a short vaca trip to PA.

[reeltime]

headed to camp on 11/07/08 arrived @ 7 pm. Pat was waiting for me and said he heard birds fly up behind the barn at dark that evening. :whistle: don't gotta tell me twice!!!! got all the gear out of the truck and headed to the barn to go bust the birds off roost.

Got a good break on the birds and with rain in the forecast for the morning bow hunting would likely be out of the question. I had already cleaned the leaves away from my familiar tree after scattering the birds so with the rain that fell during the night I slipped in quietly and settled in to wait for daylight.

Just as daylight was taking over the nights darkness birds started talking! I started out with some kee-kee's and kee-kee runs which lit up the woods! 2 birds gobbling behind me, 4-5 birds kee-keeing off to my left and the brood hen across the creek calling like mad.

A bird gobbles behind me I know he is going to walk towards the 5 birds I can see coming up the hill from the food plot finally a jake walks behind a tree off to my left and I get the gun in position and when he steps out a load of #6 winchester extended range does its job! All total my turkey season in Pa. lasted 20 minutes.

Sunday morning I took a stand out the ridge above Bella where I did some spring gobbler hunting and saw a nice buck while there. picked out a junked up maple tree with grape vines on it and told Pat " I can kill a buck out of this tree"

The rest of Sunday was spent installing a hot water tank in moms house and converting them from electric hot water to gas. Plus trying to diagnose a furnace issue on the new gas furnace I ordered for them this past spring.

Monday morning was cold and clear with just a slight skift of snow on the forest floor. I saw 3 different bucks from that stand before I had to leave at 9am ( had to go get new pvc pipe for the furnace) ran to clarion, got back and got all the pipe cut and glued for plumbing the intake and exhaust on the furnace. By the time all that was done it was almost 2:30.

I was a lot latter than I wanted to be getting to the woods, but none the less a quick shower throw a fresh suit in the tote let Judy know where I was going and I was off! By the time I walked to my stand it was almost 3:30 when I climbed in & buckled up!

As I turn around I look over and there is a buck bedded 35 yards away! a little 3 or 4 point. I can just make him out, but in our zone they have to have 4 points on 1 side to be legal. So anyway didn't want to spook him so I quietly got the bow up to the stand and set down, Little did I know my setting would only last 10 minutes!

I see a decent buck come up over the bench and he walked up towards that other buck and chased him out of there, the good one wouldn't respond to bleats or grunts. he walks up over the hill behind me.

as I am watching the direction he went to make sure he doesn't circle around and come back to investigate the calls after about 10-15 minutes I sense something off to my right and when I turn there is another decent 8 point walking down the bench towards me! so I call to him, he must be on a mission because he didn't even pay attention to the calls, and he disappears down over the bench.

about 10-15 minutes later I hear a branch break and look over to my left and here comes a 7 point down over the hill about 25 yards out, he mills around for a while but never coming any closer for a shot, he finally walks over the bench on the same trail the previous buck took.

I catch movement off to the left and see a Doe sneaking along, doing the I'm getting dogged sneak,, walk walk walk walk run 5 yards walk walk walk the whole way along the bench. I catch movement again behind her and here comes a decent buck!

she gets below me I bleat, she looks up towards me ( I have used a dogged doe & bleat call before with good success, a lot of times the doe will come right to the call ) she stood there staring up the hill as he got closer to her. I called a couple more times this time he locked up and stared my direction. He turns and starts walking up the hill angling to my right.

He is headed for the old overgrown logging road but he is going to hit the road on my side of my marker tree ( where I started my scent trail) he hits the logging road about 40 yards away and like a beagle nose to the ground BUT he goes away from me! not to panic he has to sort out the trail I figure! sure enough he gets to the cherry tree and stops ( he ran out of scent!) he turns 180 degrees and here he comes like he is on a string!

I can hear him inhaling the scent, nose to the ground weaving through the logs and trees on the old logging road, he walks behind a decent sized tree about 15 yards out and I come to full draw and anchor. There was a moss covered rock about 5 yards from my tree right on the logging road and with everything being wet from the melted snow I figured that would be a great place to put some drops of scent to stop a buck.

Sure enough he stops and I can hear him almost wheezing trying to inhale more of that scent on the rock, I ease the pin up his leg and when it settled on the crease I released and watched the arrow buried to the fletching as he dropped down jumped straight up and bolted about 30 yards stopped looked back stood there for a few seconds and literally just fell over and never moved.

Finally I set down, looked at my watch it was 4:45pm! I thought man 3 hrs 15 minutes in this stand and 8 different bucks seen and a good one taken! I hooked up the bow let it down and then unhooked and climbed down to retrieve my arrow. I walked over to the buck and said a quiet thank you and then called mom, asked her if Pat was hunting and she said no it was too cold for him, so I asked her to have him bring the deer cart.

well enough rambling for now, gotta head out for an evening set here in NY.

The only pictures I have are of the buck that mom took of me ( we left my digital camera on the couch here in NY )

[muskybob]

Excellent! Nice one.

[BlueEye]

Wow - pretty cool Lee! Thanks for sharing!

[Yankee Troller]

Nice job Lee!

[FX]

Great story and nice buck! Congrats!!

Shawn