First deer with a bow? It was near blizzard conditions in the Winter of 1972 and I was
nearly 5 years old...
Actually, it was more like 1996-7 season and I was nearly 30. I was hunting with a Jennings compound bow, 2315-XX-75s and a Thunder Head 125.
I was on a lease in Llano County near Lone Grove, TX. I loved the property but even I could see that it needed a good management program. We (the "bowhunters") had a lease on the place for bow-season only...after that, the family had day-hunted rifle hunters in there for many years. So game with horns were few and far between.
I didn't care, the place cost us $300 each for October and we were seeing lots of deer, a few hogs and even some turkey. I had day hunted for a couple of years with my bow and had taken hogs and exotics but this was my first deer lease that my step-dad didn't pay for and I had no equipment, treestands, feeders, etc... so I went to WalMart.
You guessed it, cheap day/night, 5-gallon, bucket-feeder and a rope to hang it in the tree. But get this...one of those collapsible lawn chairs for a "stand". I brushed it good high on a creek bank and hung my feeder across the dry creek bed. Everyone else on the lease thought that I was stupid for hunting from the ground in a natural blind...and they didn't mind telling me so either. But I'm just poor white-trash from East Texas and told them to shut the
heck up and watch this...
Since opening weekend, I'd an eye on this matriarch doe with a pair of yearling twins still in tote. She was big bodied and had the loooongest nose I'd had ever seen on a deer. I had several close calls with her but I'd been busted more than a couple of times too. I never told anyone in camp about getting winded or seen while hunting on the ground though.
Finally, the 4th Saturday of the season it came together. I heard movement on the rocky creek bottom to my right. By this time I'd learned (finally) not to move my head to see what was coming in. After several minutes, a young but rather fat doe enters my shooting lane and moves up the rise on the other bank to feed.
As she relaxes, I wait, look and listen for a bit to see if she has company...she's alone. I go to draw and as I reach my anchor I remember thinking..."I'm actually drawn without getting busted". I settle into anchor, breathe, settle in the 20-pin for the 15-yard shot at the opposite shoulder on the quartering-away whitetail. I squeeze the release and watch as the arrow stops with a loud "crack" as it hits the far shoulder.
As she rolls toward me, the doe's body snapped the arrow in half. She kicked a couple of times and expired in less that 15 seconds right under the feeder.
She wasn't the old girl I was hunting, but she was real easy to track...and she was my first.
Bet she tasted a lot better than that old hag too.
llanodoe.JPG
Hybrid Mode
