Not a Maine Hunt but My first Weekend of deer hunting in NC for this year
Well Friday afternoon I sat there and nothing moved. With only a few minutes left of shooting light I slipped up to the hay field and see if any were up there. 5 of them I started sneaking towards them but 2 small ones started snorting at me. I knew I couldn't get closer so I picked out the biggest doe of the five and shot. I guessed it was about 150yards, I latter paced it off 187. With darkness falling fast I searched for blood or any sign of a hit. I didn't find anything. I decided I would check it after my morning hunt and make sure I did miss.
This morning was a pretty one, the temps were not as cold as I would like 35'. I slipped into my stand 30 minutes before legal shooting light. This is one stand I can easily find in the dark so no flashlight. I hadn't been in the stand 2 minutes when I heard something coming in from the swamp. When it got close I could tell it was a buck I could here the brush hitting his antlers as he walked. Not enough light for me to even see his antlers so I have no idea how big he was. He crosses my trail and went up the hill behind my stand, he never reacted to my trail in so the cover scent must be working.
I watched a couple of flocks of geese go by overhead and even heard a few wood ducks. The woods was alive around me, lots of tree rats chasing each other.
About 830 am I have 3 does work down off the hillside behind me and work their way towards the swamp. One offers me a 30 yard shot so I drop it. The other two spin and run under my stand and back up the hill from where they came from. I sit for a few minutes and soak in the moment and enjoy the warm sun. I climb down out of the stand and tag my first deer for the 05 season. A quick field dress and drag it up the hill to the truck. Grab the cell phone and call this one in so I can 1/4 this one up and put it on ice. Not a very big one but it will be good eaten. Before I roll out of there I go up to walk the field edge to see if I truly missed last evening. I get to the spot where I recall it standing and there it is a drop of blood. Not much but I look a little bit and I see some more bright red drops. I go back to the truck and take the one I got this morning home to put it on ice and to get my stuff for a track.
I trade my ’06 for a shotgun and buckshot I know the area this deer will be will be thick and if its not dead the shotgun will be a better choice. Well I got on the blood trail there really was not much blood. The hit site there was a fair amount of splatter but no real pools of blood. It took me a while to find the trail and track it to the woods. I was following very small drops of blood some the size of the tip of a pen. Once in the woods it took a while to get direction of travel and once I determined that the track was on. I lost the blood trail again so I just continued to follow the downhill direction the deer had been going. A few minutes latter, I came across the doe dead next to a blow down. The whole track took about hour to find the doe that was only about 60- 70 yards from the shot site.
Good thing it was cool last night the meat was still good. The shot was a bit high and a little bit back. The wound being high most of the blood stayed inside the body. The shot took out the liver and one lung was ruptured. The exit hole was bigger then my fist. In order to see if I could learn something I tried to back track the blood trail and there just wasn’t any blood. After the initial impact, the blood stayed inside the deer. This reinforces the need to really track even if there is not a lot of blood I would estimate that other then at the site I found her the amount of blood she loss outside was less then 6oz.
I spent the rest of the weekend cutting up deer I got two hindquarters to finish this evening. This is the best start to a deer season I've ever had.
