As with all my posts about deer hunting success, I give God all the credit. He deserves it all anyway.
I drove up to Fort Knox last Friday (11/4), and the group I go with had planned to hunt from 11/5 - 11/11. The weather Saturday was terrible, with 30 mph winds and a huge storm front rolling in. We only hunted about 3 hours that morning, and then elected to live to fight another day due to the wind and rain. Never saw a deer that morning. Sunday morning I put myself in a gar-hole, which was a 4-5 cutover that was really thick. I’m sure there were deer in there, but it was thick and I never saw anything.
Things took a great turn for the better Sunday afternoon. I hunted an area that afternoon I had never been in - picked it based on the wind direction and topo features. I pulled up and no one was parked where I wanted to go in, so that was a good first sign. Then I got in the woods and found some scrapes (good sign #2). There was plenty of cover for deer, but it was also mature hardwoods. Around 1:30pm I got about 1/4 of the way onto a huge hardwood flat and climbed 33’ up. Great view, wind was perfect, had some cover trees nearby, etc. I rattled and grunted for about 5 seconds at 3:27pm. At 3:28 I hear and see the buck coming from the other end of the hardwood flat I was on (upwind from me),and he was coming to my tree on a string! He passed my tree at 12 yards, and I double-lunged him with a NAP Killzone MAXX mechanical. He ran in a big sweeping circle about 125 yards and I heard him crash! The first 10 feet of blood trail was spotty , but after that it really opened up. As the crow flies he only went about 90 yards from my tree to where he died.
Here’s how I found him.
And here’s a few more of him.
He’s a very symmetrical buck, with the extra kicker on his right side. He gross scored 126 4/8”.
One bit of info on Fort Knox… because they are a federal facility they make their own rules regarding seasons, bag limits, etc. They allow hunters to kill one buck with archery, AND one buck with a gun. Those two bucks are also considered “bonus” kills, so they don’t count towards the state limit.
Sunday evening was a late night, so I slept in while the other guys in our camp went hunting Monday morning. That afternoon I went into an area I had hunted once before back in Nov. 2018. Again, I pulled up to where I wanted to go and no one was parked there (probably 50% of the time someone is already nearby). I walked in and climbed where I had planned, again based on having the right wind, as well as having studied topo maps previously. This time I was 30’ up. I did rattle and grunt, but had no luck with that in this spot. At 4:17pm I was finishing a text with an AlDeer pro hunter and resident deer hunting expert (top cat!). Thankfully we finished that conversation and I had put my phone down…. at 4:20pm I hear a deer walking to my right. I looked over in time to see a deer walking behind a massive oak, which blocked the deers view of me. I immediately turned that way and brought my shotgun up, just in case it was a shooter buck. As you can imagine, once he cleared that big oak I quickly determined he was in fact a shooter…. This guy had points going everywhere, and it was clear by the way he was walking that these were “his” woods! He was around 65 yards from me when I shot him with a 20 gauge slug gun, and he went straight to the ground. He lifted his head once, and that was it. At this point I just stopped what I was doing, watched him through the scope for several minutes to make sure he wasn’t faking it, and just thanked the good Lord for his blessings. I couldn’t believe (still can’t) that I’d just killed two great bucks in two days. We all know how hard it is just to kill one in a season. For me to kill two in two days is unheard of. While I did do everything right from a hunter perspective, God has to orchestrate this kind of thing.
So I climbed down, get over to him, and am honestly shocked at what I find. He’s got tons of mass, a split brow tine on his right side, an extra 15” main beam on his right side, a broke off main beam on his left side… just an incredible buck. He gross scored 161 2/8”. I personally think he’s an old warrior. Matt Brock figured he’s minimum 5.5 years old, and maybe older. Given Matt’s background, I reckon I’ll have to go with his opinion (but I was thinking between 6-8 years old).
Here’s some pics of him.
Just for grins, here’s a couple of pics of how I load deer onto the front rack of my 4-wheeler when I’m by myself (which is almost all the time). I use a snatch block and the 4-wheeler winch to lift him - an idea that Wiley offered up several years back. These two pics also show just how big this buck was.
Last is a pic that my taxidermist took for me. He had put my first buck in his walk in cooler and hadn’t skinned it yet, so he was able to get a pic with both bucks laying beside each other.
It goes without saying, but most likely I’ll never have two back-to-back deer hunting days like this again. And I may not ever kill another buck like the second one again. Only time will tell, but I will tell y’all that I’m gonna keep trying!