LAST UPDATED: May 8th, 2015
After last night's post we reviewed the footage of the buck Mike shot a few more times just to see if we missed anything we hadn't seen before, but nothing had changed. The hit was a bit far back and we knew it was going to be a tough recovery in the morning. So we grabbed a small bite to eat, tried to watch some TV, and eventually went to sleep. When the alarm when off at 3 am Mike and I decided to call the morning's hunt off as we were beat from a week straight of hunting and needed some rest.
We set out to look for the buck around 8 am with guides Troy and Adam. We knew any blood that may have been present yesterday would be gone with last night's rain and the heavy morning dew so it was a search and rescue mission. We spread out and began fanning our way across some of the thickest raspberry thickets you've ever seen. The thicker they were, the deeper we tried to get into them. An hour into the search Mike took a breather on the edge of a bean field and noticed a few buzzards circling back where the buck had originally come from. Having tracked more than one wounded buck in our lives we knew they often like to circle back so we headed over to the area the birds were seen.
Only 50 yards into the treeline Mike spotted his buck laying next to a deadfall, no more than 150 yards from where he had been shot. Unfortunately with the record high temperatures yesterday and throughout the night the meat and cape had spoiled by the time we recovered the buck. This is the sad reality that many of us face when hunting in warm conditions, and there isn't much that can be done about it. We snapped some photos, took some post-recovery footage for our challenge score, and headed back to camp with the buck. The symmetrical 10 pointer scored 133 1/8 inches which is more than good enough to put us into first place for this challenge as well as the circuit. With a little luck, we'll repeat our victory from last year!
Right now we're washing some clothes and planning on heading up to our lease in Brown County where hopefully I can put an arrow into a nice buck before I have to go back to work on Tuesday of next week. The temps have cooled off and there's no better time to be in the woods than now, so if you can get out in the woods – do it!
Mike's 2008 Campbell Outdoor Challenge 10 point.
