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DAY 6

Tuesday Morning Hunt

Pat: With the hunt getting down to the wire I was starting to feel the pressure of picking a good stand. Everyone likes to hunt this time of year but as we were finding out, it was a great time to see deer, but not necessarily the best time to kill a shooter buck. The big boys were locked with does and most of them were out in the prairie. What does were seen by themselves were being harassed to no end by dinks. Still, it was fun to watch and sooner or later a nice buck would walk by. There are plenty of them here.

So knowing that we've been seeing most of the big bucks in the open, I decided to hunt the Condo stand which is just down the road from the guesthouse we stay in. By sunup I hadn't seen a single buck and only a couple of fawns. I was disappointed in my choice but stuck it out until lunch. I saw two bucks, both young and small and did see one shooter chase a doe about 300 yards off in the distance.

Ron: Ron headed to my tree belt stand where I was hunting the scrape line. There are two stands there, a baited stand where I had that big 9 come in, and my scrape line stand a couple hundred yards away. Nothing came into the baited stand where Ron was but he did see a big shooter 8 walk down the tree line just out in the field. Not sure he would have had a shot from my scrape line stand as he was working the field just like the bucks did for me.

Tuesday Afternoon Hunt

Pat: Pressure's on! It was windy when we left the house. I really like hunting the North Pines stand where Jake killed his buck two days ago. I decided to go look at the scrapes and see if they were freshened up since the commotion there two days ago. When we got there the scrapes had been freshened again and the area looked great. But the downside was there were very few does using this area and this time of year hunting does makes sense. So we talked ourselves out of the stand and headed to the big cottonwood where I was seeing a lot of doe activity. When Kent and I arrived there the wind was different and very poor for this stand. We decided to head back to the north stand and that's where I would hunt.

I had no sightings at all and I started second guessing my choice. There was nothing going on there. No does, no dink bucks - nothing. At 5PM I put a post on the forums from my stand and not 10 minutes after that I caught a glimpse of antlers moving through the cedars to the North. I flipped on my video camera and grabbed my bow in case he was a shooter. As he stepped out of the trees I immediately knew he was a shooter even though he had some busted off points. He was really tall with webbed main beams and I could count 11 points. Width was just to the ears and I guessed him at 4.5 years old.

The buck hit the bait but only for a moment and I had no shot. He then started heading to the field and when that happened I made my "nerr" sound and stopped him. I was already at full draw so I picked the offside leg and released. I immediately knew my arrow was perfect and the buck wouldn't go far.

Kent, Brad and Jake showed up a little while later and Jake found the buck immediately just 50 yards away. Dead from a perfect heart/lung shot. We were all thrilled. He's not my best buck from here but he's a terrific deer. We grossed him right at 150, even with the busted points. Another super buck from Kansas.

Ron: Ron hunted the kill tree but saw no shooters. We are convinced that the big deer are out in the open with does as we're seeing far fewer big bucks now than earlier in the week. Ron has one more day to go so tune in tomorrow and we'll see if he can pull off a last day miracle.

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