10-point buck for happy blogger

It had been a slow start to the deer season after still hunting twice in two different stands I had seen no deer. The cool front that pushed in today had me thinking it was time to give it another try, from a different stand location. After waiting for an hour with no sign of any deer, out stepped a nice ten point buck who did not hesitate to take a drink of water from the puddle created by a one inch rain on Sunday. This looked to be a long deer from hind quarter on past the shoulder and down the outstretched neck to the lips that were lapping up a cool drink right before dark. A brief staring contest ensued as I raised my binoculars to study the buck's rack. Looking right at me I could see that his outside spread was beyond his ears, and when he reached down for another drink I could see he met my quality deer management criteria of 8-points or better. With my heart racing I put down the glasses and raised the gun, eased off the safety and whump... he went down in a heap right into the puddle. Having never harvested a 10-point buck before the feeling of accomplishment was genuine. I was using a 12-foot Stongbuilt treestand that I won at Cordray's in 2004 in their monthly heavy deer competition, and I was wearing True Timber mixed pine camo. This 10-point went to Cordray's for processing and I donated the meat from the 150-pound deer to the Hunters Feeding the Hungry program. Kenneth Cordray of Cordray's Taxidermy is going to make a European mount of the trophy buck. Michael and Claudia Cordray told me that big bucks had been coming in to Cordray's all day because the cool snap really makes the deer walk.

To view past blog entries about fisherman tagging nice bucks click here.