However, two 1 ½ year bucks followed her and stood looking my way at 20 yards. They had me pinned down so I couldn’t draw on the doe without spooking them. The doe finally walked underneath my tree and out into the field, without giving me the shot. I started to see more bucks moving around the back in the timber with some of them moving out into the clover field. I decided to pass on shooting a doe in hopes of getting a chance at a mature buck.
With about 20 minutes of light left, a mature 140” 8-pointer stepped out into the field at 22 yards. Behind it came a 140+” 10-pointer, but I decided to pass on both of them.
A few minutes later, as dark was closing in, I could see two large racks together back in the brush. I knew they were both shooters, so decided to shoot which ever one came first. When the first one stepped out, I was ready, aimed behind the shoulder and let the arrow go. The buck whirled away from me but the shot looked good as I saw the arrow pass thru the deer and stick into the ground on the other side. My son Dave and grandson Connor were hunting ¼ mile east of me, so I got down and went over to see if they had any luck and to tell them I had hit a big one.
They didn’t have any luck, so we decided to look for blood on my hit. We picked up the trail of blood, but after about a hundred yards, it quit bleeding. We decided to wait until morning to resume the hunt.
Dave met me at first light where we picked up where we had quit the night before. It only took about five minutes to find the buck as it had only gone another 75 yards. We were both excited as we recognized it to be what we called “The Split G-2 Buck.”
We had seen it numerous times during the summer in the clover field and had pictures of it on the camcorder during the month of September. The 11-point buck grossed 167” and field dressed 205 pounds. I was very fortunate to get a day while they were still in their summer pattern. I saw 11 bucks and about 20 does that evening come out to the Imperial Whitetail Clover and Alfa-Rack field. This coming season, my mission is to get a shot at the buck that was following the one I got this year.
