DOUBLE LUNG
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- Oct 25, 2005
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Well to start off the season, Saturday morning I was sitting on the ground at the edge of a 10 year field. The morning started off great, with a bunch of deer movement. I was excited as to what was to come through out the week. I ended up seeing about a dozen does and 5 bucks, none of which were shooters. The biggest buck was around 110-115 8 pointer. There also was 2 pair of coyotes that came in through out the morning which was making the deer in the field kind of nervous. I put the cross hairs on both groups when they came in and it took everything in the world not to pull the trigger.
On Saturday night I was in a stand that was on the edge of a creek, soybean field and thick timber. As the night went on the movement was extremely slow except for the button buck that hung around for 2 1/2 hours. As soon as I was ready to get out of the stand the deer start coming into the field. I couldn't make out what they were but I am just guessing that they were all does. I also heard some light antler scuffling. So the first day of the season is over and I am happy with the results so far. There was great movement but the weather was a little to warm.
Sunday morning come around and now it is time to start checking some of these ponds around the area and see what is coming to them. I got set up right next to a tree in the fence line and get ready to watch the pond for most of the morning. Just as the sun is coming up I can see a doe 50 yards ahead of me walking to the timber as the sun comes up and shooting hours are among us I can see 2 basket rack buck standing down by the pond. They stand around for about 5 minutes and make there way back the timber. As the morning moves on I have a couple wood ducks come in and decide to hang out for the rest of the morning. Around 8:30 all of a sudden something riled up all the does that bedding about 200 yards from me. There were deer running in all directions like a chicken with there head cut off. I never had seen what made them all get nervous. So at 10:00 I haven't seen anything move for a little over an hour. Now Saturday morning is over.
Now it gets exciting! Jeff and I this summer set a bunch of stands over water ponds knowing that early season this is where you want to be. Before we went out on Saturday night he made the comment that the big boys will be coming to water just before shooting hours are over. And he was right. I get all set in the stand and take my post. The night started off pretty slow. I get out the range finder and check all of my distances. Front of pond 50 yards, back of pond 100 yard so on and so forth. All I was seeing and hear where the damn crow and squirrels. Then here come a button buck that decided that he needed a drink. He ends up making his way towards me and hangs out under my stand for a while then just heads into the timber. Then I hear some crutching behind and as I turn around there is a bobcat that is making his way through the dried up creek bed. Those are some beautiful and amazing animals. As the night goes on here comes a doe and a fawn that end up hanging out by the water until just before dark. As the light is thinning and I am thinking about packing up my stuff to head back to the truck I look to see a deer moving on the far side of the pond. I just get a glimpse of him and all I could tell was that he had antlers on his head and I have no idea on how big he was.
What I was hoping he would do is make his way around the pond and come to the close end of the pond. As I grab the Savage 10 ML 2 and lay it on my lap waiting to see what he was going to do. I can see he is doing exactly what I wanted. I pull the gun up to check out what he is and the first thing that I saw was that he had around 5 inch G4's and everything before that is taller. He is eating some grass and walking up the bank of the pond towards me. He gets just on top of the bank and he doesn't know it but he is dead to rights. Quartering towards me, I wait for him to put his head down to open up the front shoulder. The light is fading so I need to do something and I need to do it fast. As he puts his head down the 250 grain XTP bullet with 43 grains 5744 smacks him. He runs about 30 yards and stands there. As I am standing in the tree saying FALL OVER, FALL OVER. He starts to do the icky shuffle and falls over. AMEN BABY.
As he does a couple of last kicks (so I think) I reload just in case and start packing all my stuff. It takes about 10 mins to get out of the tree. Jeff heard the shot and is making his way towards me to see what I have put on the ground. As I walk up to the deer and get about 20 yards from him he gets up and takes off into the woods. As I stand in miss belief, my dream deer which I thought was a 150 10 pointer is running away from me. Jeff comes up over the hill a few minutes after my deer runs away from me and says so what did you shoot. I had to sound like a stuttering moron when he asked me that. I didn't even know what to say. As I finally spit it out, we check where I had shot him and where I thought he fell and there is no blood and no hair.
By this time nothing is making any sense. I shoot a deer, there is no blood, no hair, and he falls over, and gets back up about ten minutes later. As I am totally confused by this time on what just happened. We go to the edge of the timber to check for blood there and nothing. As we stand there we hear him get up and crash a little bit. So we did what we are suppose to do and backed out. You want to talk about not getting any sleep that night. As I explain the whole story to Jeff the first thing out of his mouth is that he is dead. This was pretty reassuring. Jeff had to work the next day so I ended going out there around 8:30 on Monday morning and started combing the area for any sign. I was out there for about a 1 1/2 and came up with nothing. As I go into town the discuss with Jeff on what to do, he tells me to meet him at the house in 30 minutes and we will start checking all the small water hole in this property to see if he is laying in any of them. As we start checking all the fingers and water holes we keep coming up with nothing. I started to lose faith and Jeff kept saying we are going to find him, he is in here somewhere.
After about 3 hours Jeff says to go to the north and walk it all down and he was going to go from the middle to the south. Jeff said I am betting that he was heading back to his bedding around and he is lying close to where he came from when we came to the pond. After about 10 mins I can here Jeff trying to get my attention. I make my way down there and Jeff is waiting for me. I ask him them great words of DID YOU FIND HIM and he tells me NO. AAAAAAAWWWWWWW, but he did find some blood. When we heard him get up the night before this must have been where he was laying and was the only place there was blood. After walking and checking trails for about 10 mins I hear Jeff yell my name and say I found him get over here. Thank you lord is all I was thinking. I get to Jeff and he is standing in the dried creek bottom. I get to him and ask him again, you found him and he says no I just wanted to get your blood pumping, he tells me that we are not going to be able to find him in here it is just to thick. Let's go back to the truck and try for another one. As I get around the bend of the creek I see the back end of a dandy buck. The look on my face when I turned around had to be priceless. The first thing I said was ARE YOU SERIOUS. Thanked Jeff probably every other sentence because without him I would have never found this deer. We haven't put tape on him yet but I really don't care what he scores. It was a great hunt with a great hunting partner and a lot of drama and no sleep involved hunt. The good lord was looking out for this small town kid and I loved every minute of it. Oh by the way the shot was on the mark and went through both lungs. He probably went about 200 yards from where I had shot him. Some of them deer just don't want to go down easy.
Travis Plathe
(DOUBLE LUNG)
On Saturday night I was in a stand that was on the edge of a creek, soybean field and thick timber. As the night went on the movement was extremely slow except for the button buck that hung around for 2 1/2 hours. As soon as I was ready to get out of the stand the deer start coming into the field. I couldn't make out what they were but I am just guessing that they were all does. I also heard some light antler scuffling. So the first day of the season is over and I am happy with the results so far. There was great movement but the weather was a little to warm.
Sunday morning come around and now it is time to start checking some of these ponds around the area and see what is coming to them. I got set up right next to a tree in the fence line and get ready to watch the pond for most of the morning. Just as the sun is coming up I can see a doe 50 yards ahead of me walking to the timber as the sun comes up and shooting hours are among us I can see 2 basket rack buck standing down by the pond. They stand around for about 5 minutes and make there way back the timber. As the morning moves on I have a couple wood ducks come in and decide to hang out for the rest of the morning. Around 8:30 all of a sudden something riled up all the does that bedding about 200 yards from me. There were deer running in all directions like a chicken with there head cut off. I never had seen what made them all get nervous. So at 10:00 I haven't seen anything move for a little over an hour. Now Saturday morning is over.
Now it gets exciting! Jeff and I this summer set a bunch of stands over water ponds knowing that early season this is where you want to be. Before we went out on Saturday night he made the comment that the big boys will be coming to water just before shooting hours are over. And he was right. I get all set in the stand and take my post. The night started off pretty slow. I get out the range finder and check all of my distances. Front of pond 50 yards, back of pond 100 yard so on and so forth. All I was seeing and hear where the damn crow and squirrels. Then here come a button buck that decided that he needed a drink. He ends up making his way towards me and hangs out under my stand for a while then just heads into the timber. Then I hear some crutching behind and as I turn around there is a bobcat that is making his way through the dried up creek bed. Those are some beautiful and amazing animals. As the night goes on here comes a doe and a fawn that end up hanging out by the water until just before dark. As the light is thinning and I am thinking about packing up my stuff to head back to the truck I look to see a deer moving on the far side of the pond. I just get a glimpse of him and all I could tell was that he had antlers on his head and I have no idea on how big he was.
What I was hoping he would do is make his way around the pond and come to the close end of the pond. As I grab the Savage 10 ML 2 and lay it on my lap waiting to see what he was going to do. I can see he is doing exactly what I wanted. I pull the gun up to check out what he is and the first thing that I saw was that he had around 5 inch G4's and everything before that is taller. He is eating some grass and walking up the bank of the pond towards me. He gets just on top of the bank and he doesn't know it but he is dead to rights. Quartering towards me, I wait for him to put his head down to open up the front shoulder. The light is fading so I need to do something and I need to do it fast. As he puts his head down the 250 grain XTP bullet with 43 grains 5744 smacks him. He runs about 30 yards and stands there. As I am standing in the tree saying FALL OVER, FALL OVER. He starts to do the icky shuffle and falls over. AMEN BABY.
As he does a couple of last kicks (so I think) I reload just in case and start packing all my stuff. It takes about 10 mins to get out of the tree. Jeff heard the shot and is making his way towards me to see what I have put on the ground. As I walk up to the deer and get about 20 yards from him he gets up and takes off into the woods. As I stand in miss belief, my dream deer which I thought was a 150 10 pointer is running away from me. Jeff comes up over the hill a few minutes after my deer runs away from me and says so what did you shoot. I had to sound like a stuttering moron when he asked me that. I didn't even know what to say. As I finally spit it out, we check where I had shot him and where I thought he fell and there is no blood and no hair.
By this time nothing is making any sense. I shoot a deer, there is no blood, no hair, and he falls over, and gets back up about ten minutes later. As I am totally confused by this time on what just happened. We go to the edge of the timber to check for blood there and nothing. As we stand there we hear him get up and crash a little bit. So we did what we are suppose to do and backed out. You want to talk about not getting any sleep that night. As I explain the whole story to Jeff the first thing out of his mouth is that he is dead. This was pretty reassuring. Jeff had to work the next day so I ended going out there around 8:30 on Monday morning and started combing the area for any sign. I was out there for about a 1 1/2 and came up with nothing. As I go into town the discuss with Jeff on what to do, he tells me to meet him at the house in 30 minutes and we will start checking all the small water hole in this property to see if he is laying in any of them. As we start checking all the fingers and water holes we keep coming up with nothing. I started to lose faith and Jeff kept saying we are going to find him, he is in here somewhere.
After about 3 hours Jeff says to go to the north and walk it all down and he was going to go from the middle to the south. Jeff said I am betting that he was heading back to his bedding around and he is lying close to where he came from when we came to the pond. After about 10 mins I can here Jeff trying to get my attention. I make my way down there and Jeff is waiting for me. I ask him them great words of DID YOU FIND HIM and he tells me NO. AAAAAAAWWWWWWW, but he did find some blood. When we heard him get up the night before this must have been where he was laying and was the only place there was blood. After walking and checking trails for about 10 mins I hear Jeff yell my name and say I found him get over here. Thank you lord is all I was thinking. I get to Jeff and he is standing in the dried creek bottom. I get to him and ask him again, you found him and he says no I just wanted to get your blood pumping, he tells me that we are not going to be able to find him in here it is just to thick. Let's go back to the truck and try for another one. As I get around the bend of the creek I see the back end of a dandy buck. The look on my face when I turned around had to be priceless. The first thing I said was ARE YOU SERIOUS. Thanked Jeff probably every other sentence because without him I would have never found this deer. We haven't put tape on him yet but I really don't care what he scores. It was a great hunt with a great hunting partner and a lot of drama and no sleep involved hunt. The good lord was looking out for this small town kid and I loved every minute of it. Oh by the way the shot was on the mark and went through both lungs. He probably went about 200 yards from where I had shot him. Some of them deer just don't want to go down easy.
Travis Plathe
(DOUBLE LUNG)
Congratulations on a great harvest.
