01-25-2020, 03:00 PM
Nice buck and sounds like you have had a wonderful season. Yep them bucks can slip right past you in a cut over. I hunted them for 30 years in east NC. First time I ever got to hunt this property, long story how I got to do it, was during muzzle loader season. I had never set foot on the property before. Was told to go down to this tower stand that over looked a pretty freshly done cutover. It was in the afternoon a couple hours before dark. I got into the stand and started scanning the cutover with field glasses, There were lots of piled up tree laps etc. All of a sudden I see this BIG buck about 75 yards from me. To me all I could see of him was his dead and about half of his neck above the brush. It looked to me that he was laying down. With the muzzle loader I was not going to take a shot at such a little target of that part of the neck on this BIG 10 pt. buck. I got on the scope and just watched him knowing that he would stand up at some time. All of a sudden his head turns completely around and it just moves off to my right and out of sight never to be seen again. Found out latter that there were deep ditches cut through this cutover that I could not see for drainage purposes and this buck was standing down in one and just walked off down the ditch. I know how it is to have to go into those young pines and green briars, which I call NC concertina wire. That same cutover that I was talking of within 5 years you literally had to get down on your hands and knees to crawl through most of it. The old dirt road that separated it and another patch of woods on the other side was my favorite hunting place because you could catch the deer coming out of the cutover going to the woods and soybean or peanut fields on the other side. My buddy and I killed so many deer on that road that the buzzards almost continually circled it because of the blood we used to say. LOL Keep that young one hunting. I refurbished an old Winchester bolt action that is a 243 Win and bought a scope and worked up a load and loaded up 50 rounds of ammo and gave it to a little 6 year old boy that is in my church. Hope to have him hunting with it this next season with his dad and grandfather. He killed a little buck with a cross bow this past season.