Since Paul has gotten his two bucks for the year (he cannot shoot another buck in Illinois) and since I have not yet "pulled the trigger" with my bow on a deer yet this year, Paul sat with Skyler and I sat in a separate stand on the same property. I of course let her have her choice of stands and I picked my stand after that. Both stands proved to be great Friday (opening morning), however a lot of the deer were hanging out in the brush -- not offering shooting opportunities. Skyler got to see and hear a lot: a buck roar, bucks grunting, a buck fight which was pretty long and drawn out and bucks chasing does. While all that was going on, I had my deer (an 8 pointer) come through at about 9:00 and I initially decided to let him walk but then he completely circled my stand at about 25 yards the entire time, offering awesome wide-open broadside shots and I finally couldn't take it any longer and decided to shoot him at about 25-30 yards. It was nice to get my .54 caliber flintlock dirty.
As soon as I shot my buck I texted Paul and Skyler and told them they had to come up to my stand because the deer were using the area heavily. Since the wind had switched at their stand to a not-so-positive direction, they decided to take me up on my offer. So after the tradeoff, and only about 3 hours later, Skyler got an opportunity at this mature awesome buck and her shot was true. Her deer dropped only about 75 yards from where she shot him. Paul and I are both super excited for and proud of Skyler and she is pretty excited herself!! She set out this year to get a bigger buck than she had gotten in the past and she definitely did that! Congratulations Skyler on a GREAT hunt and an awesome buck!
