Sneekee's NC Season (Long Story)

So I stay focussed on the first doe at she begins to make her way closer. At 20 yards she stops again to nibble at somthing and when she looks down I draw my bow.... My heart begins pounding was I wait for her to turn or move a little closer where I have the angle to shoot. She takes one side step that puts her quartering towards me at 20 yards.... I let my breath out.... hold steady.... and release just as she turns her head and scratches behind her ear with her opposite side leg! I see the arrow bury and her stagger into the woods all wobbly and again see the arrow sticking out of the ground... It looked good and felt good but we will see.
After climbing out of the tree I look at my arrow and find good bright red blood!
I take my stand back to the house.... A whopping 50 yard walk out of the woods.... Get a drink of water and make sure I have my flash light and head back after her. In total I gave her 45 minutes from the shot before I went after her.
To make a long story short i ended up jumping her so I backed out and went back in the morning. I ended up finding her very close to where I left her the night before. The shot ened up taking one lung out and passing through her opposite leg where she had been scratching!!!
With tag #1 filled and a little meat in the freezer and backstrap in my belly I feel a little better about not drawing a tag in Utah...

The next day Muzzle Loader season started but I had left mine in Utah for my Dad to use.... So I found myself hunting the property line with my bow again. More or less hoping to get lucky enough to get another stupid young one to walk out. [-o<
Well just as the sun began to slide below the trees I hear a 4-wheeler puttering its way in my direction... I'm thinking who in the heck is this... I've never even seen anyone else around here. Well and old man with his dog on the back pull up about 50 yards away. He climbs off his quad and begins spready corn around...(Baiting his Field which is legal here) Well just when I think he is going to leave me not too disturbed he climbs back up on his quad and what does he do...Rides right up beside me not even seeing me 5 yards away so he can look across the property line and snoop... So seeings as how my hunt was just ruined by a snoopy old man I figured why not give him the surpise of his life... So I stood up and said... " Do you mind giving me a little space?" Now the guy looks to be roughly late 70's probably 80's and he jumped and moved like you wouldn't believe!
Once he finally quit cussing out of pure fear he asked who I was and what I was doing... So I explained myself and provided him with my written permission to be on the land adjacent to his. He says well we don't have any problem them and abruptly starts his quad back up and scoots out of there. Well Crud... there is a ruined evening of hunting so I began to ease my self out nice and slow. Well on the way out just before dark I see four does and a BIG buck come out of the opposing tree line right onto this old mans property who I scared out of his witts!!!

Well the next day at work I start thinking maybe I should drop by and talk to this guy. I mean I do kind of owe him an appology for scaring him to death... Plus maybe if I show him I am not a jerk maybe I will get lucky enough to hunt his land.....
Now one thing you need to know about Eastern North Carolina is that all private property is pretty much run by hunt clubs period. So if you aren't in a hunt club your choices are VERY limited. So the possiblity of more land to hunt is a huge plus!!!
Well I stop by this guys house on my way back from work and tell him who I am and that I was sorry for making him soil his britches...
It takes about all my concentration to understand what this guy is saying and i leave not know what he just told me other than if I get something hit to give him a call cause his dog will track it.
Just to be sure to enhance my possiblities I borrow a muzzle loader from a friend and decide to hunt the edge of the field right behind the house. As I am laying in my make shift hole blind I get a call from the Old Man.... In that broken southern accent I here him tell me I had better go hunt his property for him tonight because he will not be able to.
So I am up and moving to try and find some sort of set-up where the deer came out the other night. I quickly try to find a place lay down and wait...
15 minutes before dark two does pop out into the field 30 yards behind me and get about 50 yards into the field before they notice me at all. They stop feeding and stare at me for a minute then make their way across the field and out of range. I continue to wait for the big buck who never shows himself with the other two does that emerge from the thickets.

So after dark I stand up and walk home thinking of how I shouldn't have passed on the does...
I make a deal with myself to not pass anything legal until I have just one hunter's choice tag left that will be saved for the big buck... Remember I have 6 tags all together and I can buy more doe tags for $10 a piece after I fill all mine so why not fill the freezer! lol
Because of my work schedule and other things I am commited to I am only able to hunt on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday Evenings. So Thursday evening rolls around and I find myself in a better position in my "Ditch blind" waiting on the deer in the old man's field again... Tonight there is a little more of a chill in the air and I think the deer will be moving much earlier tonight. Unfortunatley it is still not cold enough to kill the skeeters so the battle with them continues as i fight to stay in the ditch and not be carried away. As my battle with the skeeters rages on I think maybe I should at least have my gun in hand in case something just so happens to pop out early. so I pick up my borrowed muzzle loader look it over and look up and there he is... as close as he could possibly come out of the hellish thicket to me staring straight at me... I know what your thining but it isn't the big guy lol It is of course a monsterous spike with one side broken clean off so more like a single spike a true unicorn deer! His gaze quicky turns to the side and he begins to make his way into the field and feed. He turns so he is facing the opposite direction and I make my move... By the time he turns broadside again I am on him and I squeeze the trigger... KABOOOM... SMOKE... a waving white tail and he is back in the thicket.... ](*,) Did I miss? I sure wish he would have dropped.... then a conversatoin comes back to mind...

So once I am reloaded which seems to take a decade I head over to where he was and find blood EVERYWHERE! So I think I will be able to track this thing until I come to the wall of overgrown cursed ground that would stop a stinking bulldozer in its tracks.... So I call the old man who offered his "Tracking Dog" which is a mutt.... He says he will be right there so I continue my battle for life with the skeeters and wait wondering what on earth have I gotten myself into...
So they show up and and the dog bails off the quad hits blood and start going when the old man tells me to catch him. So we get a hold of the dog and he puts a great big cow bell around his neck... Thats right a cow bell... He explains... If your deer is dead he won't bark and you can't keep up with him.... Just like that the dogs loose and flying through this stuff... Here I come after him clothes being torn off fighting the overgrown hell now and not being able to hardly move as i hear the cowbell growing quieter... 30 yards into this stuff I can barely here the bell in front of me as i burst into a opening where there lays my deer with the dog laying next to it! :thumb I am completely dumb founded..... good boy i tell the dog as the battle to get the deer back out begins. Turns out when you crash a trail through that stuff it makes it easier to get out too so the drag was much easier than expected just not easy enough....
Tag #2 is filled and it has added a whole new repect for tracking dogs and give me a little more understanding into the style of hunting where I am....

The Next evening I decide to hunt one of my original spots and give the deer time to calm down in the old mans field... No I haven't seen any deer in this spot this fall to date so I am more or less just expecting a nice quiet evening. So i go lay down on the edge of the field and listen to the birds and watch hundreds of doves fly over.
Time Passes quickely and uneventfully other than two loose spaniels almost running over the top of me.
So at just about dark I decide I have had enough skeeters and I don't really care cause gun season opens tomorrow anyways. So i stood straight up and what was there in the middle of the field... one lone doe feeding away...
I look around and know there is no time to go around the edge of the field or even crawl straight at her within range so I say heck with it and walk straight at her....
I get to 75 yards thinking WTH... This never happens... Not even in high fence hunts.... I can't believe this... So I knelt down took aim and KABOOOM.... SMOKE... corn rustling where she is running and quiet... I think I hear her his the dirt on the edge of the field but can't tell and I can't see that edge. So I pust out the flash light and start walking the edge of the field... Sure enought there she lays.
Tag #3 filled lol

Well I take the next few days I am able to hunt off in order to butcher everything and get it taken care of completely. Since it was gun season I needed to make sure my rifle was still on so I busted out the ole .243 my Grandpa gave me when I was 14 and brought it out. Now i am ashamed to admit this but the ole .243 has had the same scope on it since the 70's probably and to make it worse.... It is a Tasco that has the same value as oh maybe a bag of skittles.... Well come to find out the scope finally bit the dust for whatever reason so i was left with a choice... Try and convince my wife to let me buy a new quality scope or ask if I could use her Christmas Present from last year... You see i brought almost all of my guns back to Utah this fall except for the .243 and my 12 ga. So here I was stuck with my wife's .300 WSM with 168 gr. barnes TTSX for these tiny Coastal Whitetails lol
Then the same friend who I borrowed the smoke pole from invited me to hunt with him at their hunt club the following weekend. Of course I had to say yes to this just for the experience.... Now I have told some stories of these guys but wow.... Of course these guy all hunt with dogs because it is legal here... I don't think it is neccessary but it definatly helps get them where you can see them. I think the deer herd would be better managed if the outlawed it honestly but how could i pass up this once in a lifetime expereince.....
Side Note: Hunting deer with dogs is exciting but it turns it into more of an upland game experience than a big game HUNTING experience. It takes little work and a lot of bullets for most.
This part of the story gets even more unbelieveable....

Well the morning was cool and crisp enough it even had the skeeters hiding for a while.... It was the perfect morning to be in a stand or blind like had been the rest of the year. I wasn't though... I was with a bunch of guys all parked at a fork in the road deciding what "Blocks" of land they wanted to "turn loose in". Well by the time they got everything hashed out it had been light for an hour and I had to pee non stop cause i had just about polished off thermos of coffee. So we headed to our spot when someone called over the CB and asked for a jump cause their truck was dead. So we turned around and helped out. Funny thing is that when we did do our Spot was stolen and we ended up searching for any open spot that wouldn't get us shot!
So we finally found a spot to set up and wait. you could hear the dogs quite a ways away running.
they began to head a direction where no one was to watch so we made our way over. The area is about 5 year old logged out so it is thick!!! well I found one opening where I could see maybe 50 yards and hoped that I might be able to see something moving and get a shot.
No like I said before I just wanted to fill all my tags but one and save it for a decent buck. So I had three tags left at this point. Well we could hear the dogs in the distance but i heard some rustling in the brush to my right. So i looked over and I could see steam from the sun heating up the dew on the leaves. I could also see the branch that had been moved to get my attention and I figured it was probably squirels. Well a truck started heading down the road we were standing on try to head off the dogs who were clearly not going to do anything for us. As I turned to look back down the lane from looking at the truck I saw a single buck walking broudside across my lane!!!! KABOOOM Recoil and looking through the scope again.... I see steam rising where he was and some brushing moving... I figure he is twitching on the ground....
My friend says in a startled tone did you get it??? I shurg my shoulders and say I'm pretty sure he dropped right there but it is too thick to tell!. So I made my way to where he had stood and laying there one on top of the other is two small bucks shot right through both of them in the high shoulders!!!!!
So my dog hunting experience ended the 1st hour into it without seeing a single deer being run by dogs. Isure heard it though! So tags 4 and 5 are filled and I am still hunting that big buck I saw earlier in the year.
With all the dogs that are being run everywhere it makes it very dificult to see deer come out while it is light. With the luck I am having this year though it might happen!