by- Collin Cottrell
This year I did just that. I was able to get home a couple of times during the early bow season, but with football games on Saturdays made it frustrating to have limited hunting time. With football season ending on the same weekend as the gun opener in Minnesota, I decided that I would skip using my rifle and work towards my goal of shooting my first deer with my Mathews DXT.
Opening morning of gun season I heard plenty of shots being fired from friends and neighbors close by, but I was on my own mission with the bow. At about 7:30am I heard some noise behind me. I turned my head slowly and through the bushes were a couple of deer with their heads down. I could barely make out what they were, but I knew that one was a real nice buck and the other was a decent doe. I had decided that I would shoot anything that gave me the best chance since I had never shot a deer with my bow before.
Gun season is during the rut here in Minnesota and it gave me an advantage that I was going to use. I had put a small amount of deer scent out and had my grunt tube with me. I watched the deer through the brush as I stood in my portable tree stand. The deer were about 45 yards away and hiding behind thick vegetation. They would not come into a shooting lane so I had to be patient. With the wind in my face I watched the buck chase the doe in circles for close to a half hour.
The doe started to get bored of this and then walked away with the buck following close behind. As they walked away, a different deer popped out from where they came, basically out of nowhere. I couldn’t tell what it was right away. The trailing deer slowly started to walk into the shooting lane to my left and stopped about 40 yards away. Thats when I got my body into position to draw back. I could see that the deer was a small buck as he popped his head into the shooting lane and started to walk out into the open. Once he was in the clear, he started to walk away from me too.
I hit my grunt call a couple times and that did the job. He was trying to find out where the sound had come from and right away he put his nose to the ground. The wind had swirled as he caught a hint of the deer scent that I had placed. He started to walk right towards me, and as he did I was ready. He passed not 10 feet in front of me when I drew back my bow. The buck heard me which caused him run and duck for cover. He was now 30 yards straight in front of me.
I drew back again and put the pin on him as he cleared the bushes for a moment. That is when I let go. He ran a bit and crossed a small stream where he started to walk slowly with his tail down. My G5 Striker had done its job! I found the arrow and it had all indications of a clean harvest. I had successfully taken my first whitetail with a bow and arrow during the Minnesota gun season.
What a day !!!!
