It all started in January of 2006 in Southern Ontario when I began scouting a new hunting area of 200 plus acres of public forest land. This area provided the ideal habitat for deer to thrive with lots of dense cover including hardwoods, cedars, hemlocks, pine reforestation areas, oak flats, swamps, wild apple orchards, creeks and ponds. It was easy to map the deer travel patterns with a foot of snow on the ground and logging trails throughout the property.This public land tract was bordered by crop fields of corn or soya beans, wheat, grain and alfalfa. I made a special note of a deer funnel that passses through the inside corner of a wild apple orchard leading to a wheat field.
I continued to pattern deer right up to the Spring turkey hunt and set up my first trail game camera. By the first week of June, I had three tree stands in place. Throughout the summer I would move the trail cam around to different sites, where ever there was good sign. Some nice does and fawns showed up at the mineral site but no bucks. By July 1, I was cruising the backroads boarding the hunting property. The summer evenings where warm and it was the perfect time to glass the fields for bucks. On July 11, at 8:30pm, I observed two nice bucks in full velvet feeding in a wheat field with two does and two fawns. This field was a mile west of my hunting property. The following evening at 9:00 pm I observed the same two bucks feeding in the same field. With a better view this time, I noted that the one buck's rack was larger ,wider spread with eight to ten points.
In the Fall of October, 2006, the first four days of my deer hunting proved to be quite
eventful. I had three treestands set up. Stand number one was located near a water source. Stand two was located in the deep woods near a transition zone to a soybean field and stand three was set up near a series of large oak trees loaded with acorns. Going into stand two on a Tuesday morning, the first week of bow season, I spooked a doe and her two fawns. At noon, while eating my lunch sitting in my tree stand, two coyotes walked slowly passed me. They where just five yards from me when they stopped for a moment and had no idea I was there. My crossbow was unloaded and hanging on a bow hook in the interest of safety of course, lol. The two coyotes then wandered off and I quickly finnished my lunch and got back to hunting with a loaded crossbow. Later that evening, just as I had climbed down, two fawns ran right up to me and stopped just a few yards from my feet. It was just as well. My unloaded crossbow was leaning against a tree and besides, I did not want to harvest a fawn, even though I had a doe tag. I sure wished, however, that I had the camera in hand to record the day's events.
The next day a cold front with rain came through, so I only hunted a couple of hours at stand two with no action.
Thursday morning I hunted at stand number one until noon, but nothing was happening. In the afternoon I moved a mile south to stand number three, which was setup fifty yards from a large oak tree. The stand was eighteen feet up and had good conifer cover. All was quite until 6:15p.m. I spotted two does coming in behind me from from the right. I watched them circle around in front of me along the edge of a field just out of range.
The first doe continued past me and then headed toward the acorns. The other doe stopped and looked straight at me. I was thinking she was going to pick me off when suddenly she bolted and ran towards the large oak tree. I figured the game was over, so I gave a couple of grunts, as the two goofy does ran in circles.
Then I heard a rubbing tree sound close behind me to the left. I looked over my shouldler and saw what had excited the does. A large antlered buck was slowly approaching and walked right into the middle of my shooting lane.I called out " MEE " to stop him, which he did.
I picked a spot behind the right-shoulder and then slowly squeezed the trigger of my crossbow. I watched from just ten yards away as the arrow disappeared into the buck's rib cage, it did and donkey kicked and then took off, diappearing into the thick bush.
That's when the adrenaline rush hit me ! I began to shake and my chest was thumping. A few seconds later I heard the buck drop.
A total of four does crashed through the brush as they scattered in every direction and all was quite. I waited half and hour before I climbed down from my stand. I found my arrow right away. It was fully intact and covered with bright red blood. It had been a complete pass-through. Next I followed and marked the blood trail for about fifty yards. It was getting dark really fast and I was starting to lose the blood trail in the darkness, so I stopped the search and headed home.
I resumed the search at first light, after a sleepless night. I found the buck just fifty yards from where I had stopped looking the night before. I field dressed the animal and began the long drag out to the trailer which took me three hours. I did not have a scale at the time but my buddies and I came to a consensus that the buck weighted over 200 plus pounds and was three-four years old.
Harvesting this trophy was the result of a lot of time invested in scouting and in studing deer. To take this fine animal with a crossbow, after all the practise, made it extra special to me.
Steven Mitchell ( aka Tracer )
