Venison Free Deer Season

My hunting career started with a bang about 7 years ago. After years of wondering why my older brother Jacob converted from a surfer to a redneck he finally invited me to go deer hunting with him to see what it was all about, and I accepted. My first time in the tree stand I saw a coyote, which I thought was a big grey fox, and two does, both of which I shot with the single shot youth 243 rifle he let me borrow. I was hooked! Shortly after, he gave me his old Matthews bow and took me on my first bow hunt at Tide Swamp WMA. The first morning I shot and recovered a spike. Beginner's luck was truly on my side.

Since my start at pursuing the wild game of the South I have been blessed first with many opportunities to get out of the city and into God's beautiful creation, and second with many successful hunts that ended with meat on my families' table. I enjoy hunting just about everything, but deer season is what really gets my imagination going. In the past I've been blessed with an average of 5 deer a season and for the last three seasons I've managed to harvest a nice buck off one of my two Georgia leases. That was until this season.

I knew this year would be a challenge when my wife and I discovered that she was pregnant with our fourth child which was due in the middle of November! I had managed to conceive my other three kids to be born in  March, May and July, but this time I really got my timing off. "No problem." I thought, "I'll just hit the early season hard before the baby is due."

Adding to my encouragement was the news that hunting over bait was legalized in South Georgia. My brother and I put together some corn feeders and drove up to our leases in July to put up feeders and cameras in anticipation of Archery Season in September. "We're hunting over feeders, we've got it in the bag." Or so we thought.

When the opener finally came we checked our cameras and were not disappointed except for one fact, all the photos were taken during the night. On our smaller lease, held by just my brother Jacob and I, there was a bachelor group of bucks that included a couple of bruisers coming in every evening about an hour after dark.  

I optimistically dismissed the fact that no deer photos were taken during the day and I sat over my feeders. I then moved to the swamps and the hardwoods and the pines. I tried everywhere and didn't see a single deer from the stand during my three archery season trips to GA. But gun season was coming and I would get one last chance to hunt my leases before the baby came. Opening day of general gun I saw a few deer but couldn't make a shot. A cold front came through and started a little pre-rut chasing. From the stand I glimpsed a doe running through some thick brush and could hear something crashing after her. Later as I walked back to my truck I saw a fellow club member, Tommy, heading back on a parallel trail about 100 yards to the left of me. Suddenly I heard something in the woods to my right, as I was bolting a round into my Savage 30-06  two deer busted across the trail right towards Tommy. I got ready as they pinged off Tommy and came back in my direction, first a doe, I put my eye to the scope, then a small six point. We have an eight point rule on this club. That was about the most excitement I had in GA this year. The only thing I shot was a five and a half foot long rattle snake I nearly stepped on walking down a ditch line to a stand I never ended up hunting.

The baby came November 27, a healthy little boy we name Simeon. I stayed home a week to help my wife, and decided it would be a good help to mount my eight point from last season. At least I could see a deer, right? It was my best mount yet, which is not saying much at all, and it has earned a prominent place on the wall of our boys' room. My GA season was done for the year, but I still had a shot of bagging a buck. I had drawn archery, muzzle loader and general gun tags for Citrus WMA in Florida which is only about an hour and a half from my house.

The first morning of hunting there I was greeted at my stand by a pair of blue eyes shining in my headlamp. I sat all morning listening to deer blow at me from downwind. My younger brother sat at another spot I had scouted and missed an eight point from my ground blind. He returned the next morning and claimed  he saw seven bucks but could not get a shot! I returned the next day and sat where he had been and saw nothing. I scouted around and found a small tram that had a good rub line. I returned with my younger brothers and put my climber in an oak tree right along the trail. It was a full moon and a beautiful morning. As the first glimpses of morning light mixed with the moonlight I heard footsteps coming right toward me from across the trail. I stood up to watch a buck cross right under me and started rubbing a tree about 5 yards away from my tree. He then turned and stepped onto the trail right below me! I drew my bow and put my top pin on his back..."Thwack!" He wheeled around and took off down the trail! I texted my brother Jonny that I had just whacked a buck.

I sat in the stand for two and a half more hours before getting down. There was my arrow stuck in the trail. There was dark hair and some blood on the blazers but no blood on the ground. That sick feeling that everyone who bow hunts long enough knows came over me. I called my brothers to help with the search, we couldn't find a speck of blood. We walked zig zags through the woods in the direction he ran to no avail. Nothing. I hunted there a couple more times during archery, hunted muzzle loader and decided to do a little more scouting the day before the first weekend of gun season when I came upon it. I had walked down the same tram I shot him at about 100 yards further than where I had given up the blind search at. To the left I saw an open area with green grass growing in the woods. I walked back to check it out and to my right I saw a rib case and a rack! Now I don't have the equipment in my garage to test the DNA of the hair on my arrow with the carcass I found, but I am pretty darn sure he is my buck. No, I didn't get the satisfaction of following a clean blood trail with a prize of venison at the end, but I did get to send him to the coyote taxidermist for a European mount. A nice wide eight point with dark chocolate antlers. A great Florida public land buck in anyone's book.

I didn't have the pleasure of putting venison in the freezer this year, but I did sent four nice hogs to the great pigsty in the sky and turkey season is coming soon.