Saturday morning bowhunt 082912

Mike, Brent, and I headed to the "R farm" on Saturday morning. I set up my climber a little downhill from Brent’s tree, where I had the encounter with the decent buck near some white oaks. Like clockwork at 7:30, 4 adolescent bucks came in on a string. There were two smaller spikes, and two fork brothers in the group. One had really nice palmated mass at his forks. Tall but narrow antlers. I decided to pass on them all. Too early in the season to be burning my archery buck tag on those when the rut is not even in yet. Two does with the longbow will be a tall order before November.

They milled about under my stand for about 45 minutes feeding. Sounded like pigs eating. I could have shot any one of them a number of times. The only sharp one in the group was this small spike that kept looking up at me and getting nervous, but he would eventually calm down and start feeding again. Eventually they wandered off toward Brent, and I was hoping he would get an opportunity. They passed him about 50 yards away and he was using his Ben Pearson recurve. After that a large squirrel came by and I shot him at about 12 yards.

Later in the morning I saw a deer far off down the hill and I thought it may approach, but never did. I eventually got down to flush it toward Brent or Mike, but I did not move anything. Then, when Brent was leaving he chased a ”very large bodied deer” out of it’s bed. I am betting it was the larger buck I missed last Saturday. On the way back to the truck, I ran into a flock of 12 hen turkey. They passed my about 40 yards away on the trail.

Mike ended up seeing a doe that played cat-and-mouse with him for a while, but never offered him a shot. He also passed on two small spikes he saw. He had seen a flock of 8 turkey, which I am guessing was the same group I saw, as they were heading from that general location.