Congrats Tyra on your first whitetail! Here's her story.
4:15 am the alarm goes off. Boy, it sure is warm in this bed, but you can't kill them from the house. Get up, get dressed in many layers and go outside. The truck and everything in the back of it are covered in frost! The thermometer says 19 degrees! I'm thinking I might go crawl back into that warm bed - 19 degrees! I tell myself to suck it up and go get that big buck. Once on the way, I seriously question my sanity as the temp drops to 17 degrees. Corey waits for me to get up into my stand, then off he goes to his. It's cold! I keep telling myself to stick it out til the sun comes up. Then, just 5 more minutes, just 5 more minutes. My hands are numb, I can't feel my toes and I'm shivering. I haven't seen a thing, not even a squirrel. Finally at about 7am I decide I had enough, I'm going back to the truck and wait for Corey. I turn to my left, slide my safety rope down so I can get onto the climbing stick and look up into the corn field. There he is, walking toward me! A Big Buck! I attempt to do too many things at one time - reach for my bow, take off my glove and not move too fast - and somehow succeeed. I draw my bow, and when he gets right in front of me, I bleet at him. He stops, poses very prettily for me and I wacked him. I think it's a good shot. He runs off around the corner of some trees and I watch him fall. The next 30 minutes seem a year long. Now what do I do?!? I left my cell in the truck. I get down, go down the road to get my phone to text Corey. I can see the buck in the corn field struggling, but he can't seem to get up. I text Corey, but he doesn't have service where he is. I head back toward my stand and walk up on a 3 or 4 pt buck in the road. I stop, he looks at me and starts walking toward me! He wanders around for several minutes, jumps the fence under my stand then walks off into the corn field in the back. I check on my big buck and HE"S GONE!!! I nearly cried. I walk back to my stand and see blood going in the wrong direction - the direction the little guy went! I'm so confused!!! I know that buck I shot was bigger than 3-4 pt. But the blood on the ground is following the trail the little guy went...and I watched him walk away! Finally Corey shows up and I show him the blood going the wrong way. We follow it and there is just too much blood for that deer to have walked away. We keep going and down by the creek - there he is - a 10 point buck! My first deer ever and with my bow!
We realize that the blood trail passes right in front of the swamp ghost trail cam we set out! We got pictures of him after he's shot walking off!
