It was 1999, or maybe it was 2000 in Russell County along Uchee Creek. Bow season opened on Friday and I couldn't be there. Arrived in camp after dark on Friday and one of the guys tells me about the buck he stuck on the southernmost greenfield of our property. Our property was about 2 miles long and maybe a mile at the widest.

That Sat. morning I settled into my stand at a creek crossing about a 1/4 mile north of where the guy lost his buck the day before. Another guy went to almost the northern extreme of the property. I watched a group of does walk by me about 7:30 or thereabouts and then nothing until around 9:30. A six pointer crossed the creek and walked towards me. As he was coming up the high creek bank right towards me I noticed that he looked like he had a car antenna sticking right straight up out of his rump that would "wag" back and forth as he walked. It didn't appear to be bothering him too much and as he came into bow range he passed behind enough underbrush for me to draw. By now I could tell that the antenna was actually an arrow. As I came to full draw, he reappeared from behind the vegetation. My aluminum arrow fell off of my TM Hunter rest and clanged loudly as it fell across my climber and down the tree trunk. The little Buck jumped and ran underneath my tree to a spot that was still in range but on the other side of the tree. To this day I'm still not sure how I was able to grab another arrow, nock it, turn around, and draw without the whole tree shaking all of it's leaves off and the deer changing counties. But I did. And I took the shot and the buck ran off once more. I watched as my fletching ran off with the deer, and his antenna.

I gave it about 30 minutes and couldn't stand it any more. I climbed down and found good pink frothy blood at the spot he had been standing, but not much of it. 35 yards and I was on my hands and knees looking for the next speck. At that time I wasn't a very experienced tracker, but one of the guys in camp that weekend was excellent at it. I decided to go get some help. So I headed back to my four wheeler and there lay my deer, literally 2 feet from the back rack. I loaded it up and headed back to camp grinning ear to ear with my first bow killed deer, and it was a buck. Albeit a small buck. It didn't matter to me though. You couldn't have wiped the grin off my face with dog schitt.

I had him about half skinned and his antenna removed when my buddy that went North that morning backed up to the skinning shed with another buck on his truck. Once out of the truck and he saw my deer, a very perplexed look came over his face. He swore that the deer I was skinning looked exactly like the buck that he had shot earlier that morning. I told him about the antenna and showed him the wound on his rump. Then I grabbed the arrow and it matched the ones in his quiver. Sometime during this, the other guy that had hunted the Southernmost area the day before walked by his truck and asked him where he had found "His" deer.

So what we figured out happened was that the deer from the day before had traveled at least 2 miles and died in the same trail the the antenna deer had ran off on that Sat. morning. The antena deer had to have stepped across the dead deer and then circled way back to the south where I was waiting. My buddy that installed the antenna found a buck laying in the trail that the one he shot had ran off on, so he thought it was the same deer he had shot. He loaded it up and headed back to camp with it. When they started skinning that deer they found a broadhead and a short piece of an arrow that matched the arrows of the guy from the previous day.

Strange, but true.