No Hope Without Prayers

Thirteen-year-old Rowdy Lee with the big Hancock County 8-point buck he killed with a crossbow.

My name is Rowdy, and I am 13 years old. I became interested in hunting when we moved to Georgia about six years ago. I loved watching the deer on our property. Last year I was able to put up cameras and put corn out at a family property. I would get really excited as I watched all the deer come in and feed. I started putting out deer corn in about March. My dad and I soon discovered that we had several monster bucks, as we called them, coming in. We would always pick on each other on who would get the biggest buck of them all. Most of these big bucks and our biggest buck, which is an 8-point, would only come in and feed during the night. It was so frustrating! I would convince my mom to take me to check the corn every week, and I would put it in huge piles of 50-lb. bags out in the field. I really didn’t know what I was doing, all I remember thinking is I want that 8-pointer before my dad got to it. My thoughts were to try and get these monster bucks to come out during the day.

Then bow season rolls around and my dad and I are really excited to head to the family property. The morning hunt of opening day we didn’t see anything but a doe. We decided to go back to the house to take a nap, shoot my crossbow to dial it in better, and watch some hunting videos.

We decided to get out to the blind at 3 p.m., and I prayed, a lot. At about 6 p.m. my dad was ready to go and I said no. I didn’t want to leave yet. A little later, we saw multiple does, but I think they knew something was up. So they never really came out of the tree line, and they just left.

About 30 minutes later, a spike showed up, and then out of the tree line that big 8-point showed up. I kept whispering to my dad saying, “Dad, dad, dad, that’s him.” I was trying not to make too much noise, but I was trying to get his attention to show him who was there.

The 8-point monster buck was 70 yards away but not close enough for me to make a shot. As we were looking at him, we discovered that he had just started shedding his velvet, it was really cool to see.

Rowdy’s dad was able to get a picture of the big 8-pointer—with strips of shedding velvet hanging down—before Rowdy took his shot.

I just said to my dad, “Wow.” The buck walked back into the tree line, and we thought we missed our chance, but then he came back into the field at 30 yards. He walkde even closer… he was then at 20 yards. I decide to take my shot, so I shot. I heard a ‘whack,’ and he mule kicked. He turned around and went out into the woods the same way he came in.

I shot him right before sunset. My dad and I got out of the blind about 10 minutes after the shot and tried to find the arrow. We couldn’t find it, probably because the crossbow shoots at 425 feet/second. So we headed back to the house to grab a flashlight because it was getting dark by then.

We got back to the field and started heading into the woods and we found blood, just a little bit at first but then there was a lot after about 5 yards, but it looked like it might have been a gut shot. The blood was good for about 20 yards, and then we thought we saw him just standing there. We backed out and called our buddy David Kilgore from Kilgore’s Kids to come in with a thermal to try to help us find my buck.

We couldn’t find him that night, so we decided to back out again and look for him in the morning. We went back out in the morning and couldn’t find him. We decided to look on GON‘s Tracking Dog list to call someone local to help us locate my deer. They got there around 5 p.m. As soon as the dogs sniffed the blood, they followed it for 300 yards, and they found him.

If we had just waited in the blind a little longer and walked a little farther, we think we would have found him that same night. My big monster buck died the night I shot him. When we found him, we discovered that it was a liver shot, not a gut shot. The coyotes got to him first. His neck was eaten a little bit, and his velvet was brown, but I was just glad he had died and was not suffering. I was sad that we weren’t able to harvest the meat. And my dad and I are grateful for all the help we had tracking my second buck that I named, “No hope without prayers.”