Hunter: Christopher Skelton
Points: 8 (4L, 4R)
County: Morgan
Season: 2016-2017
Hunt Story
I finally allowed Christopher to start hunting in a stand by himself. He completed the hunter safety course last year, and has show responsibility in handling a rifle around other people. We had 2 or 3 nice bucks on trail camera, but had not seen any of them while we were hunting. Christopher wanted to hunt other areas. I tried to convince him that we needed to hunt in this bottom location because it had acorns, water, cover, and was close to the property line, which the adjoining land isn't hunted that much. I finally convinced him to start hunting the Bottom. Well as luck would have it, his cousin Garren, went with us for the first time in 2 years and he wanted to hunt the Bottom, so I told him he could hunt it on Friday and Christopher could hunt it on Saturday. Christopher was discouraged and decided to sleep in on Friday morning. Then on Saturday, when I went to wake the two of them, Christopher again said he was going to sleep in. As we were getting dressed, I reminded him that it was his turn to hunt the Bottom stand. He jumped up out of bed and quickly got dressed. We went to our stands, I was hunting a tripod in some open pines, with no food plot thanks to the drought we are in. At around 7 am I heard a single shot coming from the bottom. I called Christopher on the walkie talkie, and he said he had just shot a giant buck. I told him to stay put til around 8 a.m. and i would be there shortly. Around 7:30, I knew he was about to go crazy in excitement, as I was also, so I climbed down to go calm him. When I arrived at his hunting location, he jumped out of the shooting house, and went into explaining what happened. The buck came down from our corner stand in some hardwoods, he could only see parts of its body, but not good enough to get a shot. He said he could tell it was a big deer. It finally jumped the creek at the far end of what should've been our food plot, and started crossing near where there was 2 large scrapes. He took his grunt call out and grunted at the buck, he kept walking, he blew a little harder 3 times, this got his attention, the buck stopped and looked right at Christopher's location, pausing just long enough to allow a single shot from his .35. The buck mule kicked, then turned and jumped the creek and back up the hill. We could not find any blood, or sign of a hit where he said the buck was standing. He showed me where it jumped the creek, and I could see fresh dirt kicked up on the other side. We crossed the creek and slowly looked for any sign of blood. Nothing. I started walking up the hill, looking in the leaves, then I finally saw blood, good blood. We trailed him up the hill, through some cut timber for about 150 yards, then he crossed onto the neighboring land, into an old firebreak, and turned and started walking down the hill. We trailed him for another 50 yards or so, when I told Christopher we needed to back out and let him lay and die, I felt we were pushing him. We went back to camp, where we were greeted by all who were there. We told them about finding blood and decided to give him a couple of hours to expire. Around 10:30 we decided to go back in and see if we could find him. Everyone wanted to be a part of it, even the other kids. Reluctantly, I said ok but only if they agreed to stay back and remain quiet. So off we go. When we got back to the firebreak, Shane Roberts and I started trailing the buck, with Christopher right behind us with his rifle just in case we jumped him. We trailed him for another 125 or so yards, then the buck turned back down hill into the hardwoods again. We lost the blood trail. Shane and I started looking really close trying to pick the trail back up but no luck. We are not use to having to deal with armadillos around here, since they just showed up about 5 years ago, so all the leaves were already disturbed. Then I noticed that one of the trails in the leaves was broken up instead of a steady line, so I started to follow it, about 30 yards in front of laid the buck. He was dead, but still limber. I told Christopher I was glad we backed out when we did, other wise he would've jumped up and ran off. Every one went to screaming, Christopher looked up at me, thanked me, then looked up to the sky and said thank you Lord.
