Finally, My First Successful Archery Deer Hunt!

After a week of getting up hours before sunrise and evenings sticking around until the last bits of sunlight passed through the woods, I thought I was going to get nothing again. Just like all the other years of hunting up until this point. The deer would always be just out of range, a change in wind would spook them, there would only be doe when I’m targeting a buck, or more than not, the deer just all seem to disappear. And to be clear, I’m not out there looking for trophies. All I care about is the challenge of hunting, filling my freezer with venison, and provide for my family an amazing alternative to beef. After thousands of arrows into my practice target, countless days in the mountains hunting, and 5 years later, it all paid off, and I harvested my first deer!

Each year, until this past fall, I’ve spent from the end of summer into the snowy end of fall, stomping around the mountains of Utah outside of Salt Lake City, looking for deer and elk. It didn’t matter how often I hunted, what times of the day, or even where I went. Each day ended the same, back at the truck with nothing to show for it besides new lessons learned and a bit more exhausted then when I left it. I came close one year on a south facing slope in Big Cottonwood Canyon during peak foliage at 65yds, but ultimately my tags left unfilled. Having moved to the east coast this year, I finally had the chance to hunt at my in-laws’ property in Pennsylvania with a white tail buck and doe tag. And despite the easy access and no mountains to climb, this wouldn’t be so easy, this would be my first hunt from a tree stand.

Before this week, I always thought tree stand hunting was the default, easy way out of hunting. Just sit down, let the deer walk in, and go tag your deer. Based on this, spot and stalk hunting in the mountains I thought was real hunting. Little did I realize, the opposite is true. Hunting from a tree stand, though significantly less exhausting, is extremely difficult in a completely different way. Being in the stand, you loose all the ability to control your hunt. If the wind changes, you can’t get up and leave. If a deer hides behind a tree and you can’t just up and move to get a better angle to open a shooting lane. Worse yet, a group of bucks could be walking upwind, just out of range, and you can’t climb down and move in on them. Everything is out of your control except for the stand placement and your shot placement when the time comes. It’s a pure game of patience and luck that tested me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. 

During my days I could hunt, I was super lucky, and had the option to climb into a few different tree stands on the property in different areas. My father-in-law, Jim, even had a double seat stand that my wife, Courtney, was able to join me and her father on a few of the mornings. The patch of tall woods I had the opportunity to hunt had been thinned out over the years by heavy wind storms, yet, dense enough that you couldn’t see beyond 60 yards in any direction. In the pitch black of the mornings that week, I’d hike out to the stand, tie my bow to the haul line, clip into the safety line, and start climbing into the stand for the morning. Getting settled, I’d pull my bow up to the seat, nock an arrow, get my range finder and binos ready, and then scouting through all my shooting lanes in hopes of a deer would pass through in the next few hours. 

I had the chance to experience the woods and nature in a new way to me through sitting in that stand for hours each day. When the wind would blow the leaves in the tree, the stand would sway with the tree, similar to the cadence of breathing. The loudest noises in the woods, or any noise for that matter, are never deer. No matter if the forest floor is covered in crunchy leaves or the mountain side is covered in dry sagebrush, deer will never make a sound. But when I would spot a deer, especially one within shooting range, made my heart rate spike. Immediately, a small dose of adrenaline starts pumping in your veins. Luckily, as the week went on, I slowly got more accustomed to this sensation and was able to remind myself to take a breathe, then make a decision. And this paid off on the final day of my hunt.

Needing to leave town after work, the morning would be my last chance to hunt for this year until Christmas. With sunrise scheduled for 7:09AM, the morning’s darkness was slowly replaced by the dawn’s light. The clock was running out, soon enough it’d be sunrise and all the deer would disappear for the day and I still needed to get to work. On this morning, I brought out a cow call that I hadn’t used yet this week and gave it a few shakes throughout the morning. Scanning left and right, hyper-focused on any movement on the forest floor below. Then, out of the corner of my right eye, coming in from behind me at my 5 o’clock at about 40 yards, a strange-looking buck started walking towards my stand. Trying not to spook this deer, as it passed behind each try, I’d make incremental movements to shift my body around and get my Vortex binos up to my eyes to verify if it was a shooter. In PA, a legal buck needs to have at least 5 points on it’s rack, and with the bino’s magnification, I was quickly able to identify at 3 points on the left side of its rack and at least 2 on the right. It was legal, and this would be my deer!

Now facing the deer as he passed below the right side of my stand at a steady pace, moving upwind, I clipped in my release to the D-loop on the string, and pulled the my Hoyt Torrex XT compound bow back with 70lbs of force to full draw. Waiting for him to stop, he started moving out away from me, yard by yard. Eventually, he stopped, facing away from me at a trail crossing 22 yds away that I had ranged earlier in the week. His vitals were hidden behind a tree, and I was afraid he’d keep running off down the steep hill beyond the trail he was standing on. This was my last chance, especially if he winded me. Luckily, he started to quarter back towards me, and even in the darkness, I placed my green lit pin right over his front shoulder. 

Checked the pin, checked the bubble was on center, made sure my string was touching my cheek in the exact spot, checked the pin again, exhaled one last time, and increased tension on my index finger against the release trigger. The Victory Vendetta Pro 350G arrow with a 100G G5 Montec fixed 3 blade broadhead released from the bow, with a dull woosh, with only the bright fletching visible passing through space. I was hyper focused, with such a narrow field of view through my sight window, I never heard a thwack or any sound that would indicate I made contact with the buck. Inhale. A moment later, the buck made hard turn away and headed off down the steep hill. At that same time, the buck spooked 2 other deer that were nearby that I hadn’t even noticed since I sole attention was on this buck. I then heard the crashing sounds of twigs and branches breaking as the buck bounded off down the hill. 

“Shit,” I thought to myself. “Did I miss or did I hit low and that’s why he ran off?”

But at 22 yds, this shot was as routine as it gets. My two pins are at 20 & 30 yards, with my 30yd pin calibrated for when I need to adjust it beyond 30. It was dark, and despite my fiber optic pin being lit up a bright green, it was still only 7:02AM, a full seven minutes before sunrise. Could it be that it was too dark to notice that my rear sight may have been off, or did the buck jump the shot and I missed him completely? Still in my stand, waiting to move before I did anything stupid and spook anything else, I took out my binoculars from my chest rig again and searched the ground below where the deer was to see if I could spot any blood trails. To my absolute astonishment, there was my arrow, spiked a few inches into the ground at a 30 degree angle, covered in dark, red blood. I had made contact! But was it enough?

WIth my adreneline slowly coming back down, I quickly fumbled for my phone in my pocket to text my father-in-law, who was hunting from his stand on the opposite side of the property, to tell him I shot a deer. Moments later, I he was calling me to tell me he’d be up to meet me soon and we could start looking for the deer. While I waited, wouldn’t you know, a mature doe walks down the same deer path from left to right. Without a moment’s hesitation, knowing I still had my doe tag in my pocket, I drew on the deer. Watching it walk through, again at 22 yards, it froze broadside at the smell and sight of my arrow sticking out of the ground. I had every right and opportunity to take this animal, but I couldn’t pull the trigger on this doe. Not for a moral reason, but a logistical one. I still was unsure where the buck had ended up, and if I made a fatal shot. If I shoot this doe and potentially miss a vital, I could be spending all day looking for two deer in the hot afternoon sun. I simply did not have the time, and I dropped my bow down, and relaxed my draw and un-nocked my arrow. I was now committed to the buck. 

When I saw Jim walking up the trail, I climbed down from my stand to meet him by my arrow. I quickly filled him in on the shot, the placement, and where the deer bolted off down the steep hill. From the arrow as our starting point, we spread out to find the start of a blood trail. First a drop on a downed log, then I got off trail mistaking a fallen red leaf for blood. Retracing my steps, Jim pointed me onto the next traces before he followed the line downhill with his eyes and spotted the white belly of a deer laying down in an unnatural position 40 yards below on the steep slope. Overly excited, I sprinted down to the buck, with bow in hand, ready to dispatch the deer if needed, but that was not required. The buck had expired 50 yards from where I shot him. 

I had made a mental note of this buck when I first saw him that he looked different. As soon as Jim caught up to me, his excitement explained why. This deer was half brown and half white, with it’s underside and ribs being almost entirely white. Jim exclaimed that it was a pie-bald buck, and he’d never seen one in person before. Essentially, it was a deer that had more of the gene that could have made it an albino, so quite rare! Better yet, in all the excitement, I failed to mention to Jim that I shot a buck, because he was just as surprised when I turned the deer over and a 7-point rack appeared! 

Of course, this was only half the job, we still need to field dress it, get it back up the hill, then down to the house to quarter it. Mostly watching Jim do the work, “we” dressed the animal, then with the help of a 4-wheeler winch, towed the now lighter buck up the hill and onto the back of said 4-wheeler to get it home. Over the next few hours, and ultimately days, the deer was processed with most of the work being done by my wife and father-in-law, to which I couldn’t have been more thankful for. 

I’d done it, finally, harvested my first deer, and to do it in archery felt like an amazing milestone in this journey. Stoked to be able to fill our freezer, it was an added bonus to keep the unique hyde which will take 9 months to process, and my father-in-law even made me an European mount of my first deer skull. What a ride it truly is! I can’t wait for next fall.