Hunter: Aubrey Stevens
Points: 10 (5L, 5R)
County: Meriwether
Season: 2018-2019
Hunt Story
The Thursday before opening day, my oldest son checked our camera near my stand. There were the usual suspect we have been watching, but on Tuesday night there was one picture of an exception buck. He came back through briefly on Wednesday night. No daytime pictures though. As the sun began to rise on opening morning, I noticed two deer enter the small food plot my stand was overlooking. I wasn't quite sure what they were as their silhouettes moved around feeding. As the sunlight got brighter and I could focus more, the larger one raised his head, and all I could see was horns. He finally worked his way to a shooting lane at about 50 yards, and I squeezed. At first I thought I missed. After a brief wait, I climbed down and found blood but it soon ran out. My son joined me and he tracked it to the neighboring property, which is about where the blood trail went cold, too. I have an injured ankle and currently have to wear a walking boot. It started sprinkling rain, so we went back to the trucks. My foot was hurting pretty good from all the walking, so my son sent me home and contacted a man with some tracking dogs. He also contacted our neighbor and got permission to look on his land. After about an hour they found the deer. He did not tell me how big it was, only for me to put my camos back on and meet him in the front yard. Talk about a surprise. I knew it was a good deer, but not that good! We rejoiced, took pics then promptly got him to the cooler. Truly a blessed opening day that we will never forget.
