Daniel's 10-point deer
It was opening day of the missouri firearms season. My dad and I were hunting some hardwoods in central Missouri. We hadn't seen a thing all morning except for a large doe that I missed early in the morning, but thing were going to change this after noon. After being refreshed with some lunch, my dad and I switched stands to hunt the afternoon. At about 12:30 pm my dad started grunting on his Knight & Hale EZ-Grunter. I was about two hundred yards up the ridge from my dad, and I could here some deer running around below him. Then a shot rang out. I got on the radio to see if my dad had got his deer. He said that he didn't know. So he got down and started looking for sign of a hit, but he couldn't find anything after about thirty minutes of looking around. Forty-five minutes later, the deer my dad shot at earlier came back again after hearing the grunts from the EZ-Grunter. This time my dad connected. The deer took off barreling through the woods like a freight train. We waited about ten minutes before getting off the stand and looking for the deer. When we got down we couldn't find a blood trail. Even though my dad knew he hit the deer from the way the deer reacted to the shot. So we started making circles from the area my dad had hit the deer, I found the blood trail about a hundred yards or so into the woods, and it was a great blood trail, I don't think it could've been better, or so I thought. I started to follow it and the trail kept on going. I couldn't believe it. A deer bleeding this bad couldn't go very far. Then I thought maybe my dad had made a hit in the intrails. I decided for my dad to catch up with me on the trail and we sat and waited for twenty minutes before going back on the trail. After the wait we started back on the trail, then the blood trail seemed to stop. We could hardly find any blood at all. It got the point when we were only seeing specks of blood here and there and that was all that was keeping us on the trail. One hour went by and we are about a quarter of a mile from where my dad had shot the deer. We had followed the meager blood trail, marking it as we went, to a small logging road at the back of a cattle pasture. Then we lost it, we couldn't find any blood. Not even the tiniest piece. So we started do make circles again, and still nothing could be found. So we went back to last place we saw blood. I got down on my hands and knees to see if I could see anything. All of a sudden, I could see alot of these tiny specks of blood. I started following it crawling on my hands and knees for about twenty yards when the deer seemed to start bleeding real bad again. It was such a relief to see it, we followed the trail across the creek into the cattle pasture, and from the looks of the blood trail the deer was getting tired and was falling down, and getting back up. I noticed a small thicket running right down the middle of the pasture, and I told my dad that I think he is up in there. But he wanted us to stay on the trail and not push the deer, as the trail started getting closer to the thicket, I saw the deer jump up, and take off towards the other side of the field. My heart sank, I couldn't believe this thing wasn't dead yet! But we still stayed on the trail. We followed it out of the thicket, and we didn't find anything else, just one speck of blood leaving the other side. So I told my dad I was going to last place I saw him from when he jumped up and ran. I realized that their was a small rise in the field and that I was on top of it. So I walked slowly hoping the deer was somewhere down there. As I looked down, I saw what I thought was a large log, but when I looked at it closer, it was the deer. I radioed my dad that I had found the deer, and that he was still alive. I put a shot in the deer to keep him on the ground and my dad and I went towards him. The deer was still breathing but didn't have anything left in him to run. My dad finally finished him off with a shot to the heart. From examining the deer, my dad had actually hit the deer high in its leg, blowing of his leg. The trail came from the profusive bleeding of the artery in that leg. Yet it was enough. We had followed the deer for over two hours and half a mile. The deer was the biggest that we have ever seen on the property, and we thank God that we found him. We were so close to giving up. We have yet to have the deer scored, but our guess is a 125 b/c. It was a great end to what could've been the worst hunt.
Daniel M.