Larry finally went deer hunting by Eddy Chance (10/10/06)

We had a successful bow hunt this weekend at my lease in Eden Texas.  I finally twisted my good buddy Larry’s arm hard enough to get him to take a weekend off and spend some time in the woods hunting the elusive white tail deer.  Larry and I have been hunting together for many years but his business has taken him away from deer hunting for the last few years.

We headed out Friday evening from Cedar Park, Texas around 5:30.  We stopped on the way up at Coopers BBQ for a great meal.  When we arrived at the lease you could drive down the highway without head lights.  There was a massive full moon which doesn’t usually bode well for deer hunting.  With a full moon the deer tend to feed all night and then bed up during the day.  However, here in Texas we have the best deer attractant known to man, corn.

We woke up at around 5:30 AM and slowly prepared for our first hunt of the weekend.  We gathered our bows and camera gear and headed to my blind.  Several years ago I started hunting out of ground blinds.  These are what I call tent blinds that you can buy through several online stores.  They are large enough for two hunters and have windows with a shoot through mesh. This allows you to have a good view of the deer but they can see you through this mesh. They can’t see your movement when drawing back your bow and it also helps keep your scent closed off to the sensitive nose of the deer.

We arrived at my blind and I opened the zipper door and let Larry get settled while I put out some small corn piles close to the blind in several shooting lanes.  I like to put the corn in cactus or thorny bushes.  This keeps the deer from just eating up all the corn and will allow you to get a better shot when the deer are busy trying not to get stuck by the thorns and spines.

With the full moon I could see deer along the ridge waiting for me to leave so they could get to the corn.  As soon as I returned to the blind and settled in, we could hear the crunching of corn from outside the blind.  As the sun slowly started to rise we could see more and more deer appearing from the darkness.  I could tell that some of them had horns.  After a while I could see that there were several doe and at least four to five small bucks.  As I checked out each buck with my binoculars I found two that were possible shooters.

We were looking for a large doe or a management buck that needed to be taken due to inferior genes.  There was a long cow horn spike, and another buck that looked to have three horns.  Both of these are considered management deer on our lease.  As soon as there was enough light to make a good shot I hand signaled Larry to take the three point buck.  While Larry was trying to turn for his shot I noticed that one of the small spikes was headed right to the front window of the blind.  For a moment, I thought that this small buck was going to stick his head in the front window.

It took several minutes for the buck to get into a shooting position.  I prefer to have the deer standing in a quartering away stance.  To me, this is the best angle to shoot a deer with a bow and arrow.  In this position you are more likely to hit several major organs and put the deer down quickly.

I prepared my video camera as Larry drew back his bow.  He took his time and let the arrow fly.  It was a text book shot.  The arrow disappeared just behind the left front shoulder and the deer made a high kick with his back legs.  He bolted up to the top of the ridge and as he headed over the top he was weaving back and forth.  I quickly rewound the video and we could see that Larry had made a great shot.  We decided to wait for thirty minutes to make sure he was down.

We emerged from the blind and started looking for a blood trail.  It didn’t take long and we found the first sign of a good hit.  The deer circled several times and then we lost the trail.  We walked in several large circles from the last blood sign and soon picked up the trail again.  We found the deer about fifty yards from where Larry shot him.  It turned out that he had two points on one side and a large spike with some other small points at the base of the spike.  This is the type of deer that needed to be removed from our lease.

It was a great time spent enjoying the great outdoors with a great friend.  The best part is now we will have some great smoked jalapeño deer sausage to enjoy.