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.



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