wonderful and I hope made them feel very special, I couldn't of found this wonderful buck with out all of my family helping me. It took us 2 hours and a slow walk over the ridge with flashlights to locate him. My mom immediately found the arrow broken in two, with signs that I had made a good shot, but no blood at all on the ground only a small spec on a tree. We walked the area over and over finding nothing so we followed the trail I remember him taking. Dad was trying to locate a concrete bunker on the ridge which is 6 feet deep so we would not fall into it when Corey yelled deer!!. There was the buck only 15 feet from us beside a fallen log, if Corey hadn't of been following Dad to go see what the bunker looked like we might of passed by him and never realized he was there. I immediately called my husband who was still traveling to S.C. and told him of my success. I know how proud of me he is. All my accomplishments are his also because he is the one person who has made this dream possible for me. Without his knowledge, passion for the sport and love for me, this buck would have never been harvested that warm November evening in
Ohio
.
I was wondering how we were going to drag this deer out of the woods. Dad had just had his knees replaced 12 months ago, but here he is a trooper helping me drag the deer as far as he could. Mom and Corey carried the equipment and tried to help find an easy way down. We did have to call on my brother Steve to help finish the job because of the nature of the woods and the steep slope. He never hesitated, jumping in his truck at
11:00pm
, driving over to help us. (Steve is a Strongman competitor and could have probably thrown the deer over his shoulder and hiked him out of there in minutes).
What a happy occasion this was with hugging and congratulations all around for this deer was shot by me but a little piece of everyone in the family contributed to the harvest of this impressive buck. This memory will certainly last a life time and maybe more.
We are continuing our hunt for quality bucks since Randy, Nathan and Corey still need to fill there tags.
Shot straight,
Lou Ann Weisenstein
