kjohn15
Member
Yesterday afternoon (November 10th) I was able to turn my luck around after a week of hunting hard while seeing very little movement and surviving a treestand fall due to a tree stand strap breaking. Thank God for the safeline. After a drought of exactly 2 years, I connected on a mature whitetail. The story of Sebastian begins in 2012. We were able to get a few pictures of him in September, but knew he was young and definitely not a shooter. I had a few encounters with him that October and noticed he developed a abscess on his side almost the size of a volleyball so I gave him the name Zit.
2013 came around and in the middle of September he showed up again,but this time he was sporting a right main beam with a massive crab claw. I made the comment that it looked fat like a lobster claw and instantly my wife, who loves attempting to name deer, said call him Sebastian. I looked at her with a blank stare and she said "like the lobster on little mermaid." Her names usually don't stick but this one did. I had one encounter with Sebastian in early November from the stand on an all day hunt. He came in to 40 yards around noon but never presented a shot which I was not disappointed since I wasn't sure I wanted to kill him yet.
In March of 2014 my wife and I each found one side of Sebastian's sheds. How cute huh? Perfect match set. We were excited to see what he would grow into. September 2014 came and went and we hadn't seen Sebastian yet, but when we checked cams before my wife began early muzzleloader season he showed back up. I was disappointed to see he had lost his massive right beam, but his brows grew longer and developed awesome splits. Overall he only grew about 8 inches from 2013. He was never camera shy over the years and we have hundreds of trail cam pics of him, but 98% of them were at night and the only time we saw daylight pictures was in early November.
As mentioned before, we didn't have much action the past week due to what we believed was the does had left the timber to avoid harassment from bucks and entered the standing corn. I did, however, have one encounter with Sebastian before killing him. On November 6th I was walking in with my gear, lonewolf stand, and a boss buck decoy when I bumped three does. They got up about 120 yards in front of me and trotted out to 200 and turned around to figure out what I was so I stood motionless while cussing under my breath. As the does finally began to work off, I caught movement from where they got up. Sebastian was standing there looking in the does direction and had no clue I was there. I stood there and watched to see what he would do and he bedded back down! I instantly got low and shed all my gear, the stand and the decoy. All that was between Sebastian and me was tall warm season grasses and scattered cedars. I was able to crawl and butt scoot my way to 49 yards and peaked up to get a look at him. He was asleep like a dog with his chin on the ground and legs straight out in front of him! I couldn't believe it! I was able to use a 20 mph wind in my face and the last cedar tree to get to 34.5 yards. Just as I was clipping on the string he woke up and noticed his surroundings had changed. He stood up facing me and I froze. He eventually got nervous and trotted out to 100 yards and turned broadside to look back before walking into a finger of timber. I felt excited and deflated all in one! That brings us to yesterday. I sat in the morning and saw exactly 0 deer from the stand so i got down at 10 and put a plan together. I was changing my approach to try to change my results. I packed up my lonewolf and sticks and grabbed a handsaw and walked about 1/4 mile through the standing corn to a little pocket of timber that I knew from shed hunting has a lot of scrapes and sign. I was sweating and figured I made a ton of noise so I hoped I hadn't blown all the deer out of there. I got set at around 1:45pm and around 2:30 the cold front came through, winds switched, and my sweat turned cold. I left the truck at 58 degrees and it dropped to 40 in a matter of a couple hours. Around 2:50 a small buck chased a doe into the pocket of timber, she doubled back and he lost her so he spent the next half hour looking for her around me. I watched him work off around 3:20 when i turned towards the corn and watched Sebastian pop out and jump the fence. He worked in to 15 yards quartering to and I wasn't about to wait any longer. I drove the easton axis tipped with a rage hypodermic down in between his shoulder blades and watch him take off. He expired 100 yards later. This deer is by no means a giant only rough scoring 150 7/8" but he is a mature deer with a lot of history. Thanks for reading guys & gals!
Good Luck to those hunting in the Polar Vortex. As long as you can withstand the cold it should be good. P.S. Check the standing corn 
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