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Sunday A.M. This morning I intended to hunt the junction of a brushline and a big sunflower field, but when I got out there in the pre-dawn darkness, I could tell that the wind was completely wrong for that spot, so I sat on the other end of the field in the brush, but my visibility was very limited and I didn't feel that great about the spot come daylight. It was quite foggy this morning, so I figured it might be a good time to do some spot and stalk hunting. I slowly edged up to within view of a very large Alfalfa field and raised my binoculars. What I saw made my heart skip a few beats. There was a group of 5 bucks out there eating, heading slowly towards the cover of the head-high sunflower field. There were at least 2 bucks in the group that would have made P&Y, and the others weren't no slouches either. Unfortunately, there was no way to approach them as they were in the middle of the field. That was the bad news. The good news is that I finally saw some good bucks on a morning hunt - even if it was the last morning of the hunt. Oh well, it's good information/intelligence for when I come back here in the future. It was too foggy this morning to get any good photos of anything, unfortunately. Sunday P.M. This evening was my last hurrah to hunt from the stand where I almost got a shot at the good 10-point a few evenings ago. As I went out this evening, I was determined to take a buck, any buck, to at least bring some meat home. I would have considered taking a doe if it were later in the season and every doe wasn't accompanied by a spotted fawn still. When I got out of the truck I tested the wind and saw to my dismay that it was all wrong for my stand. It was full out of the east, blowing right to the trails. I made a split-second decision to make a simple ground-blind out of existing brush, on the downwind side of the trails - the other side from my treestand, so the wind would be okay. That's exactly what I did, and while it wasn't a perfect situation, I felt that I could make the shot on a buck that came through my shooting lane. The only bad thing about the spot is that being on the ground limited my visibility significantly and so anything that happened would probably happen fast.  This doe came through my shooting lane early There wasn't a lot of deer activity through the area this evening, but I did have several does and fawns come through my shooting lane, and then got all excited about 90 minutes before dark when a decent 8-point appeared through the brush about 30 yards away. For some reason, though, his sixth sense must have been speaking to him because he never did come down any of the trails, wandering instead off in the direction from which he had come. About 30 minutes later I saw movement to my right and there stood a 6-point buck moving with a purpose towards my first shooting lane. In fact, he was about 5 short steps away - too short to allow me time to get in position without him spotting me. I didn't move, and let him go through my first shooting lane. To get a shot into my second shooting lane, though, I had to stand up to be able to shoot above the grass. Even though I had a bush between me and him, I wasn't able to stand up without spooking him, and I saw him start to bound toward the sunflower field. I drew my bow as I was standing up, and I whistled at the same time. Unfortunately for him, he stopped at my whistle, nearly broadside at 25 yards and before I knew what had happened an arrow was on it's way and made what appeared to be a good hit. He did a death dash and I heard some crashing about 30 yards later and then everything was still. I felt strongly that it was a good shot, so I immediately went to inspect the spot. I found the back 12 inches or so of my arrow broken, on the ground, and a good blood trail. I followed the blood and found my buck about 30 yards away. He had been slightly quartering to me - more than I realized, and the arrow had gone in at the point of his left shoulder, breaking through the joint where shoulder blade meets leg bone, and then was stopped after sticking out of the right side shoulder blade, going through lungs in between. He was a young buck and had a small rack, but I was very surprised at his body size. He was easily 160-170 lbs. live weight, which I consider to be very big for a 1.5 year old buck. I was very happy about that, lots of meat to take home!  My buck was standing at the "x" when I took the shot  My fat North Dakota buck  Hunt Conclusion This was a really enjoyable hunt. It had it's challenges, to be sure, but we saw a lot of deer, a number of good bucks, had zero pressure from other bowhunters not in our party, had decently cool weather, and got to hunt whitetails in September! What else can you ask for? I'll definitely be planning a future trip back to this area. Check back to Livehunts.com in 6 weeks or so as we bring you a Whitetail Deer Live Bowhunt for trophy bucks in Kansas!
Joshua Flournoy owns and manages the Livehunts.com web site. Joshua resides in east Texas with his wife and four children. |
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