bsmith121e
New Member
Hi all, I have enjoyed reading everyone's harvest report and viewing their photos so I thought I'd post the story of my 2003 archery harvest. It was November 1st and the first day I made it in the stand. The morning hunt I saw 4 bucks and passed on a decent 10 pointer, he had length and width but didn't have good mass. That afternoon, the wind was from the East, basically the only wind I could hunt this particular stand. I saw a small buck working towards me at about 3:30 so I grunted periodically just messing around to see how close I could get him. While I was watching him, I heard something in the other direction, looked over and saw a buck working a scrape about 50 yards away. I knew right away he was a decent buck but couldn't determine his exact size due to the trees and brush between us. When he finished with the scrape he started working a rubline directly toward my stand. Once I got a good look at his rack I knew I wasn't going to pass him up if I got a shot even though he was an 8 pointer. He was coming down the trail that was about 5 yards from my tree from my right. I had my bow drawn on the left side of the tree so I could get a broadside or quartering away shot cause I didn't really want to take a quartering toward me shot. Then things went wrong. When he got to the spot where I walked into the tree he smelled it and bolted back to about 20 yards and was looking right at me while I was at full draw. Then I had to let down and slowly swing my bow to the other side of the tree. At this point he started walking back to where he came from and I had a severe quartering away shot and thought I could get an arrow into his last rib. The shot went a couple inches to the left and shattered his rear right hip/leg bone with a rocket sidewinder broadhead. He went down for a couple minutes and I nocked another arrow. Then when he got up he was 30 to 35 yards away and I got another arrow in the paunch. He went back down for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile two more small bucks came into the area and got about 10 yards away from him just watching. Then he got up again and walked into some tall CRP grass. I waited about 15 minutes and decided to stalk him because it was supposed to rain that night. I followed the blood trail into the CRP as silently as I could and and snuck within about 15 yards and put another one into the boiler room and the rest was history. He green scored 136 5/8 gross. The whole deal really made me appreciate a good double lung hit. Last weekend I filled my two doe tags to cap off a great 2003 season. Congrats to all who have filled their tags and good luck to all who haven't!
![157RAtinybuck-thumb[1].gif](https://www.iowawhitetail.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/157RAtinybuck-thumb[1].gif)
