The Rocket Buck As most of you know, the day started off really rough at the Rowland Ranch yesterday. We had to bury a loyal and faithful dog that had been part of our family for 14 years. Rocket Dog has now crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. We had schedule to have our house pressure washed and that was going on at the same time so things were chaotic to say the least. All of our FB friends were more than comforting all day long and we seriously needed that. Paula and I went out for a late lunch after the guys finished the pressure washing job. Paula tried to relax with a glass of wine but I was antsy and feeling low. The woods seemed an appropriate place to go and grieve so I pack up and headed to the swamp after reading that very suggestion by brother John Albritton. Once I was settled in I relaxed some and closed my eyes and just reminisced and relaxed. To say I was drained would have been an understatement for sure. As the sun begin to sink, I started scanning the swamp, not really hard scanning but just watching and listening to the changing of day to night. I spotted what I first thought was a squirrel about 80 yards away on the other side of the swamp. I looked at the water in front of the movement and saw the reflection of a deer. From the reflection, I could tell it was a doe but she was a long way off. I just laid back in my climber stand and waited. Light was fading but there was plenty of time left and finally she began to cross but not exactly in my direction. I thought of calling but elected to just let it play out naturally. When I had first got up in my tree, I had lifted up a prayer saying that it had been an exceptionally rough day for me and that if God so chose to bring me a deer, it would help ease the ache in my heart. If the doe was to come in, so be it…if not….that was OK too. She was the first deer I had seen this whole season. When she was about half way across the swamp she turned in my direction. I waited until she was behind some trees and eased to my feet and readied my bow. She was still 60 or 70 years out but had begun to quarter in my direction. I had turned sideways in my stand to face her with my back to the South as she approached from the North. I had been standing for maybe 10 or 15 minutes when I heard the tale tell sounds of light foot steps behind me from the same direction that I had walked in. Before I had entered the thick part of the woods, I had stopped and sprayed some Doe in Estrous on both of my boot soles. Without looking I tried to convince myself that it was just a raccoon approaching and to stay focused on the doe and not mess up the opportunity. But the sounds were that of a deer walking and I knew the difference. When the doe out front disappeared behind a tree for a moment, I took the opportunity to look over my shoulder. That’s when I saw that the deer coming from behind me was a buck and he was following my boots tracks…step by step. He had also spotted the doe coming from across the swamp but there was nothing I could do to reposition as I was dead in between them and with both looking hard in my direction from both the front and the back…I could not chance moving. The buck continued walking and I could hear him turn toward my tree. I looked down through my stand bottom and watched him walk dead under me. I calmed my heart and my focus now shifted to the buck. He walked into some brush dead out in front of me and stopped with his butt facing directly at me. No shot and no angle and brush blocking his vitals. I briefly thought about taking a spine shot when he was at 18 yards but just as quickly dismissed that idea. I was wondering how I was going to draw without getting busted by the doe who was facing directly at me at 45 yards now. All I could do was wait. Finally the buck turned his head and neck out of the brush to try and get a better look at the doe. I tightened the tension on my release and got ready to draw. A second later he turned slightly to the right and now I could barely see his shoulder crease through the brush. It was now or never because if he stepped back straight, there would be no shot. I came to full draw without even looking to see what the doe was doing and found the magic triangle behind the shoulder but through the brush we call river cane. I would have to shoot through some light leaves to make this shot. When my pin settled low on the “V” I touched off the release and heard a satisfying Thwack! I was using Nockturnal Lighted Nocks on my afternoon hunts on my Black Eagle Arrows Carnivores but this was the first time attempting to take big game with my lighter draw weight Elite bow backed down. I could see my arrow nock shining bright red in the ground but I had no idea where the arrow hit…or missed. Did I get a pass thru or did I shoot too low? I was using Steel Force 100 grain, cut on impact broad heads for this hunt…..one of my all time favorites. I had lost sight of the buck within seconds after the shot and with both doe and buck now running in the same direction….I had to depend only on my hearing to tell me the story. They ran across the swamp back in the direction where the doe had come from…the one with two creeks and plenty of water. …always seems to be my luck…so I knew tracking would not be on blood alone. I heard a deer hit the second creek and the splashing continued longer than it would have taken to cross that little creek so I figured he had crashed right there. I stayed focused on the sounds as things went quiet. A couple of minutes later I picked up my cell phone to call Chris to help me track when the splashing started up again. My heart sank as I thought…he’s back up and running again. I wasn’t sure if it was him or maybe the doe crossing the creek but the sounds of splashing water stopped and all was finally quiet. I sent a text message to Chris and Steph and got a message back from Christopher Rowland asking “Good Shot?” ..always hoping for an answer like…Yeah smoked him perfectly. But I had ZERO idea where I had hit him because of the combination of shooting through some light leaves and the fact that I can’t see well past 20 yards while looking through a peep. I can see my pins and I know where I need to shoot but I cannot see my arrow hit…even with a lighted nock unless it is in the bright light of day. I told him to hurry because the light was fading fast and he asked….”small buck or a good one?” I said a pretty good buck but he went across the swamp and I know he went down in the second creek so there will be no blood trail. He said, “Relax dad…you don’t want to push him if he’s a big deer. Just sit tight and I’ll get some gear and head your way…don’t worry about the light or the water…its not that bad this year and we don’t need blood to track.” I sat there and thought that these were the same words I use to say to him when he was a youngen after he arrowed a deer and wanted to start tracking immediately. It was almost comical with the exception that I was nervous about not knowing how good my shot was. Finally after 2 days he arrived…..OK it was only 30 minutes…but it felt like two days. The light was almost gone and I had got down and checked my arrow which looked good and shot a low, upfront shot with good blood and traces of white chest hairs. But there was NO other blood than what was on the arrow where he ran. We spread out about 10 feet apart and started looking for blood with our flashlights before we got to the water. We found None as we spread further apart in our V shaped pattern which is a normal search pattern for us looking for a starting point! Finally I found a running track in the mud but because it was wet I could not determine if it was the doe or the buck. A few feet further and I found a splash of blood and called Chris over to begin the track on blood. We were already in the water and the first blood we found was 40 yards from the initial hit. We tracked on running tracks in the wet and crossed the first small creek as the tracks picked up on the other side. We found a few more small splashes of blood so we knew we were on the right track of the buck. We stepped into the second creek and Chris turned his light on something in the middle of the creek and said…Is that your deer?, with a big grin on his face. I shined my light to what looked like a dead fall a started to say to him…don’t play games boy, when he just kept shinning his light on the “log”. I looked closer and sure enough..there he was…in the middle of the creek, upside down and covered with so much black mud it was hard to recognize him as a deer. We did the celebration hugs and fist bump and went to him to drag him to a drier cypress root spot out of the water. He was a big bodied buck with 7 points and a kicker. He was an older buck maybe 5.5 years old and a fat boy for sure. We took a pic or two but the skeets were getting bad so we quickly secured him to the frame pack and used two trees to help Chris get stood up with 135 -140lbs of buck on his back. We could see my nock light burning from where we were so he only went about 70 yards. The pack out was short but Chris’s legs were Jello when he got to the UTV at the edge of the swamp. I grabbed my arrow, Badlands pack and my bow on the way out and we celebrated with a couple of Gatorades Chris had brought us! This hunt had God written all over it as we gave Thanks and it was a great way to end the day!
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 15:16:02 +0000
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