In my dreams my first buck was a 230lb, 160”, mainframe 14. I certainly had not planned on anything less and when I lined up on him I thought he was just a large doe. Just one more large doe and my freezer would be full and I’d be done with meat hunting for the year. Well that just wasn’t to be …

I went to Woodville this morning to hunt with my good friend Matt Guerin. He has some nice land with steep ridges and covered with oaks and I’d been hunting this particular area with him for two years. In fact, I took my first deer about 500 yards from this spot.

My tree was on the upper edge of a light bench just above the bottoms and I could see 100+ yards in just about every direction. By 530AM I was up the tree and settled in to listen for the deer working first light. I could hear them coming up from the bottoms and heading up the ridge behind me. But I never saw a one. Somehow I’d allowed moisture to get inside my clothing that morning and I was shivering from the cold. It wasn’t even that cold, just 32F. But the wind was blowing a good 6-8 MPH and I was wet.

By 715AM I was about done with it, I’d had enough of the shivering so I decided to get down from the tree and move around. The first thing I did was to check the area where I’d heard the deer going up and I found their trail. I thought it would be fun to try to track them and do a stalk hunt so I started following their trail up the mountain. It really wasn’t that hard, I could see the leaves overturned by their hooves in many places. In other places I would see a hoof print or a broken twig on the ground. I followed that trail, taking about 10 steps and pausing for a good 30 seconds and looking around. The leaves were somewhat moist so I wasn’t making any noise with them. I tried to avoid the twigs as best I could but some were buried below the leaves and snapped when I stepped on them. Every time I’d hear a snap I’d stop for a good minute.

About 400 ft up the mountain their trail veered right and went around a small bench. It took me about 45 minutes to work around the bench and 2 breaks along the way. As I rounded the second break it opened into a full up steep hollow that ran from nearly the top of the mountain all the way down to the bottoms. I thought to myself that this was deer heaven. If I were a deer I’d stick my butt on the downwind side of this hollow because I could see everything within several hundred yards.

As I scanned the far side of the hollow I found a group of five deer. All of them were standing and it looked as if they were eating acorns. The group was about 90 yards from me and I was downwind of them so I raised my 308 and lined up my brand new VX3 heavy duplex reticle on the largest of them. I’d just sighted it in yesterday and it was set on 4X but there was no time. I knew I had 2, maybe 3 seconds max before my window shut. The deer was quartering away somewhat but I had a good clear high shoulder shot and I took it. BOOM, FLOP, didn’t even kick …

I immediately texted Matt “Doe Down” and headed towards the hit spot. When I reached the body I sat down and looked at it from about 5 yards, looking for breathing … nothing. I came around the front of the deer and to my horror I saw one and a half spikes coming out of his head. One was broken off, he looked healthy but like he’d been beat up by the bigger boys on the block recently. Horror? Yeah, the only rule on this property is “if you shoot a buck, you gotta mount it”.

The area he lay at was very steep and getting him down from +400 to the bottom step was simple. L would drag him 5 ft then he would roll or slide down 30 ft. I managed to get him close to the bottom step and got to a point where I needed to cross the ravine to keep from going on the adjacent property. I had to let him lie there, go back to my tree and get my drag line, then come back. Matt left his post on top of the mountain and came down to help me. When I told him it was a spike he just grinned and said he was gonna give me a one time pass on that rule today. Relief … Now I could actually enjoy the deer.

I slipped a noose around his head and tucked his front hooves into the noose and began to drag. This wasn’t a downhill drag. I needed to drag him around the mountain and actually back up a little in order to get him on the trail. We quickly ditched the drag line and found a cedar limb about 7 ft long and strapped him on upside down. We each took an end, threw it up on our shoulders, and marched roughly 1000 yards around the mountain to the truck.

Much thanks to my good friend Matthew Guerin (aka I_hate_poachers) for helping me learn the sport, for inviting me to hunt on his property, and for being such a good friend. We had a great time this morning, good memories that will last a lifetime.