Name: Cory Smith
State: Missouri
Year: 2012
Weapon: Bow
Wind Direction: South
Stand Location: River Bottoms
Products: Muddy Vantage Hang On, Muddy Climbing Sticks, Mossy Oak Rocky Appareal, Irish Setter Boots, Bowtech Guardian Bow, Bloodsport Arrows
Story
The season had been a pretty big struggle, it was 2012 and EHD had hit the farm and surrounding properties pretty hard. Between 3 properties we had found a total of 93 dead deer due to EHD. The majority of our big deer were lost and we only had a few of the many hit list bucks left alive.
One of the deer we had on our cameras on a consistent basis was a deer we nicknamed “Grimm Reaper”. I had had 3 very good encounters with him as a 3 1/2 year old, and we were getting consistent early to mid season photos of the buck. (now 4 1/2 years old)
Right before the start of the rut, Grimm started to go almost exclusively nocturnal on our cameras. We knew that he probably wasn’t living on our farm any longer, but had a fairly good idea of the corridor he may be running.
After a week of hunting with no site of the buck, we drew up a drastic, last minute game plan to hunt a corridor that was almost never hunted and extremely hard to get to due to the distance into the secluded piece of river bottom ground.
We decided to wait until mid morning to trek in the long creek corridor back to the spot we had picked on the map. Finally reaching the spot, and sweating fairly significantly, we set up our Muddy Vantage hang on 15 yards off of a scrape line and trail.
The action was dismal until about 3:30pm, and then the woods exploded. A doe came busting along the creek levee, followed closely by a 130″ 8 point. With my binoculars on the 8 point, I was abrubtly startled by a loud grunt (known now to me as a buck growl), I quickly turned toward the sound only to see Grimm on a bee-line directly to the hot doe.
Luckily for me, the doe had passed along the 15 yard trail that passed directly by my newly placed hang on. While I was a bit hurried and startled, Grimm was quickly at 15 yards and before I knew it I was drawn back. A quick and loud mouth grunt was given, he halted in his tracks quartering to and he looked directly up at me. I released the arrow, it smacked his front left should with a loud thud and he took off like a bat out of hell. Running about 60 yards, he quickly turned and crashed to the ground.
It was my biggest buck to date and I could not have been more thrilled. A season worth of hard work, time and dedication to harvesting that buck had paid off. The only bad part about the deal was the mile long drag out that me and my brother had to undertake. But looking back on the ordeal, it was the most memorable drag that I can remember and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
