Hunter: John Rowell
Points: 9 (5L, 4R)
County: Walton
Season: 2016-2017
Hunt Story
It rained for the first time in 45 days here in Walton county on Tuesday (11/29). I knew there would be a good chance something would be moving in the afternoon because of the few hour break in the rain. I got settled in the stand a little later than usual at 5 PM because I set up a doe decoy with estrous on it in the middle of the gas line. At 5:20 I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up to find a buck at 200 yards away from me. I raised my scope to identify the buck and immediately recognized it to be a 9-pointer that I've had on camera since 10/25. The buck was quickly approaching the edge of the gas line without paying attention to my grunts, decoy, and estrous scent. At that point I knew it was now or never and that I wouldn't great opportunity like this again! I lined up the shot a squeezed the trigger. The buck jumped right after I shot and in that one jump was already out of sight in the woods. I climbed down from my stand and went to the spot the buck was standing when I shot and found no blood and no hair in the immediate area. I felt good about the shot and felt like I owed it to a deer of this quality to get a track on it. I called my friend Nickolas Skinner who had helped me previously in the season to recover an 8-pointer. Nick arrived with 2 of his tracking bloodhounds and after 10 minutes of trotting around, the dogs picked up a scent trail. A few minutes later we heard barking and began to chase after the dogs. We ran through 300 yards of thick brush and came to a pond on my property to find the dogs swimming around and barking in it. Nick and I were quite confused because there was no deer in sight even after throughly searching the area. After one hour we saw a hump appear in the pond, so I grabbed my jon boat and paddled out to the hump to find out it was my buck! We then figured that the dogs must have drowned the buck and he sank to the bottom of the pond. One of the craziest hunting stories of my life!
