Hunter: Gordon Lew
Points: 12 (6L, 6R)
County: Upson
Season: 2019-2020
Hunt Story
I had 2 pictures of this buck from August. He was pretty camera shy apparently. My first encounter was the second week of the season, when he walked out on my food plot. I had tilled and planted, but due to no rain was more of a dust bowl. He stood out at 50 yards for what seemed an eternity. I knew he was a perfect 12 but tried to count points. he made his way into 38 yards. I drew and placed the 40 yard pin under his chest and squeezed the release. the arrow flight was perfect. The arrow went right where the pin was. under his chest. The deer did not jump the string as I anticipated. He trotted off and stood under a river birch for 45 minutes motionless. 45 minutes after dark I quietly got out of the stand. I never heard him leave. Skip forward to last Friday. I checked my game camera and found he had returned to the plot at 1:30 AM and at 5:30 Am that morning. I waited till Sunday when the wind was out of the north. I felt he was bedding about 300 yards away in some select cut on the neighbor's property. The trail leading to the bedding area crossed the creek. I was set up long before daylight. daylight came and was uneventful. I felt he may move later in the morning due to the full moon. At 10 am I was thinking about getting down. I looked behind me and he was like an apparition. I don't know where he came from. He was standing slightly quartering away at about 24 yards. I drew and placed the pin behind the rib cage. Upon the shot he hunched up and slowly trotted and crossed the creek. He stood on the opposite ridge. Through the binoculars, I could see him bleeding. I felt he was going to fall. After several minutes he came slowly down the hill and got into the creek. I felt I had hit him too far back and he was liver shot. I watched for over 30 minutes and finally saw some movement. He walked up the bank and then went right back into the water. He disappeared due to the high banks of the creek. I sat there not moving for over 2 and a half hours. I knew he hadn't come out and I did not want to climb down and spook him. I called a buddy and explained the situation. I told him I needed for him to circle the deer and get between him and the neighbor's property. He came over about an hour later. He walked around the deer and got on the ridge above. He called me and said he could see the deer laying in the creek. Its eye were open and looking at him. I got ready and my buddy slowly walked toward the deer. The deer got up, came out of the creek and came trotting up towards me. At around 18 yards I made a clicking sound and the deer stopped. I shot him again. The arrow came from a steep angle through the shoulder. The deer ran down the creek bottom. I could see the lighted knock out to around 80 yards. I got down and was pretty shaken. I decided that I would let the deer lay up and we backed out. It was now around 2:30 and the deer had been laying in the creek for nearly 5 hours, I knew he was injured bad and wouldn't go to far before laying down. I called Ken Parker from the GON trailing dog listings. I told him what had transpired. He felt that the deer would be found dead in a few hours. Ken drove down to the property with his Bavarian deer dog. I called the neighbor to inform him that I had a deer down and had a dog. He told me that there were some hunters down with their kids hunting the youth rifle. We decided to wait till dark to keep from pushing the deer past other hunters. We took up the trial right before dark, the dog picked up blood not too far from where the second shot occurred. When we got to where I had last seen the deer, we found a fresh bed. a few yards further a second bed with fresh blood. As we were talking, the dog began getting anxious and began pulling. At that moment the deer jumped from 8 yards away and crashed through the thick brush. The arrow had broken off while the deer was going through the brush. Ken walked up and picked up the arrow. He said the deer was bleeding a lot. We backed out and waited another hour. We proceeded through the thicket and found it opened up to a freshly logged opening. With our hand light we scanned the opening looking for eyes. The dog was over to our right and we were not paying attention to him. When we turned the light toward the dog the deer was laying dead 10 feet from us. The deer had made it another 25 yards after we last jumped him. The emotions that came over can't be described. My dream of one day taking a Pope and Young deer in Georgia has been a 25-year quest that has taken me all over the state, thousands of hours of scouting, planning, traveling and sitting in a deer stand. I've have been fortunate to have killed a lot of great deer but the goal of taking a truly magnificent animal has been finely reached. I am blessed
