Third time really is the charm! Got setup a little late this evening but better late than never right? Shortly after 6 pm I had 3 does come in feeding and I watched them as they walked around feeding. About 6:20 I had another doe come it, and at this point I had a fawn, yearling, and two adult does feeding within 30 yards of me and I had decided my trigger finger needed scratched. It was plenty cool enough and I had waited long enough, it was time to harvest a doe for some meat. I was just waiting on a good clean broadside shot. Just as I was about to take a shot a the one bigger doe that didn't have a fawn I saw another tree coming. I quickly got a good look at it and sure enough it was that same 11 point I have been telling you all about. The same one that I have missed both days before hand. He might have gotten me to miss twice, but three times was not happening. I watched him approach and waiting on a good broadside shot, finally at 6:27 pm with just 5 or 6 minutes of legal shooting light left he presented me with the perfect broadside shot at 27 yards. I let the arrow fly and heard the signature thunk of an arrow landing where it should.
I will honestly say that it was dark enough I wasn't sure where I hit him all I knew was I put it right behind is shoulder and dead in the middle up and down. He took off running and I lost sight of him.. So I waited about 30 minutes before I started my search.
Went to the place he was standing and started looking for the arrow, found it clean pass through with good lung blood on it! 🙂 This told me my shot landed right where or close to where I was aiming.
Started looking for blood, couldn't find any, he didn't really start bleeding until about 40 yards into his run. I was only getting dots and some places several dots, knowing it was a clean pass through I thought I would have more blood (this had me a bit worried). Followed the blood trail for another 60 yards or so and started to see signs he was bleeding more, took the flashlight looked around and there he was just 5 yards further over in some brush. So in total he ran about 85 yards, which isn't so bad. When I found him I learned my shot had landed right where I was aiming behind his shoulder, but was an inch or so high and gave him a high double lung shot. This is why I didn't have a big blood trail, it was mostly only dripping out the exit, which was high as well.
I of course had to grab him and check him out and count the points, and as I said yesterday after I shot at him, it isn't so much that he is that big, but he is super cool as you will see in the pictures below. He is a mainframe 8 with a second beam or kicker on his right side that gave him 3 more score-able points. He has several other little points but they are less than an inch. Probably the coolest 11 point buck anyone could ask for even more so from central Maryland. This deer makes me even more thrilled and excited as anyone could have taken him as he was spending most of his time on public land in Loch Raven and I got not 1, but 3 chances in 3 days to harvest this awesome deer. I don't normally need do-overs but I am sure glad I got more than one on this deer!
Below are a few pictures taken with my phone this evening, I will post a few more better pictures tomorrow after I get the camera out, along with some more details about him such as weight and such.
Anyone want to take some guesses at what he might score?
Hope everyone else had as an exciting weekend as me, and if you were lucky enough to harvest a deer as well, post a comment with some pictures! Good luck to everyone this week with rut really getting geared up it should be awesome hunting this week. I now must move on to helping thin the doe population.
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