My first morning on the ranch

The previous weekend I had passed on a very small doe on public land. I was really looking forward to having 180 acres to myself. Friday night my friend and I scouted and set up a ground blind underneath some pines adjacent to a pond. I had 80  yards to my right of clearing before the fence and wood line which marks the property line. To my left front I had 40 yards of clearing to the fence and woods. Sunrise at 7:21 and I was in the blind by 6:05 Saturday morning. About 6:20 a big doe came in from my left. She kept glancing my way as she moved toward my right. A couple times I almost convinced myself she had antlers but knew it was the dark playing with me. I was fairly certain she was the 8 year old I was after. Just before legal shooting light I flipped my safety off (crossbow) and with that very loud click she bounded off about ten yards to my left, stopped and looked at me trying to figure out what was up. She walked to the left off my shoulder and out of site. She stopped at the corner of the woods, still on my side of the fence. She snorted at me three times which gave me goosebumps. Then she grazed her way back to the right and with 20 minutes till sunrise I took a very rushed shot. I misjudged the range and put the 40 yard reticle on a 28yard doe. I then yanked the bejezzus out of the trigger and put the bolt into some rock hard dirt. Broadhead broke as did the shaft and my nocturnal nock danced off. Totally blew that I thought as I collected up the pieces and gathered myself.

At 8:30 a trio of does walked passed just inside the wood line and fence. I watched them pass thru the fence and feed out of range and then go back down the draw the way they came in. About 3:30pm they returned but this time crossed the fence about 60 yards out to my right front. They worked their way down to the pond and I tracked them thru the scope but they were quartering to me and once in the water I had no angle. Eventually they came out of the water and exited about forty yards away working away from me at a good quartering angle. They stopped together and I waited for the largest to be clear. Again I failed to range and had an extremely poor body position to take a shot but I did and missed cleanly. Stupid I thought, these deer live her they would be back and sure enough about 6pm they came from the draw tracking along the fence line. They moved back and forth right to left and back to the right again. The biggest two kept an eye on me and I focused on being still and breathing. Suddenly the largest doe began moving to the fence head on. She kept looking at me but I wasn’t moving and kept the scope on her. She hopped the fence turned to my right and was quartering to me. She then turned back to the left presenting me a perfect 35 yard broadside target. I stopped breathing and pressed the trigger and WHAT THE HECK? All I saw was the flash of the nick and then saw it dance crazily to the left. I realized I had not put the crossbow stirrup outside the blind window and had put the bolt through the side of the blind. “Surely I missed again”, I thought but upon retrieving the bolt there was blood on it and plenty of blood on the ground. It was 6:20 and the sun would set in 20 minutes. I decided to give her thirty minutes and called a friend to let him know. He promptly jumped in the his truck to help me ( he is one of three great hunting mentors I have).

We tracked her for 300 yards, across a creek bed, through a button hook and up a spur where we lost the trail. We searched for an additional hour and called it off at 10pm and prepared to come back and search again the next morning. We picked up where we left off and found her trail again. We tracked hard, with Mike’s eyes definitely on fire as we picked up blood again and again. Things were feeling positive but I kept my hopes in check. We tracked her for about 100 yards and found where she left the woods to cross a more open wooded area that had been raked clean of pine straw and leaves. There were tracks everywhere as it was clear that someone was feeding deer in this spot. Eventually we found blood in a section of sand but could not find a definitive exit from that area. We searched the surrounding area for 90 minutes, following terrain, making concentric circles and going back over where the other had searched. She had simply disappeared and now it was raining. It made no sense that we could find no evidence of her leaving that sandy spot… I went home that day knowing we had done our due diligence and took the rest of the day off to think and recover mentally and physically. I welcome your thoughts and will share a theory from April Boone (renowned tracker and friend) if you are interested.

First miss of the day was just to the left of the tree

When put a carbon express piledriver into rock hard dirt

The last blood sign found

The last blood found