Hey, all! I’m finally back with something to say!

My 2022 whitetail archery season is now done. I didn’t get out as much as I usually do, but I still saw a fair amount of deer. I ended up harvesting a small 7-point buck on public land (which this post will be about). However, if you want to see a full recap with footage, please see this YouTube video:

The 7-Point Buck Story

As I stated earlier, this post will be the story of my 7-point buck hunt. It was quite the whirlwind in trying to track it. When I shot it 30 yards out from my saddle, I saw a picture-perfect quartering away shot; I hit him right on the money. It made a half-circle into some thickets but I didn’t see it come out on the other end, so I assumed it was dead. It was only around 8 o’clock in the morning, so I gave him more than enough time to expire.

As I got down from my tree, I wasn’t able to find any blood nor hair because of the terrain. Eventually, I stumbled upon blood by walking where I saw him enter the thicket. From there, I knew my buck had to be no more than 50 yards. As I progressed, I lost blood after 100 yards. After scrambling around, grid searching, and praying to the deer-gods, I had given up the search. My brother on the other hand, thought the buck also had to be dead from the pictures of blood I sent him. He decided to leave work to help me track it.

Once he got there, we went back to where I found last blood and basically walked in every-which direction to find more blood. After giving up, I decide to do another wide circle and I luckily stumble on a simple speck of blood on a fallen tree. I call my brother and we take off on this new blood trail. After another 50 yards, we lose blood again.

After losing hope – again, I tell my brother to stand 30 yards from me and just make a b-line to the end of the trees to see if luck was on our side and we stumble upon the buck; it had to be dead at this point, right? We get in position and we take off. 20 yards into the search, I find a huge chunk of coagulated blood which led to a fresh trail of blood droplets. I call my brother again and we take up this blood trail.

After going another 100 yards, we finally find the buck – alive! It was hurt bad and I felt like someone punched me in the gut. I never want to make deer suffer from my actions. We made a quick decision to head back to the car to grab my bow because my smart-self thought I wouldn’t need it. So we get to the car, grab everything we need, we start heading downwind of the buck through this swamp. When we get close to the deer’s position, I start crawling to get closer, and when in position, I stand to get a quartering shot. I release an arrow and the buck grunts and takes off. I see that my arrow is no more than 5 inches into the buck. I now have another feeling that someone punched me in the gut.

We watch the buck make it to a section of acorn trees and contemplate what to do. With the sun setting in an hour, I make the decision to give it one more hurrah to try and put the buck down. I slowly make my way to the tree line, and thankfully, find the buck laying there dead. After analyzing my shots and arrows, I come to the conclusion that the mechanical aspect of my broadheads did not function as it should’ve with the quartering shots. The path each arrow took was similar in that they didn’t go straight, but veered off to the right a little, making them non-deadly. This is something I am going to definitely change in the future. Here’s an image of my first shot:

A rollercoaster is the only way I could describe this hunting trip. Being confident in the first shot and expecting a dead deer turned to hours of tracking, to making another bad shot, to finding the deer dead. In all honesty, I wasn’t happy with how everything turned out. No animal should go through that and it was on me and my equipment. In the new year, definitely expect me to change up my broadheads so this won’t happen again.

I hope you enjoyed this story and happy hunting!