Who Wouldn’t Want To Be Me?

After getting off the air on Saturday morning, my son and I headed off to the farm for a final weekend of bowhunting.  There is nothing like the feeling I get when I am sitting in my treestand in Caneadea. Got into the woods around 2pm and the plan was to hunt until dark.  Around 4:30pm, I received a text from my buddy Donnie who was hunting from another stand about 300 yards away.  He told me to stay in my stand until 5:30 because the last hour is always the best.  I checked my phone as the sun was going down.  The time was 5:23pm and I had not seen a deer all day. As I stood there with an arrow knocked in my bow and my release on the draw string, I suddenly heard something behind me.  Crunch, crunch, crunch.  As I looked over my left shoulder, I caught a rather large doe coming toward me from the back.  I knew where she would pop out and I was ready. There she was, underneath my stand about five yards from my face.  I decided I would harvest this deer and pulled the bow back to a full draw.  As I was about to release the arrow into her, I heard something behind me. Again it was crunch, crunch, crunch. Peering over my left shoulder I could the bright white rack of a nice 8 point buck.  I immediately collapsed my bow and waited.  Sure enough, he came through the exact same spot as the doe. Before I had gotten in my stand the day, I had placed a hock (scent gland) in a small bush in front of my stand. So here I was with a beautiful 8 point buck about ten yards in front of me and the doe about 12 yards to my right. As I drew back the bow on the buck, the doe suddenly started to smell the hock in the bush and started going crazy. She then took off and ran about 30 yards behind me.  The 8 point looked thoroughly confused.  He ran about 30 yards in front of me and stopped.  He was sitting there waiting for the doe and she was behind me and not making a move.  The three of us sat there as the woods went dark as the sun disappeared for the day.  It was time for me to head back to the cabin.  No, I did not get a deer that day, but I was most definetly in the game.  This is the reason why I bowhunt.