Hook: "Better to be Lucky than Good"

A moniker that is often used by a good friend of Nick and I, Ethan Shetler: "It is better to be lucky than good".

This would later become the scenario after the tracking odyssey that was from a buck we now call 'Hook'.

On the evening of the 14th I am sitting in the Boxelder stand that Rachel shot her buck with a slew of turkeys out in front of me. I feel my phone in my pocket buzz... I knew Nick and Dad were in Guthrie Center for the evening. I pick up and Nick tells me he hit another brute from the same stand as last year. Last year the buck went 40 yards and tipped over. This time it went a bit differently.

"I hit a big one. Another big 8 but this one has a lot of trash. The shot was back...Way back."
- Poindexter


"What happened?"- Me

"It was a 45 yard shot and he was kinda walk running and I didn't blat him to stop..."- Poindexter

"Seriously. You are an idiot." - Me

"Yup. I know. It's a dead deer and we will have to come back in the morning."

We have come to learn that gut hits, though far from ideal, are fatal 100% of the time. You just have to play your cards right and either hope they bed down, or know what they are going to do and where they go.

Being that Nick is a deer killing machine, I had to razz him as much as possible. Never hurts to humble him a little.

We came up with a game plan and head out from Nick's place at 4:30am.

I told Nick I would find that deer.

Nick, Dad and I pile into the truck at 4:30 and head out. It was a long cold drive without a fan in that truck. Upon arrival at the field, Nick was just short of a complete mess. It was still too dark, so we waited in twitchy, anxious, darkness.

When light finally came we wasted no time getting to first blood. It took a few minutes but we eventually did find blood. It was very sparse, and on open field with a lot of exposed ground, it was difficult to find. We finally found the trail as he went around a finger of timber to the back side. The blood was surprisingly good as we enter the timber. We did however follow to a fence-line...

Down go the bows and over we went.

We tracked for another 200 yards before we came to another fence. We knew he was hurting when he 90-ed the fence and followed it straight up to a gate opening. At the gate he crossed into a vast prairie on a ridge...

It took us almost 15 minutes to find blood from that gate. At that point the mood was rather disheartened. We followed blood for another 200 yards for roughly an hour.

When we found the first bed we knew it would get tougher, and with only smears and flecks it was all we could do to not go cross-eyed. We were yet again at the crest of the prairie and we found the arrow. This deer had carried the arrow on a 600 yard loop and it was intact except for the broadhead which had twisted off cleanly. The blood after that was borderline impossible to follow.



"Gentlemen. We have a dead deer."

Dad's words were music to our ears that almost didn't seem possible. At the edge of the wood-line and prairie was a gigantic buck laying on his side.

As we walk up on this beast is when it takes a dark turn.
Yes he was down, but he was not done. Chest heaving and a head that tries to come up when we get close. This is the unfortunate part of making a poor shot. There are too many unknowns and poor circumstances.
We proceed with caution as the set of head gear on this thing would ruin someones day in a hurry. I handed Nick my knife and we finish off the large buck.
The whole ordeal was humbling for all three of us, but in the end we have a magnificent animal harvested by our hands.

Nick's shot was as poor as we thought. It enter just in front of the left rear flank and exited out of the center of the right flank. Now I am not one for product placement, but if it were not for the large 3-blade Rage broadhead, this saga would have been written far differently.

 I told Nick to smile and at least pretend like he was having fun, but he was still a little in shock from the whole ordeal.

When we turned him over, as this fall's trend seems to show, someone else tried their luck at harvesting this buck.

 Later inspection would show that this was LAST seasons wound. The shoulder blade grew around the arrow shaft and it appeared to have dissolved and absorbed the broadhead.

Even though the drag was 90% downhill, this thing was a mammoth. Nick and I were gassed by the time Dad took these photos:

 Once we got him to where we could drive the truck right up to him, we set up for real pics.

It is always a gift to be able to harvest such a majestic animal. We strive to make the cleanest and most humane kills, but that does not always go as planned. What we have done when things do go poorly is everything possible to find and retrieve it. We owe it to the animal as we have taken it's life in the process.

Congrats Nick.



Stay Tuned

Lucky: The Tale of a Backyard Buck

This has remained one of the greatest deer rut seasons I have seen since I started hunting. The activity was consistent and honestly most of the time frequent. With the coming of a cold snap, the ability to hunt did however become more of a hardcore hunter's game. There were a few days after work that I was able to get out but the cold bit, and it was tough to keep motivated.

On the afternoon of the 11th, I just short of begged Rachel to let me go out. Not only did she say yes, she asked if I would take her as well. I was dumbfounded as it was 23 degrees and breezy. There was still snow on the ground... Nevertheless I had her collect her gear and out to the field we went.

With the fall progressing as it did, it was not expected that either Rachel, nor Nick was going to be able to hunt at all this fall. Because of this, we only had a few stand put up and we were booted from the area I fell out of the treestand awhile back.

We headed to Nick and Lisa's place near Madrid and went right back down to the creek bottom that has treated me so well in the past. With the wind swirling a bit, there was only one viable stand and I knew I had to get Rachel into it. The boxelder stand.

After getting her settled I doubled back into a short stand on a steep incline up against the ravine face. I was pretty much cursing the deer woods all evening. There was no vibe, all magic was gone, and I had not seen, nor heard a critter all evening. My mind was playing tricks on me and I swear I heard a shot. The voices in my head were so loud I swear I could hear people talking in the woods.

It then occurred to me that there was a voice. I was petrified that maybe someone walked in on Rachel. I had my phone in my hand all evening and I pulled it out to see 'Rachel McWifeington' scrolling across my screen. IT NEVER BUZZED...

I open my phone and I can hear my wife from 150 yards away.

"WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER YOUR PHONE!!!!"

I told her to stop yelling and at this point assumed she had shot one. She thought she had made a marginal shot and it ran towards me. I was cursing myself for not keeping my eyes peeled and was now worried sick I missed it and had no idea where it went. I got out of the stand as quietly as I could and double far from his possible path to get Rachel. We checked where the shot was and I will never know how she threaded the shot. She got LUCKY. I found blood and it was fair, and 80 yards ahead was Rachel's arrow with lit lumenock. We backed out and waited at the house.

We conversed with Nick and Lisa for a few hours, and even enjoyed some pizza and movies, but I could tell Rachel was about ready to beat my head in. She does not fair well waiting after marginal shots. We called upon Ethan Shetler for some firepower backup and once he showed up, we collected our things. As we were headed out the door a vehicle came to a screeching halt at the end of Nick's driveway, and we see flashlights bobbing around the ditches. We figured someone was popping shots from there truck but it ended up being some po-dunk kids with a beater van, and the rear driver tire completely came off of the van. 30 minutes of Ethan stealing lugs from other tires and they were on their way...

When we finally got out there we found the blood trail and got to the arrow. Good blood on the arrow, but the deer went straight uphill which is never good. When we crested the hill there was a doe standing not 30 yards from us. She was so dumb we started questioning whether or not that was our deer, but Ethan went on ahead and verified that it was indeed just a doe. At this point our blood trail was poor. Ethan quartered on ahead of us while we tried to figure out his path.

"Well looky here folks we have a dead deer!"-Ethan Shetler

Laying in the bottom of the deepest, darkest ravine is a dandy 9pt buck.

 We decided it would be best to get him out of the ravine and in a more suitable area for better pics, and a better gutting area.
Ethan and I dogged him out of there but I thought it was going to kill us both. It was all downhill, but we were humping him over logs, and rock drops and ponded areas before we found the creek. Then we had to get him over that shear edge.
Once we got him in place it was picture time.

We thought it was funny how the men stood around with their celebratory cigars, while the women gutted the deer.

 Rachel's hit in the middle of the middle somehow managed to fine liver, paunch, and a nice star punch right through a lung. Again LUCKY.

 While quartering the buck from the hang post on the deck, we discovered another thing. We knew there was a previous wound on the deer right behind the shoulder opposite of Rachel's entry shot. It looked like someone else had tried their luck at harvesting this buck but had failed to do so. Upon inspection I found small fragments of lead and copper plating. It appeared someone tried the shoot him with a muzzleloader and we could not figure out why it was not a fatal shot. Again, LUCKY. For obvious reasons we decided Lucky was this bucks name and it couldn't have worked better. I was planning to sit in that treestand. I would have shot that buck. It will look much better on the wall with Rachel's name on it.


Stay Tuned

Weekend Camp in Southern Iowa

November 7th and 8th I was invited to hunt on a property in Southern Iowa owned by an uncle of Michael Parker. I had planned on hunting as hard as I could for as long as I could but the conditions were not conducive. After meeting with his uncle and going over trail cam pics, it was decided that there was really only one buck they wanted to be passed on, and that was a 140-145" non-typical 2.5 year old called 'Splits'.

First morning hunt I just biff an opportunity at a 150" clean ten. Not ten minutes later Splits makes his debut. 25 yards broadside but moving. I pass. A few more nice bucks take a trail just out of range before he comes back 30 minutes later. Splits proceeds to stand in front of me for 15 minutes at 10 yards...The kicker? He comes back an hour later and does the same thing...

Michael filled one of his two doe tags, but shot two.

We ended up jumping one of them as the shot was very poor. We would not recover this deer before the coyotes got to it.

Evening hunt Michael sent his climber with the ladder stand and we sat tandem. We had a shooter 8 pt come through and a shot just never cleared itself so no arrow launched.

We saw 70 turkeys in the field behind us

Along with a bruiser tending his does

Saturday morning hunt we struggled as the wind was so bad there was nothing happening.

 When we got back to camp, there was a fat woodchuck sitting on his dirt mound of the old farmstead foundation. I put the .17 to work.

Breakfast and naps ensued. Michael went and found his doe but the coyotes were quick to the carcass...Michael would inevitably hit a deer on the road running into town for ice.

Evening hunt Saturday again Michael joined me tandem in the stand. We would have another encounter with a beautiful buck.

This buck was a 140" 7 pointer that Michael had missed earlier in the year and the landowner had pics and a few encounters with.

 He came in, again, just out of range. 45 yards is just too much of a poke through the timber. We would not see another within range but we did watch a monster in the field behind us at about 175 yards. This was another giant Southern Iowa buck.
I would leave camp happy I was invited, but hungry for another chance. As long as Michael Parker (and my wife) lets me come down, the landowner said I was welcome back.


Stay Tuned