IAHNTR
Dude, you 'da man! Love the buck and the bow and the cornfield and the buddies. Really good lookin' buck. Good job. Yardage? Method? Have you taken better?
Thanks a ton Robby - I'm just getting back to RS a little more since I put one down.
The other 2 in the photo are my father and brother. I was actually hunting over a couple acres of standing beans and had the decoy out, but as always he came in from a way that I wasn't expecting and ended up never even seeing the decoy. I had seen this buck about an hour prior messing with a doe at ~90 yds and threw out a few grunts and even a snort wheeze. He wasn't responding to these at all, left the doe and walked out of my life (so I thought) back into the thickest of thick multi-flora rose choked timber. After that encounter I texted my brother, who was at his desk job, that I had just saw a 150". I was giving him updates every half an hour.
About an hour later I had a small 8 (4x4 in western talk) work through the recently cleared timber behind me. After he moseyed through I gave it 10 minutes and hit the rattling antlers together pretty hard for a good 15 seconds. It wasn't 3 minutes later and this buck came from where the small 8 did, which was over my right shoulder. I only had a small window of opportunity in that direction and had to spin around on the seat and draw before he was behind a large red oak that still had most it's leaves and was impossible to shoot through. It was a really fast encounter and I wasn't sure of the yardage when I shot. He ended up stopping on his own. I had my HHA sight (single pin) set at 40 and I knew he was more like 30. I aimed about 3 inches high and let it fly. He was quartering to me hard and I put it on the front of his right shoulder. The pink nokturanal nock showed me that I put a good hit on him as he tore off. After a 70 yard dash he got wobbly and tipped over with in sight. The encounter happened so fast that I wasn't even sure he had a left side. I just saw all the bone upstairs and immediately went into kill mode.
After I saw him tip over I got all shaky and crazy like - you know the feeling, and had to sit down for a minute processing what just happened. I then sent out another text; "Giant down". I proceeded to call my father who lives 15 minutes away to see if he could come and help load him in the truck and in a matter of a couple minutes he was on his way. By the time I got all my stuff out of the truck and all my phone calls made it was dark. I knew the general area in where the buck expired, but like to follow the blood trail anyways. I was half way to where I thought the buck was when my dad joined me and we walked up on him for the first time together (that was really cool). After a few photos we got the truck as close as we could and drug him the rest of the way up the hill to the truck (35 yards). Getting back to his place we weighed him at 250 live weight and 200 gutted. In boning him out I found that I hit a half an inch in front of the ridge that runs vertical, perpendicular to the scapula and passed through both lungs. The broadhead broke off the arrow and was lodged under the skin on the off side.
I am very glad that I was using a fixed blade (Shuttle T) broadhead because it did pass through some of the scapula and the blades were pretty bent up. I'm not sure if I would have got the same penetration with a mechanical. After the shot I ranged where he was standing and it ended up being 29 yards. He is my best whitetail (second buck) by 18 inches and probably my best kill to date. I tried to do a European myself on him and took him to a guy that has the flesh eating beetles to finish him up for me. I'll post a picture when I get him back. The picture in the corn is actually in my dad's backyard where he grew some popcorn corn that turned out great. I just liked that as a back ground.
Thanks for the comment Robby and all the live/semi live stuff you do. Now it's time to focus on muzzleloader season. Have a great Turkey Day!!