Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

2nd sit of the year and I shot a small 8 point. Had tons of pictures on my trail cams but by the end of the second week of bow all of the deer disappeared. Didn’t really start seeing them again till mid November. Thats when it happened. I had a beautiful 8point come to my stand. Once he hit the scent trail I laid he went ape #^&#^&#^&#^& trying to figure out where the doe went. I use a single pin sight and was set for my shooting lane where I had the drag hanging at 25 yards. The buck was so confused he started to head back to where he came from. He was stopped quartering away and I guessed it at 30 so I held high on him. I let it fly and the arrow sailed clean under him. I lated ranged the opening at 36.5. He left, bounding twice then walked away. Being disappointed I figure I would change stands after lunch and head to a stand on the edge of a swamp where I had seen 3 does the night before. After lunch while wee were getting ready to head in, my buddy asked if I was going back to the stand from the am, he said maybe that deer will come back since he wasn’t spooked. I agreed with his assessment so I headed back in to the Ridge stand as we call it. We were in stands by 12:30, around 3:15 I could hear something making it’s way in front of me. Around 3:45 I could see a big bodied deer about 80 yards in front of me, and he was heading right too me nose to the ground. I quickly saw his amazing rack and drew my bow as he approached and started to turn down hill. He came to a screeching halt when he got wind of my scent drag 15 yards in front of him. He was behind a small pine tree, but I could see him well. I needed him to walk 5 more yards to be in the shooting lane, for what seemed like 10 minutes, but was only like 2-3 I was holding at full draw while he looked around for the doe. I am nursing a bad hip, and it was killing me at this point. My arms were getting tired too. I decided in that moment it was either let it down, accidentally release, of thread the needle. So I threaded the needle and the arrow glanced off of a pine bough and thwack. The buck flipped over, but that sound I had heard before. My buddy had arrowed a monster, the buck flipped over and was down. The deer jumped up 30 seconds later and bolted. We never found that deer, the sound I surely heard was shoulder bone. Not wasting another second I nocked another arrow and settled on his vitals. The arrow flew true. After recovering the deer and upon field dressing him I determined that I hit him just in front of his leg, he was quartering a little to me and looking back, and took out both lungs before hitting the opposite shoulder. The first arrow had done the job. The second arrow also found its mark of the heart. This is my biggest buck to date and we have him all summer on trail cams. We thought he was a big 8 or 9, turns out we were wrong he was a 10