Hunter hunting along a marsh

Calvin K

Information

  • Date Taken: 10/11/2020
  • Time Of Day: Evening
  • Official Score: 141
  • County: Gladwin County
  • Property: Public
  • Dressed Weight: 225

Well, last night I ended my Michigan Whitetail buck pursuit. A bitter sweet moment for me because I absolutely love to be in the woods in late October/ Early November. Most people have said you’re so lucky. However if they could have seen all the preseason scouting, archery tuning, equipment familiarization, over the top scent control procedures, watching the wind directions, studying satellite maps. And much more.
I’ve been trouncing through the Glen Arbor public lake shore since early March. Locating core areas, feeding locations, and preferred travel corridors. If anyone knows about public land mature Whitetails they are extremely in tune with their surroundings. On Oct. 11th I had a perfect wind direction out of the ESE it allowed me to get in between this mature bucks core area and where I thought he would go for water before venturing out and feeding in the acorn flats at night time.
Just like I had imagined him doing he came out at 6:30. However, he was about 20 yards behind me and down wind from me…. Not ideal. He raised his snout in the air and licked his nostrils (they typically do this to verify what they smell). I thought he had winded me. He quickly disappeared from view. While waiting for any sort of movement I thought I had missed my opportunity. After about 10 minutes of mind racing and frantic scanning of the underbrush he emerged broad side at about 20 yards from me. I drew back my bow and placed the top pin behind his front shoulder and released the arrow and watched as the lumenoc equipped arrow raced towards it’s mark.
A beautiful clean double lung shot. He fell to the ground briefly then got up and crashed ahead through the underbrush.
This brute only made it 40 yards from where I shot him.
A partially Velveted 9pt with a drop tine on public land.
I may have to take a road trip to Ohio or Wisconsin this November.

2020 what a season.