First Archery Deer

Lets talk about archery hunting for a minute.

Its hard.

A lot harder than you'd think.

It takes a lot of practice, work and skill.

Deer can see and smell you a mile away.

For an archery shot you really need to be under 50 yards to have an effective ethical shot. Not only getting that close you need to have a clear shot. Free of any weeds, tree branches, grass etc. The slightest thing can take your arrow off course. Once all those stars align up you still need to make sure you have a good vital shot to quickly kill the deer and not let it suffer or run too far and get the meat too hot.

They make archery season a lot longer for these reasons. Once you hit the extended season you can take a doe or a buck. Once muzzle loader and rifle season start deer are so spooky. The muzzle loader is over and the rifle started Saturday. Friday morning Chris, K and I headed up to Inspiration area to see if we could get a deer before the rifle hunted the next morning.

We got there a little early and waited for the sun to rise

 Miss K was bundled up in the side by side. We packed her special hunting blanket she loves. We stopped to let the sun come up and she was asleep in the back seat with the blanket over her helmet to keep her warm. She slept like this for about 3 hours.

 We saw a nice big 2pt and a spike that were with a herd of 8 does. They were so spooky we couldnt get closer than 65 yards to them as they were running up hill. We went to the top of the hill and started working our way down and they took off down the hill. We continued on and let them settle down some. There was no getting close. 

 Id told Chris whatever we see Im going to shoot. I am really running out of hunting time for deer and want some meat in the freezer. Besides Im really not a big horn hunter. Its nice to shoot something with a big rack but I dont really care. I just like meat in the freezer, you cant eat antlers anyways!

We didnt even see any doe at all. We headed back home and were talking about how we couldnt believe how spooky the deer were when 2 doe and 2 fawns ran across the road. They were on a dead run and 70 yards away. We glassed them for a min to see where they were headed but they had 2 young fawns with them. I wont shoot a doe with a fawn unless its at least a year and can survive easily on its own. We got back on the trail and were headed from home. We were ALMOST out of our boundary area when Chris said "get your bow ready and get out!" He saw something downhill on his side of the trail. I didnt see what he did but grabbed my bow and got out as he and K continued on. Im looking and looking and looking down off the trail and cant see anything. He comes walking down with his bow and is looking in one direction. I still cant see anything. I take a step to the side and around a tree can finally see a buck. He looks like a spike and I nock an arrow. His front shoulder and bottom half of him is covered by a bush. I have an arch of tree branches in front of me I have to shoot through. I pulled out my range finder and tried to get a yardage on him but the branches in front of me kept getting picked up by my range finder. I had just a small hole to shoot through. I thought what the hell it looks like about 35 yards so I just set my pins between 30 and 40. I couldnt take a shoulder shot because it was covered by weeds so I went a little further back and hoped I had enough of an angle. I let my arrow fly and it flew true! The deer did a complete backflip off the hill and crashed. I was shocked! Archery deer are supposed to run for a minute.. not this one. He dropped exactly where I shot him. I hit the ribs and the angle shot the arrow right up to the spine so it paralyzed him.. and when he did a back flip it broke his neck and dug his antlers into the ground so even if he wanted to go anywhere he couldnt. 

Kennedy was so stinking excited. Her and I hiked down to him while Chris grabbed his knives. When we turned him over we realized he was a 2 point. Even better! When my arrow went into him it broke into 3 pieces from the impact of hitting his bones and the back flip he did. This was my first archery kill and I was so excited!

This is Kennedy's favorite part. She loves the gutting and getting to see the insides. She asks what the organs all are and has to see the heart every time.

Im just excited to get some meat in the freezer! I dont even care how big it is and that I have my first archery deer down! Now just Chris and Todd have deer tags left to fill. Hopefully we will have a few more before the season is over! Thanks to my wonderful 'guide' for spotting the deer :)