December Client - Management Buck

He was excited at the number of bucks he saw and impressed at how big they were. I had seen a tall and heavy eight point earlier that week and wanted to get that buck for him. The first morning we set up and rattled for him. That time of year rattling is a long shot due to the rut being all but over. Nothing came in so I decided to build a brush blind on this long clearing and wait him out.

I spent the non hour building a brush blind that Mike and I got in around 3:30PM. Nothing much happened for a couple hours and then I noticed some doe feeding out into the clear cut about a thousand yards away. I looked with my binoculars and I saw a buck. I switched to my Zeiss 20X50 binoculars. With these I could see that this was our boy. I told Mike that our best bet would be to cross the clear cut and get on the same side he was. Once were on his side we would sneak down the edge stopping to glass hi every hundred yards or so. We got in the shadows of the over hanging brush and trees and moved in the bucks direction. Closing the gap wasn't that difficult but I knew once we got inside 200 yards it was going to be tough. T

he dry grass was making so much noise under our feet and there was nothing we could do about it. At three hundred yards away I could see three doe feeding but I couldn't see the buck. “Did he leave” , Mike asked? I told him that I didn't think so and that we should move ever so slowly closer. 50 yards out and I am still looking at the same doe but no buck. I told Mike that we should move just a tad closer. We walked forty yards closer and that was all I could do.

I set Mike up on the shooting sticks and we waited. He told me that he wasn't comfortable in shooting sticks. I always carry another stick in my pack so I pulled that out and placed it under his right elbow. “Is that better I asked?” He said that it was and that he was ready to take the shot if the buck walked out. Not two seconds after he said that the big eight stepped into view. He was quartering towards us which I didn't like. He was also looking right at us and I disliked that even worse.

Mike was shooting a huge caliber so I told him to aim for his chest and squeeze the trigger. The gun went off and the deer didn't move. “You shot high reload,” I whispered. He put another round in his gun and shot again. This time, the buck dropped right there never moving a muscle. As we walked up to the deer Mike was obviously very excited. This would prove to be the second highest scoring management buck for the season. Again, with a stalk like that the hunt was even sweeter.