All I can figure, he lost sight of the doe he was chasing and with the series of calls I made he thought the doe had doubled back on him. The trail he was on was 65 yards perpendicular to me. Then, for the first time, I could see him and how wide he was. Still approaching at a slow alert walk, I grunted again and he made a left turn straight at me 65 yards away. Now really alert, he kept approaching. I only had one hole to throw an arrow through the bushes, so I drew and held on that spot and waited. He needed to come to the shooting hole and, also, turn broad side. He approached the hole through the bushes and at the same time turned as if he was ready to get out of there in a hurry. I was still holding at full draw.

As the deer turned to his left, I released the arrow. I knew I hit him good. He spun hard to his left and ran back the way he came in. He jumped a blow down about the size of a VW Beetle and when he landed he didn’t have much left. He walked and wobbled and turned around twice. I thought I could see where he died from the stand but I wasn’t sure. Not completely sure I could see him, I waited. As I walked to spot I thought he died, he startled me. I found his body propped upright between two trees with an antler stuck in both trees. His head was upright as if he was looking back at my stand. Reaching for an arrow to nock and every hair standing on end, I thought he was alive. He died a proud deer and I was glad I was standing over him. Double lung with a forty yard trail.” Joe Brykalski, Oakland Co. Buck, 2007

By the time I was ready to go, the Advil had taken the edge off my back pain, but it was too late to go to bed now. So I headed for the property. I had not been on this unit for several weeks so I waited for the sky to lighten somewhat before I slipped on the waders and eased down to the stream. The best way to get to the northeast part of this place was to wade the stream up to a cattail swale, and find a spot to ambush deer crossing into the thick bedding areas. I had gotten a trail-cam picture of a monster buck in this area, so it is an exciting spot to hunt.

The majority of the wading would be along the back yards of homes that bordered the east side of the property, but the deer movement was usually good near these houses. This morning was no exception – at first light, a doe crossed the stream twenty yards from me and stopped to browse on the bank. When she finally wandered off, another doe was making her way through the lawns toward the stream. By now there was good light in the yards, but still fairly dark under the trees. I watched her cross the water and bound off into the cover, and when I turned back to the yard, a nice buck was all the way to the trees near the stream. Even in the dark under the trees, I could tell at a glance that he was a shooter, so I didn’t try to count points – just hoped he was the buck from the picture. He was on the trail of the doe, but in no hurry. I waited for him to cross, but he seemed hesitant and looked back toward the house several times. Finally, he stepped into the stream and took a drink. As he jumped onto the bank, I drew. He turned toward me, shrinking the amount of vital target considerably. I waited for his next move, but he just stood there looking back toward the house. My arm was starting to tire, so I decided to shoot. Relax, concentrate, breath, center the cross-hairs, squeeze the release trigger. The arrow flew too far left, and hit him in the shoulder, but he went down immediately. He started to struggle to get back up, so I put another arrow through his heart/lung area. That finished him, and the adrenalin rush nearly finished me. With no sleep, dosed with Advil, chilled from standing in icy water, and pumped from downing a good buck, I almost fell into the stream while trying to rush up the bank to see if this was the booner we had on film.

The pictures tell the tale – although much smaller than the trail-cam buck, I’m not complaining. He would be the number fifty buck I’ve taken in Michigan, and number twenty-five Pope & Young qualified buck – a sort of milestone deer. Depending on the amount of shrinkage during the sixty-day drying period, he should rank in the top ten or twelve of my Michigan bucks. He would also be the fourth buck in the last three seasons that I’ve taken on club property.

So my holiday netted a nice buck (taken on club property); and thanks to a local club member with a barn to hang it in temporarily, I even made it home in time to stay out of the dog house. I did, of course, spend several hours in the penalty box.

I had only visited our Gaylord property once before, but my job would put me in the neighborhood several days during the next two weeks.With any luck, I would get at least two or three evenings free to devote to time in the woods. According to the reservation system, I would have the place all to myself, so my packing included camo and the Hoyt Spectra. This property is divided into three units with a power line right-of-way dividing two of them. I have always had good luck near clear-cuts for utilities and railroads, so I picked the units where I could approach the clearing from downwind.

Week one didn’t work out until Friday, but that evening was a hit – in the woods by 3PM, and seeing deer by 3:30. At last light, I had seen nine doe and four bucks – but nothing even close to a shooter. Seven of the deer had been within bow range though, so it was an exciting hunt. The deer were circling through the property, so I may have seen some of the doe more than once. On their second round, one of the yearlings came within five feet of me and got a snoot-full of my scent. So the next hour was spent with four mature doe trying to figure me out. They snorted, stomped, bobbed, ran, returned, and generally kept me immobile for the rest of the day – but it was fun.

Week two was a little more open, so I booked Tuesday and Thursday. I got to the property at nearly 6AM Tuesday, and as I put on my boots in the van, noticed a small buck bedded about 50 yards into the hunting unit – too small to shoot, but he looked to have good genetics. He appeared to be a ten pointer with very little mass and average tine length…maybe a twelve inch spread. As I slipped into the unit along the power-line, the little buck watched me, but never rose out of his bed. During the morning I saw five doe and a spike buck, but they were spooky and snorted up a storm before heading onto the neighbor’s farm. I spent the rest of the morning still hunting, to get a better lay of the land, and only saw squirrels and a rabbit. When I got back to the van, the buck was still bedded in the same spot. I didn’t make an effort to be quite and had my camo coveralls off, when the buck stood and headed away from me. His struggle to walk was painful to watch. One leg was obviously broken and his gate seemed to indicate more problems than just a broken leg. He went twenty yards or so and laid back down again. I suited back up and headed out to put him down. It was somewhat of a cat and mouse chase, but he eventually tired and I got within twenty yards of him. When the arrow passed through his chest, he got a burst of energy and ran until he was out of sight – a surprise to say the least. If I waited the traditional time, and then field dressed him and loaded him into the van, I would be late for my meeting, so I decided to come back in the evening to do the retrieval.

As is typical, the meeting went late, and it was dark when I arrived back at the property. I had marked where the blood trail started, so the tracking was not as difficult as I has feared. I followed his trail for about twenty minutes before the trail petered out. So I marked last blood and did some inspecting of the closest likely destinations. The second guess was accurate, and I found him piled up in a blow-down near the border of the unit more than a hundred yards from where he had started. He turned out to be an eleven point typical who looked to be 2 1/2 years old with great genetics for this part of the state. It was a shame that he didn’t get more time to grow-up. During the field dressing, I concluded that he had been hit by a vehicle. The front right leg was broken and the ribs on the right side were also broken, but there didn’t seem to be any holes on the insides of the chest cavity. We would have to see what the butcher recommended about what to process and what to throw away. Getting him to the van and loaded was a piece of cake compared to the past few years, when I downed much more mature deer. He would weigh on the light side of 150 pounds, and I had brought my vinyl deer slide, which made the dragging and loading a breeze. It struck me as I was driving home that this was the biggest buck I have seen north of the rifle line since 2001, so I guess complaining about burning a tag on a small buck would be inappropriate.