The Brunswick County Acorn Buck

So in my initial hunting post a week or so ago I said, and I quote
“Maybe next week I'll have a story that involves tracking, dragging, field dressing and processing some Venison.” Well, I’ve come close. I’ll have to skip the tracking and dragging while adding spooking, high 5’s, picture taking and loading.

The Plan:

Not unlike the previous Saturday, I got up early, loaded the truck, kissed the wife and headed out for the 2 hour drive to my club in Brunswick, VA. On this day, two additional members were planning to show up and do some work around the property. Yes, another working party. My plan was to get there early enough to sit for a morning hunt, work with the others on the property mid day then hunt from 3 or 4pm till dark. We were all staying the night then heading home after breakfast Sunday morning.

The Results:

My initial thought was to stop and hunt the morning on an 80 acre piece of property we have rights to in Emporia but somewhere along hwy 58 I decided to continue on to Brunswick. I arrive at our property as the sun was rising and quickly changed into my hunting garb. After spraying down with de-scent solution I grabbed my bow along with my tree stand then made way to my morning stand.

As I near the final 300 yards I run into a rather large flock of Turkey. Must have been 20 of them. It’s always an impressive site watching these large birds take flight. The cackling along with the sound of their wings pushing the air for lift is one I never tire of. Had I been toting a 12 gauge instead of a bow, I would have had a turkey for dinner. I digress.

I made my way to the far back corner of our property where weeks before I had cut a path through the cutover to the edge of the woods and to a tree just made for my climber. After settling in about 18 to 20 feet up, I sat taking in the morning, still hearing the startled Turkey’s clucking away trying to reassemble the flock for safety.

About an hour goes by, during which I stood 2 or 3 times thinking Turkey were working their way through the cutover towards my stand. They never showed up. Then I hear another sound. A much heavier sound. As I slowly look to my right and inside the woods, I catch movement, Deer! I watch, standing with bow in hand and release on the string loop while I wait for a shot opportunity. Four or five deer file through with just one Doe stopping, offering me a small window for a shot. As I begin to draw my bow string, one of the other deer playfully charges her and off they go, along with my “opportunity”.

I sat on stand until something like 10am then decided to head back to camp and help with the days work. On my way out I did jump a Doe that was bedded down on the end of our path, but that was the end of the morning hunt.

Fast forward once again to the evening hunt since no one wants to hear about working parties. I would point out however, I damn near didn’t hunt the evening. After all the work we did, I had talked myself into believing that no self respecting deer would ever be fooled into getting close enough for me to take a shot. How wrong I was..

Evening plan was to hunt my now favorite Oak Ridge. Knowing the White Oak acorns are dropping and the deer have been feeding heavily on them building fat and getting ready for the rut and Winter. I knew right where I wanted to be so I changed into a fresh set of scent free hunting clothes, sprayed my boots and hat, put my climber on my back, grabbed my bow and headed for my tree.

Around 4:15pm I was 18 feet in the air waiting for the dinner bell to ring. 30 minutes later, up the path from the opposite side comes another Cow-horn. If you remember, that’s all I saw last Saturday – Cow-horns and a 3-pointer. If this little guy continued on his present course, he would cross my scent path and surely bust me. Fortunately, he ducked into the cutover well short. No time to relax though, turns out he had reason to duck out of site.

Turning around to face the Oak tree, I notice more deer had arrived. Wow, this was just like the prior week. As these guys feed in and out of view I noticed a deer with a pretty nice rack on his head. As he worked his way closer to my stand, I see 4 tall tines and judge him to be a pretty nice 10 pointer. "This guy is going for a ride on the tailgate of my truck." I tell myself.

So about now, I’m obviously talking to myself; “Damn! This buck is nice.” “God I hope he gives me a shot.” “I sure hope none of these other deer see me draw on this guy.” So much was going through my head as this deer gets closer. Now he’s just steps away, all he has to do is take maybe three more steps and I’ll have a perfect broadside shot at just 20 yards. I drew my bow and held, and held, and held. Now I’m hearing a stomping sound behind me, you know the one. It’s the sound a deer makes when he senses trouble or is pissed off at something. My 10-pointer also hears it and instead of taking 3 steps out onto the path, he moves back under the tree. Now I have to try and slowly let off my bow and hope none of the deer see me do so.

After letting off my bow, I slowly turn to see what just kept me from a very nice deer and what I find starts the heart to racing once again. It was another very nice buck. Probably an 8-pointer, definitely a wall-hanger. He’s standing about 20 yards down, broadside looking right at me. Funning thing is, he’s not spooked. He just stands there. I can’t draw or for sure he’d see me, so I wait. A half a minute goes buy and he makes a quick move to the Pines. Now I have no shot! 30 seconds later, he goes charging into the woods and the next thing I hear is one cool buck fight. I’ve never heard deer grunting and fighting in the wild. It sounded like 2 pigs going at it. They made such a ruckus all the other bucks feeding under the White Oak all headed into the Pines to watch the fight. Damn! Now what?

The last deer to move to the Pines was a basket racked 6-pointer. He stopped, giving me a clear shot and while I wasn’t happy about it, I was drawing my string to take it. Just as I started to draw back, he too jumps in to see the fight.

What can I do? One minute there’s 8 to 10 bucks of all different sizes feeding 20 to 40 yards from me and the next, nothing. So I stand there, bow in hand and wait. Another 20 minutes or so goes buy and out pops a Cow-horn. Now after everything I’ve just seen, I’ll be damned if I’m going to take a Cow-horn. This guy walks right by my tree, up-wind. I just watch thinking to myself, “What the hell am I going to tell the guys back at camp?” I know they’re going to ask what I saw, I also know they aren’t likely to believe me. No, I decided that I was going to tell them I saw nothing since they wouldn’t believe me anyway.

About now the sun is starting to get low in the Western sky. I have maybe 20 or 30 minutes left of legal shooting light. Looking down the path I see my little Cow-horn buddy that ducked into the cut-over. He’s heading for the Acorns. Just as I had predicted, as soon as he got parallel to me, my scent hit that nose of his and he stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t like what he was smelling. Sure enough, he turned and headed away. Once he got about 20 yards away, he started running. Thank god he didn’t snort at me or sound the alarm. So now I’m thinking it’s just about over. I decided to turn and take another look towards the White Oak and “Oh My God!” there’s another deer and he’s heading in my direction.

After seeing it was another buck I waited for him to get closer. Now I can see that he has a number of points and they are tall and wide. This was it! not the 10 pointer but still a very nice buck. “Please keep coming” At about 30 yards, he turns broadside and I drew my bow. Not real sure at the yardage, I make a bone-headed decision to use my 3rd pin. Don’t ask me why, I never use it. My middle pin is good out to 30 yards. Like I said, it was a bone-headed decision. I take aim, pick the spot and release. A split second later, I hear this thud. I’ve heard this before. It’s the sound a Broadhead makes when it hits bone. To my surprise, the deer drops to the ground. At this point, I knew what had just happened. Yes, I hit him high and in the spine.

When this happens, you just have to try and keep your cool. Don’t do anything to spook him. As he was laying, I had no follow-up shot at his vitals. However, with every attempt to get up, he was turning more and more broadside. Then, not believing my eyes, another deer snorts and spooks him. This caused him to start dragging himself across the path under the Oak tree. When he stopped. Thank God! I couldn’t see all of him but I could see enough through the trees to see his vitals so I quickly launched another Slick Trick, at the correct yardage this time and straight through his heart and lung. The hunt was over! The buck lay still. The woods are quite and my heart is POUNDING OUT OF MY CHEST!

After a few minutes of catching my breath, I lower my bow to the ground and turn to start climbing down when out of the pines comes another deer. He's moving slowly towards my buck, alert and stomping his hooves, not knowing quite what to think of this brute laying on the path ahead of him. As he steps out, I see that he’s yet another respectable buck. I had to spook this guy away in order to climb down out of my perch. Man what a hunt!

So here are the stats and a couple more pictures of the buck. I call him, The Brunswick County Acorn Buck. He has 9 points, 8 main and a 4 3/4” sticker sticking straight back from the base of his right antler. He looked to weigh damn near 200lbs. Inside spread of 20 1/2 and an outside spread of 21 1/4. I scored the antlers the other day using the Boone N Crockett web site and he gross scored at 137 2/8 Not bad! Originally I scored him at 127 or so but I found a mistake in my measurements.

My First Hunting Report

So, here we are, hunting season has now been in for just over a week. I skipped opening day on the 4th due to the warm weather and instead, took one of my buddies fishing. With predicted temps in the upper 70's, I may have skipped this second weekend as well, trading in my bow for a fishing pole. But with the a forecast of high winds and seas in the bay running up to 3 foot, I decided to Hunt. Besides, my new club; Lonesome Three Hunting and Fishing Club, had a scheduled working party during the middle of the day on Saturday.

The Plan: Set the alarm for 4am and get on the road by 5. Hunt my Headquarters Hunt Club property first thing in the morning until around 9:30 or 10am then drive over to the new club to meet some of the members and do some work. Then, for the evening hunt, I planned to hunt somewhere on the new property. Here's how it went:

I got up at 4am Saturday morning to my wife commenting in about the same fashion she does when I get up to go fishing, "You're nuts! Why do you do this to yourself? You never get to sleep in." And my typical response, "I know, I know, go back to sleep." It’s a good question, just not one I want to dwell on at 4 in the morning.

I quickly jumped in the shower and washed down with scent free soap and scent free shampoo, hurry up and get dressed, finish loading my gear into my truck and hit the road. 2 hours later, I pull into the club property just as the sun is coming up over the trees. On this morning, I decided to try a different location and set my climber up on a tree a few yards down wind of a very old White Oak tree that was heavy with acorns. This tree sits in between a field that's gone to fallow and a 1 year old cutover. I had high hopes for this location so up I went.

About an hour after climbing the tree, out comes a Squirrel. After he gets halfway up a tree about 5 yards from me, he freezes. What's that big-assed camouflaged glob in that tree over there? This little guy just couldn't figure out what I was or if I was a problem, but he was pretty sure I wasn't there last time he climbed that tree. A couple times, I thought he was going to jump on over to see for himself. He didn't. He did however, climb up and down the tree, stopping every once in a while to see if I had moved. One time he actually considered climbing up the tree I was in but changed his mind at the base of my tree. Back up he went on the tree across from me. This little guy kept me company for the better part of 2 hours barking and chirping at me before finally heading down and back to his den. Good thing for him I didn’t have a field point tipped arrow in my quiver since he is the only sign of fur bearing life I saw all morning.

At 10am I gave up, climbed down, packed up my gear and headed back to my truck, then down the road to the new club. When I arrived there were 3 other members hanging out on the porch and a kid mowing the grass on a riding mower. They had about a half dozen ducks hanging from the porch that they had shot during their morning hunt behind the club house. A little more productive than my morning ended up being. There were only 4 of the 12 members there on this day. They seemed to be a pretty good group of guys. I'm looking forward to the season.

Fast forward a few hours and we're coming up on 3pm. I had intended to hunt a location on the new property. Being new to the property, I solicited some suggestions. After a little conversation, it was decided that I was going to hunt a creek bottom between two cutovers on a property they refer to as "the Y-road” I head off with anticipation. 10 minutes later, I arrive at the Y-road property and parked my truck. After spraying down with scent eliminator and getting my gear together, I grabbed my bow and headed to the head of the wooded finger and creek-bottom. I had planned to work my way along the creek-bottom about 3 hundred yards in, find a small clearing and a climbable tree near a fruit bearing White Oak and hunt till dark. Not to happen! You know what they say about “best laid plans.” Yup, they often go awry. And so this one did.

After about 40 yards into my trek, I realized how thick this wooded creek-bottom was. What a pain. I pushed on another 50 yards or so. Now I'm dripping with sweat. Not good for a deer hunter. This was just way too thick. Where was I going to set up and still have a shot if a deer comes by? So I look outside the bottom area thinking maybe the walking would be a little easier at the edge of the cutover. Hell no! That was nothing but thickets and thorns. So about now I'm concerned my hunt is ruined. I give up and start making my way back to the road. After looking at my watch, I realize I have two options; pack up and get an early start on the 2 hour drive home or quickly drive to the more familiar acreage at the Headquarters club. I chose the later.

On the ride over I decide I'm going to hunt an oak ridge on the edge of our property again confident I'm going to see something large and brown. Might not see a deer in range but I was pretty sure I'd see a deer. And I did! Around 5pm the first of 3 deer sneaks on in and starts feeding on the White Oak Acorns on the ground. This guy was a bit on the small side but it was what we call a Cow-horn. For non-hunters, that's a deer with two horns sticking straight out the top of his head. Probably about 8 or 10 inches each.

Shortly afterwards, two more deer join the cow-horn feeding on the acorns; another cow-horn and a 3 pointer. This 3 pointer looked a lot like a 3-pointer I let walk last year about this time. Only now, his single horn is about 6 inches longer and curved in. These 3 bucks fed in and out of bow range from 5pm until the sun went down. I drew on two of them more than once but decided I'd rather get home at a decent hour than spend an hour waiting and another hour or more tracking. By then, I would have likely ended up spending the night. So for now, they are safe and only because I was tired and lazy. That won't be the case should I see any of them next Saturday.

So that's it. My first ever hunting report. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope I didn't bore you too much. Maybe next week I'll have a story that involves tracking, dragging, field dressing and processing some Venison.

Until then, thanks for reading.