Wednesday, October 04, 2006

One TWO deer on the meat pole

Well, there’s one less deer roaming the Adirondacks this week. New York’s Northern Zone archery season started back on the 27th of September and on October 1st, Eric, the one other person besides Mark and I who have hunted around my place, arrowed what we thought was the five-point buck.

Eric and Mark were standing at the base of the tree Eric had just come down from Sunday evening around 6:30 PM when two does and the buck came wandering their way. Mark had his back to the deer and Eric got a shot at about 25 yards. Eric said he knew it was hit pretty good but just behind where he thought the heart was, so, after marking where they last saw the deer, they retreated to the cabin to get some flashlights. When they got back up to the spot around 10 PM they couldn’t locate any blood and decided to wait until Monday morning.

When they got back up there, it took less than 30 minutes to locate the deer. It had been hit in the lungs and was just 60 yards from where they had last seen it the evening before. The arrow had not gone through the deer and it had bled out internally leaving no blood trail to follow at all.

It actually had just four points. The right antler had three but the left antler had just a little nub that wouldn’t hold a ring. We figure it weighed about 130 to 140 pounds dressed out.

The buck hadn’t gone into full rut yet, not having a swollen neck or anything, but it was following the two does. With the full moon coming up this weekend (October 7-9) rutting season is not far away. In the photos that we have from our woods cameras, this deer seemed to be dominant over the 8-point buck we have also seen.

Eric and his buck


UPDATE: Adam got his buck in PA on Saturday, September 30. Using a cross bow because arthritis makes it too difficult for him to draw a regular bow, he shot a nice 7-pointer on the other side of the mountain on which I am building. It's the same area where the group he and Don were hunting with got a good sized black bear last year. (Sorry, no pictures of Adam's deer.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

4 point's actual dressed out weight was 148