My Baptism Buck

By AzSlim

Anyway, we plopped down a little after 4:00 and started watching the birds and listening to the traffic drive by, since the tank sits beside a main dirt road. Along about 5:30 I hear doves flush behind me and a couple other noises, so I slowly turn my head to the right and peek over my shoulder. Oh boy, deer, and it’s a buck! And he’s about 5 yards behind me just where I told Brian he was going to come. Crap, going to get busted again. He looked at me then moved back up to the berm and started walking towards my left. I turned my head the other way and saw him walking down to the water at my 30 yd marker – I had strung rocks in a line at 10-yard intervals around the tank the week before. Okay, 30 yards is good.

I raised my bow and he turned and looked at me. I held still and after inspecting me for a minute he dropped his head to drink. On the second swallow my arrow hit him and he jumped sideways then ran a little ways and stopped and looked back at me. I could see him staggering and blood pumping out so I knew it was a heart shot. I sat still waiting for him to drop. But nooo, with his last strength he ran downhill and jumped into the tank and started swimming. Along about then I bailed out of my blind and started yelling ‘No! Get out of the water!’ Like the deer is really going to listen to me, especially since I am in my ghillie suit and look like a big bush. Brian ran yelling from his blind too, I don’t think the deer listened to him either. Now he is swimming strong and in the middle of the tank when he realizes he isn’t going to make it all the way across and turns around. That’s when the rooting started. ‘Come on, you can do it! Just a little farther and you’re out! Come on!’ When he was about 10 yards from the bank the sharks got him, or it could have been piranha, I just know that a big pool of blood came up as my deer went down. I could see one antler under 6 to 8 inches of water so I think ‘Hmm, this isn’t too bad, I have a rope in the truck.’ I trot over to the truck and grab my rope.

Back at the tank I build a loop, twirl a couple times and make my throw. Crap, the rope floats and won’t go down around the antler. Brian suggests we get a long forked branch and try pushing the rope over the antler. I reply ‘Nope, lets get this over with’ and start stripping down. I waded out in the cold water just short of my crotch, mud squishing between my toes, and wrapped the rope around the head. When I turn around to get out I start slipping, the bottom is too steep and slick. So Brian pulls me out first with the rope, then we pull the deer out. About this time is when I remembered the camera in my pack so I had Brian snap a few pictures. Since I am in a black t-shirt and skivvies, barefoot with mud up to my ankles the caption will be ‘Camouflage, we don’t need no stinking camouflage’. My deer isn’t one of the monsters I have had walk up on me in the past – when I was armed with my recurve and wouldn’t shoot past 25 yards and the deer stared at me from 40 - but I don’t care, he is good enough for me. He was a 3x3 before the fighting started; now he is a 2x3 with breaks on both antlers. Brian had an excellent seat for this show. He got to watch the buck when he first walked down on me, go back up the berm and skyline himself till he dropped down to the tank for his last drink. I sure am glad he was with me, otherwise I would have had to crawl out of the tank of nasty cow-poop water on my hands and knees and that would have been real cold. The next two mornings Brian had deer walk up on him but he didn’t get either of them. Of course I laid in bed snug and warm and waved when he left camp, because that’s what hunting partners are for.