Posted: 11/6/2007 5:24:01 PM EDT
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As it well over a month before I get to go hunting and I have BUCK FEVER setting here in my house now. I will probably fill this board up with deer hunting stories as this is the only thing that helps. DHD is worse for me than even BRD. I have been hunting deer for about 15 years or so. In this time I have encountered many many stupid deer and turned them into nice sausages. There are, however, a few deer that managed to out smart me some of them on numerous occasions. In the 2000 season, while hunting the Northern Texas panhandle I met up with this buck. The first time I saw him was after scouting a field this first day of the hunt. I got out of the truck to close the gate and something caught my eye. I had actually closed the gate and turned to get back in the truck when it struck me. I saw a deer antler, not a rack of antlers just one time. I turned around and looked and there was a dead deer laying out in the open 50 ft away. He hadn't jumped out at me before because he was laying amongst a few broom weeds and his silhouette was broken up by some wild plums a few feet behind him. Now that I new he was there I could plainly see him. I figured someone must have shot him from the road and got scared away or someone was shooting at eyes and didn't realize they had hit him. I walked towards him and was considering sawing off his antlers as they were pretty large. He was a mature heavy 10 pnt. I got within 10 ft of him and the dead deer, was suddenly on his feet and gone like a shot faster than I could blink. It took me a while to figure out what had happened, the buck heard the truck approaching and new he couldn't get out of site quick enough, so he just plopped down right there and froze. He had alot of confidence this would work so I wonder how many times he had tried it before and it worked? The next day as we were driving in to the field, I looked over in a little hammock of scrub oaks that was off by itself and there was the dead buck standing in the middle of it watching us drive by. I yelled to stop the truck, but by the time it had stopped, I had lost sight of him. I knew he was still there though as the tallest cover outside of the hammock was not even an inch tall being as it was surrounded by grazed over grass. My brother, my father and I piled out of the truck and began glassing the hammock. We were on a hill over looking the the little island of 4 ft tall trees so I knew we would spot him in time. If he ran he would be cut down in the 150 yard stretch of open ground. After sometime we sent my brother down to kick out the brush while my father and I waited in an over watch position. My brother kicked out the brush quite thuroughly and annouced there was no deer there but he had found very fresh tracks and a freshly tended scrape. We couldnt believe the deer got away and when we figured out how he had we really couldnt believe it. on the back side of the hammock there was a little 16 in to 2 ft deep trench erroded into the ground by heavy rain falls. We found where the buck walked into the trench and then there in the soft sand we saw the obvious marks he made as crawled through it.... thats right the buck low crawled, just out if site hidden in the small depression until he was out of site of us and then he jumped up and ran when he was out of view. We saw this deer to other times on this hunt and everytime he melted like a ghost into the brush. We never killed the "Dead Deer" and I hope he bred an army of genius ghost deer just like him. |
| Ever see a deer with cactus spines stuck in the knees? They are sneaky. There was a video of a buck calmly feeding on a ranch. A pick-up was going through the area and heading down the farm trail near the buck. He calmly walked behind some bushes and laid down until the truck passed. Then he got up and resumed feeding. The guy in the truck had no idea he had just passed within a few feet of a nice buck. |