Archery Gallery
Josh Weeks Archery August 2012
Well my 2012 archery hunt came and went this year on opening day.
It all started this summer with a load of scouting. I have been into this area dozens of times in the last year knowing there were some good bucks in there. I had a couple of nice bucks on camera this summer, but had only seen this guy once before a distance and only for a second. I new he was a good one but not sure how good.
fast-forward to the week of the hunt. I went up weds morning to start looking. Of course with all the weather the prior week, and raining weds my springs had a slim possibility of producing so I decided to head out to my glassing point and set up and do some glassing. Right away I spotted a group of 4 bucks one of them being a 100+ 3 point that I was considering shooting if the big guy didn’t show.
With a heck of a storm moving in I new conditions were gunna get tough. Wow what a long night of sleeping on a cot with a tarp over me. I couldn’t scout for most of the morning Thursday due to the rain, However when the storm broke a bit in the afternoon I went back out to glass. Just before dark I glassed up the big dude I was looking for.
After contemplating how to approach him in the morning I was in a toss up. He was on a bench in between two huge canyons. I decided I better get to the glassing spot early, locate him and plan from there. At daylight on Friday when the sun came out enough to see I was not a happy camper. I couldn’t even see the bench they were on, wouldn’t you know it, FOG. It was the longest two hours of my life. Finally I got a little break in the fog and put some glass on the bench. Instantly I saw the two little bucks that were with him. I new he was there. I then decided to boogie over there and see what I could do. After nearly 2 hours of crossing two canyons and scaling up to the bench where he was, I was to my dead juniper that was my goal.
At this point my buck fever was setting in hard. I had an arrow knocked and slowly slipped my way in to what I thought was fifty yards from where I thought they would be. When I got to my next tree I looked through the bush and saw a deer feeding its way into an opening. With having stocked in of tons of deer in my day the scenario usually goes, “when I got there the little bucks were in the way of the big buck not offering me a shot, or the big one wouldn’t step out”. Not this time. When the deer cleared the brush I was pleasantly surprised to see I t was him. As soon as I saw the rack I drew back figuring the yardage at 45. As soon as he cleared the tree I let it fly. The shot was tru and I nailed him perfect. I watched him disappear into the brush. At that point I was a wreck. Heart pounding, shaking, then doubt on the hit all start playing tricks on me. I waited about 20 minutes and the slipped up to the shot location. I looked above where he was standing and saw the arrow. Pass through, but no blood, I walked down the trail through the brush twenty yards and started seeing blood and a lot of it THANK GOD I was thinking to myself. After fifty yards of trailing there he was.
Wow what a hunt and what a buck, defiantly was worth all the scouting and hard work. He has a 19″ inside spread and 21″+ main beams. Was defiantly happy with him and there was no ground shrinkage on this guy.
Thanks for reading: Josh Weeks
Tagged 100-110", archery, hunt stories, velvet
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CouesWhitetailAugust 29, 2012 at 4:29 pmAuthor
Congratulations Josh!! Spot and stalk on a great coues buck with a bow is an amazing accomplishment!!
loco4couesAugust 29, 2012 at 11:32 pm
Again, Josh, great buck and way to stick with it. Your hard work and scouting definitely paid off.