Hunter: Audrey Cole
Points: 8 (4L, 4R)
County: Walton
Season: 2021-2022
Hunt Story
We decided to go to the stand after the rain slowed down around 4 p.m. The buck had shown up on camera the past two days between 5 and 6. We got settled into the stand and the rain started to come back down. Audrey and I were in a box blind so we were pretty comfy. After about an hour the rain slacked up, and we started to see some does come out into the hayfield behind us. We tried to get a shot on a doe because light was fading pretty fast due to the cloud cover and fog. We decided not to take a shot on the does and turned around and saw the buck about 50 yards away with two does, so we quickly sprang into action. As we were trying to get Audrey settled in for the shot, one of the does spooked and the buck took off with them. After I whistled, he stopped about 120 yards out and was quartering away. We got Audrey re-settled on her bog pod and she squeezed off the trigger on her 7mm-08 her mom and I got her for her birthday in November. I knew the buck was hit but the deer took off into the woods. We gave it about 30 minutes, and the rain started to come down again so we went to get pop pop and start looking for blood. We couldn’t find any sign of blood or hair, but from my 20+ years of hunting I knew that she had hit the deer the way he reacted. I got on my phone and called my buddy Brandon Hightower who has a top-notch tracking dog Bo. He showed up a few hours after Audrey had shot the buck, and after putting Bo on the area the deer was shot in the food plot, it didn’t take Bo 20 minutes and he was on Audrey’s deer. Had to wake Audrey up to FaceTime her to let her know that Bo had found her deer. To say this little girl was excited was an understatement!
