A Rainy-Day Disaster

Robert WellerBucks n Bears, Friends of ELO, Hunting Stories & Adventures

When I walked outside early this morning, I closed my eyes and smiled as I drew that first breath of the cool morning air. When I opened my eyes and looked up at the dark night sky, I saw my old friend Orion just above the horizon. The site of that group of stars always gets me excited for the approach of Autumn and all that comes with it. It’s by far my favorite season, and these days fall means high school football games, and of course Archery Deer season. 

Like many of you, I think about what surprises I might encounter in the woods as the season approaches each year. My thoughts often remind me of new spots I found the previous year to hang a stand this year or clearing a shooting lane for an existing location to make it better. I start thinking about my gear and what I need to replace or add to my pack this season. It is also the time of year we usually start telling others we know about deer we are seeing or maybe swapping old hunting stories with the guys at work. I love telling the stories of previous hunts and enjoy hearing about the encounters my friends and coworkers might have had the year or two before. It always seems to get everyone pumped up and ready to hit the woods. For whatever reason, today I was reminded of a buck that became the first shoulder mount on my wall. 

It was the middle of October 2002, and I was sitting in one of my favorite tree stands for the evening. A stand I had seen dozens of bucks from in years past but until then I had only ever seen those one-and-a-half-year-old bucks. I had been talking earlier that day with a coworker about hunting when it was raining and as I sat there in my tree stand, I could hear the rain starting to softly hit the leaves. I was going to get wet, but I thought about what my coworker had told me about how the big ones move in the rain, so I decided no matter how hard it rained I wasn’t going to head in until dark. It was a soft rain, the kind of rain that makes the woods even more relaxing to sit in. I had been sitting there for an hour or so and had not seen any deer movement. As I scanned to my left and right, the words I had heard that day kept ringing in my mind, over and over again, “The big ones move in the rain”. I kept slowly turning my head and looking into the brush for the slightest movement. And then, there he was, the biggest buck I had ever seen in the woods. He was a tall eight point, and I knew somehow, I just had to get a shot at that deer. He was about eighty yards away and totally unaware of my presence. As I watched him slowly work his way through the brush, I realized he was going to take a trail that would take him straight East and that he was not going to get any closer to me. I had to do something to increase my chances, so I slowly reached for my grunt call. Because it was raining, I had my bow on my lap and my pack was hanging next to me. The pack was still zipped shut so the items inside would hopefully stay dry. I struggled to operate the zipper with only one hand, so I slowly turned my body and reached across with my other hand to get my grunt call out before the buck got any further away than he already was. Then the absolute worst thing happened. In my haste, I had not hung my bow up and I was no longer holding it on my lap, it was almost like living in slow motion as I felt my bow slipping off my lap. I reached to try and stop it, but it was too late. The next thing I knew I heard my bow crash through a few tree limbs and hit the ground. I looked down and could see it laying there some 20 feet beneath me. As I looked up to see if the buck was still there, I saw him turn and disappear into the brush. I BLEW IT! My hunt was over. I had just seen the biggest buck I had ever seen, and I blew it. I sat there for a few minutes just shaking my head as I looked down at my bow, desperately trying to see if it looked damaged. After I was certain the buck was long gone, I climbed down and retrieved my bow. As suspected, the fall had not been kind to it. At some point the hydraulic damper had hit the ground or a limb and the threads had pulled from the riser. I called the local archery shop and to my surprise they were still open for another hour, so I scrambled back to my truck and drove straight to the archery shop. Luckily the damage ended up being minor and they had me all fixed up in no time. They even let me shoot the bow and make sure I was still hitting where I was aiming. I spent the next two or three weeks looking for that buck. I hunted every stand I had on that property hoping that I would catch him sliding through again. I was bummed about the mishap and when something is bothering me, I tend to talk about it at work. I was telling my supervisor about the story one afternoon at break time and he started to tell me some of his stories. He was telling me about using his grunt as a doe bleat and that he would often blow a long hard bleat to draw bucks in closer as the rut would start to pick up. That afternoon I was pumped and ready to hit the woods again. I decided I would sit in the stand that I had seen the big eight point from and hope for the best. I had only been in the stand for a few minutes when I caught a glimpse of him. I would have recognized those antlers anywhere. He was back and I was hoping that somehow, I could get him to come closer this time. He was just standing there and seemed to pay no attention to me at all when I grunted at him. After grunting at him several times he turned around and started to walk away. Remembering what my supervisor had told me earlier that day, I quickly pulled the grunt call apart and adjusted it to doe bleat. I looked up just in time to see the buck disappear over the hill. It was now or never so I took a deep breath and blew long and hard as if I were a doe screaming for attention. A few seconds later the buck came bounding back over the hill and was headed right for me. I quickly grabbed my bow and got into position to take a shot. Just as I swung around, three does came trotting down the trail the buck was going to intersect and one of them broke off from the group and ran over directly beneath my stand. The buck decided she was the one for him as he turned to follow. The doe, playing hard to get, ran around a small tree about 20 yards from my stand. On her second lap around the tree, I made my move and drew back on the big eight point. I put the sight pin on his shoulder and let the arrow fly just as he passed in front of me. The arrow struck him behind the lungs, and he hunched up as he turned abruptly and headed East away from the doe. I knew in an instant that the shot ended up too far back. I quickly grabbed another arrow and drew back on the buck again but by now he was facing straight away from me and was slowly moving out of my effective range. Rather than chance a second shot pushing him, I opted to let him do his thing. He was walking very slowly and appeared that he may not go too far. After the doe had left the area, I quickly and quietly got down and snuck out of the property. I contacted my friend Andy and told him that I was pretty sure I had made a liver shot on a good buck. We waited until about 10 PM and then went out looking for my buck. The blood trail was sparse, and I quickly became discouraged. But we continued to make circles and look for the buck or any sign of a blood trail. When we reached the East edge of the property we found a patch of white hair on the barbed wire fence. “He must have crossed here”, we thought. On the other side of the fence was a freshly plowed corn field. The freshly turned over earth was going to make it very difficult to follow a blood trail by flashlight, so we decided to come back in the morning. I didn’t sleep much that night and in fact, I felt just sick to my stomach. Up until then, I had made good shots on deer, and I was very disappointed in myself for allowing the excitement to get the best of my judgment. I knew better than to shoot at a moving deer like that, but I just got so caught up in the moment that I did it anyway. 

The next morning Andy and I met up around 9 AM and we quickly picked up the trail near the fence where we had stopped the night before. It had gotten cold that night so there was some frost on the ground adding a bit more difficulty to the task of following the not so fresh tracks. We decided to spread out and work in a zigzag pattern as we crossed the field in hopes one of us would find a drop of blood somewhere. No such luck, but I did manage to find a set of tracks that appeared like they might be from a deer walking as if it were wounded so I followed them to the edge of the woods on the South edge of the field. As I approached the woods, I looked across a gully and up the hill on the other side. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a deer all curled up and wedged up against a small sapling. I yelled “There he is!” and Andy quickly made his way over to me. We walked in the woods together as I started to shake. The excitement was uncontrollable as I knelt alongside the buck and lifted his head. As I sat there in amazement, holding the antlers in my hands, my mind drifted back through the events of the night before and even back to three weeks prior when I had dropped my bow while attempting to grunt at this same deer. I relived those memories as I retold the story to Andy, and we were both surprised that I even saw the buck again after that. The tall eight pointer was a two-and-a-half-year-old so by many trophy hunters’ standards today he would have gotten a pass. But in 2002 for my first deer over a year and a half old, he was a wall hanger and that is exactly where he ended up. He is not my biggest mount on the wall, but he holds his own as a very impressive 120-inch green scored two-and-a-half-year-old. I will never forget the events that led up to my being able to successfully harvest him nor will I ever replace him with another on my wall. He was my first wall hanger buck, and his story will always be one of my favorites to tell. 

I harvested that buck on November 2nd, 2002, and a short time later, a friend of mine from church told me that statistically there are more trophy bucks taken between November 2nd and November 10th than any other week of the year. Over the next several years, I Found that to be very true. The rut changes all the rules when it comes to whitetail hunting, and it will make a buck do crazy things. It can even make him return to a spot you might have spooked him from earlier in the season. I for one can attest to that as I thought my chances of seeing that buck were gone. But on November 2nd, 2002, that rut crazed buck showed me otherwise. So, if you’ve had an encounter that didn’t go as planned during the early season, don’t give up hope. Stay positive and keep hunting. Maybe you’ll see him again or maybe you’ll see one even bigger.

As always, good luck in the woods, happy hunting and God Bless!

Robert Weller
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