HUNTER: Colbey Bailey
INSTAGRAM BIO: https://www.instagram.com/colbybailey101/
YOUTUBE: Bailey Bowhunting
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/commitoutdoors/
STATE: Missouri
SEASON: Archery
HUNTING PRODUCTS: (Click to View)
WHITETAIL PHOTOS:
WHITETAIL STORY:
EDITOR’S NOTE: Love the stache!!!
It was Nov 19 and I was sitting on my “honey hole” farm. I had already punched my first buck tag here in Missouri on a decent 8 pt. But I knew it was a matter of time for this farm to have a mature buck make a daylight appearance.
I had already missed my opportunity in the pre-rut stage on my target buck. But with one tag filled and meat in the freezer I was honestly enjoying my hunting. It took a lot of the pressure off with the first one down.
I got to the stand a little later than I wanted, but since it was almost 60 degrees, I wasn’t too concerned knowing it would probably be later for any movement.
With prior knowledge of trail cam pics, we had day light buck movement the day before on the opposite side of the farm.
I got some great nature footage that day, and a light breeze was coming out of the SW blowing back over my shoulder.
All of a sudden, like a old buck does, here comes this buck out of know where and is now standing out in front of me at 90 yards. He is staring my way, so I’m unsure if hes seen me or just looking for anything. I move painstakingly to the camera to get on him.
After what felt like forever, he breaks and starts walking at an angle in my direction. As he walks and has his head down I pop out a couple grunts and a doe bleet, until finally he looks my way. He then proceeds to walk to a scrape and thrash a tree and walks into a super thick bedding area.
At this point, I get a little desperate and grunt and then hit a snort-weeze, and it wasn’t 10 seconds later he walks right back out and straight to me.
At this point, I had already grabbed my bow but I was still sitting. So I set the camera up into the spot I know he’s gonna walk into, which is about 5 yards underneath my ladder stand. As hes making his way to me, at the last second at 10 yards from my stand, he turns and goes right back into the thick bedding I’m sitting outside of.
As he disappears behind me, I slowly stand up, bow in hand, and grunt a couple times but out the opposite way that he was so it would sound like the buck he was looking for was back out in front of me.
After about 30 seconds he comes out straight downwind of me, jumps the fence and comes out to 5 yards in front of me. As he turned around a cedar tree, I had already pulled back and let it rip. I knew the shot was good but he was quartering really hard to me, and I knew I didn’t get a complete pass through. I could see the arrow hanging out, just not from where exactly.
With all this happening within close proximity, I wasn’t able to get the camera flipped around on him for the shot. So I immediately back out and wait a little over an hour.
When we started the track job I immediately was a little nervous because there was no blood. But as thick as this bedding area was I knew there were only a few paths he could use. Naturally, I took the biggest one knowing if he was hurt he was taking the easiest path.
Luckily we found the arrow covered in a super dark blood, which told me liver. So I wanted to follow what little blood I could in case he was already dead and it was a gut shot.
As we continued, we see eyes but he’s in bad shape, so I immediately back out and go back home eat dinner and watch the footage that I did happen to get.
We returned at 10:30pm, went back to the last place we seen him bedded up and found only a small pool of blood. So we once again took up the blood trail, which was a spec of blood about every 5 yards. I would take a path, look for blood, find something and my girlfriend would stand next to it as I went a little further.
After about 3 hours of that, and knowing I had to work the next day, I was on the verge of letting him lay over night. I took 10 more steps and saw a leg, then a belly, then a rack…and at 1:30 in the morning my tag was punched! I honestly couldn’t believe it! I didn’t care about work the next day at all.
It was was a great whitetail story, and I’m so thankful I was able to capture it all on film – the ups, the downs, it was a roller coaster ride of a night.
SOCIAL STORY:
