Hunter: Beau Leyse
Points: 8 (4L, 4R)
County: Ben Hill
Season: 2022-2023
Hunt Story
This buck showed up a year ago with a broken front leg and looking poor on camera. He walked with a distinct limp and one of my club members dubbed him "Gimpy". We did not expect him to make it through the winter. However, he did and gained nearly 20 inches of bone one his head. I had a different deer I was spending time chasing until he was shot on the thirteenth of November by another member of my club. I had managed to get Gimpy in front of me at sixteen yards on November third working a scrape and it was too thick to squeeze an arrow through, I opted to not pursue him in hopes of the other deer. After the deer I had my heart set on was harvested, I decided to come back in on the opposite side of the thicket, using Spartan Forge to guide me, where I witnessed him work the scrape on the morning of November third with a different wind. So as the sun rose on November 16th I was climbed up a tree using my spurs and saddle and settled in an hour before sunrise. Around 7 am I let out three tending grunts and turned the can over a few times. Within minutes I heard the crunching of leaves to my west, as I had predicted the deer would approach from that direction. I was unable to turn my camera on as the deer stepped into a lane before entering the thicket. I mouth grunted to stop him, hit anchor with my recurve and let the arrow loose. The arrow flew true for ten of the twenty two yards to the deer before striking a limb and nose diving into the dirt five yards in front of the Gimpy. The buck merely jumped, then turned and began to walk a circle around me, he was heading for a wider lane to my south as I took the time to grab another arrow and turn my camera on and towards the lane. As he stepped into the lane I grunted to stop him, once more, knowing the spot his feet came to rest, was 30 yards (since I ranged the back half of the lane at grey light) and my point on distances is 33 yards, I placed my Simmons tree shark even with the bottom line of his belly. I began to pull through the shot and the arrow was loose, The nocturnal lit up like the back half end of a rocket heading for it's destination. Within the blink of the eye the arrow was buried into the deer's shoulder. I watched him run 50 yards before falling over. AS I climbed down I realized he was much larger than I had originally expected and was just the deer I needed to tag out on, merely days before my first child is schedule to be born.
