Saturday October 8th, On the board!

After hunting for 7 straight days I entered the woods sleep deprived and very tired today.  However the anticipation of more great conditions for the morning hunt and my plans to sleep in on Sunday, I dragged myself up the mountain in New York for my 3rd straight day in this stand.  As it is, I've seen deer every time I've sat this stand this season, and I've already passed 3 one year old bucks.  Cloudy skies and a SSE breeze between 5 and 10 mph had me excited for another morning in this stand, despite the 50 degree temp and humid air, which made feel warmer than any other day this week.  I had hopes of finally seeing one of the many doe groups feed across my bench like many years past, or maybe even getting lucky and seeing an older buck late for his trip up the mountain, or maybe I would even get skunked this morning, always possible in the deer woods as we all know.  At 8:20 am I checked my clock, wondering if I was close to 8:30 am when our NY hunting crew would be getting on the radios to check in on the action.  As I was looking at my phone, finally, the unmistakable noise of a deer walking in the crunchy leaves.  I looked up staring in the direction of the noise, but couldn't spot the deer and my heart rate starting climbing as I knew something was close and that feeling of maybe getting busted by an approaching deer continued to drive up my nerves.  Once I spotted the deer I knew it was safe to stand up, I quickly noticed a bigger rack than the 3pt, 4pt and 6pt I've been seeing all week at this stand and a quick look through the binos confirmed he was a 7 pointer.  He wasn't huge, and any other day would probably have gotten the pass.  However, after passing 3 bucks already this week, missing once and hitting two doe's (only one of which I recovered) this season, I was locked in for a clean harvest, and this was the best NY deer I've seen all week, and more so, I could have my Sunday's off for the rest of the season to recharge if I tagged out.  I ranged him at 35 yds as he entered my shooting lane, "buuuuuurp," he stopped broadside in my shooting lane, I thought to myself "grip, nose, level, pick a spot" and click!  My arrow ripped right through him, perfect shot I thought to myself.  He bounded about 20 yds and froze, I knew he had no clue what just hit him, and he stood there still for about 2 minutes.  As I was coaching him in my head to go down, he started walking away hurt, very slowly, and soon got 60yds away and out of my sight.  I knew the shot was good, he just needed time.  I jumped on the radio as it was now 8:30 am to tell the guys about the news.  While I was breaking the news and hearing about Reggie's 3pt he had just dropped only 500yds down the same bench, I suddenly heard some thrashing in the leaves, as I looked up I saw a deer bed down.  I noticed it was my deer as soon as I raised the binos on him, but he got up again, only to crash a few more steps and collapse for the last time.  For the double lung shot I made, I thought this deer fought the good fight longer than I had expected as I hate making them suffer, but the good news was he was down, and he stopped moving, and I'm on the board for 2016.  Its been a great few weeks to start off 2016;  My scouting in CT paid off with multiple deer sightings and a couple shots, unfortunately my doe was eaten by coyote's, but my buddy Pauly also dropped a 6pt in a spot I showed him I had previously scouted.  My go to "old faithful" bench in NY paid off big as well going for 6 hunts and seeing 7 deer, at least one a day aint all that bad on public land!  I certainly spent very little time scouting in NY this year and my bench just so happened to be getting heavily used prior to the season opening, and it all came together today.  I'm hoping the deer come back in CT as they vacated the premises for a week after the coyote's got my doe, this week I'll be focusing on CT trying to get a tag filled in another state.  After all, NY and CT are my warm ups for the MA bow season I've spent countless hours scouting for all year and setting up 8 stands, 2 climber spots and growing my food plot.  After one more week in CT, I'll be all in for the MA season pursuing big woods public land bucks, mainly my target deer, "Bullwinkle."  The pressure is off now, and I'm more excited than ever that this will be a great season as I get to let all the little ones walk this year and focus on shooting a mature buck, hopefully its Bullwinkle...  More to come, the season is young.