live4muleys
Active Member
- Messages
- 978
I went back and forth with whether to post this story or not. I have finally decided to post it, I feel that the New Mexico page is in need of a good hunting story. This is the story of my nephew Xavier's archery deer hunt.
We had went out a couple of different times on this hunt and had not been able to make it happen. We were seeing deer but just couldn't get it all to come together. We decided to try a little different spot that morning. There was about 4 inches of snow on the ground and plenty of frost on the trees. We didn't plan on going in the woods too far as we knew my nephew had to be back for basketball practice later on that afternoon. We decided we would make a couple small circles here and there and see what happened.
As we started to make our first circle we knew it had the potential to be good. We started to see sign right off the bat and found a couple of does soon after leaving the truck. It had my nephew very excited to be seeing the amount of sign that we were seeing. As we went in a little further we jumped a buck, I couldn't tell how big he was but knew he was a legal buck. Once he saw us though he was not going to let us see him again. That buck high tailed it and we never saw him again. We were all very hopeful that there was going to be another buck in there. With every step we took though, our hopes of getting close enough were not too high. The snow had froze and had the loud icy layer on the top. It was loud walking but with the amount of sign we were seeing we thought there was still a good chance of finding a buck. We continued to walk and found some more does and they didn't seem as spooked the further in we were.
As we continued to walk, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I swung my head around and saw the butt of a deer moving through the trees. I was not able to tell if it was a buck or a doe, but it looked to have a good sized butt. I told my brother and my nephew and we decided we would go and try to get a better look at the deer. As we start to move to where I saw the deer, my brother and nephew freeze in their tracks. I knew they had spotted a deer, but didn't know anything else. I was about 20 yards behind them. I saw my brother range it and then saw my nephew draw. At that time my heart was pounding out of my chest and I was thinking that this might actually all come together. I watched intently as he released the arrow. Immediately I could tell it was a miss by the way both my brother and my nephew's shoulders dropped. I was completely bummed out, but they started to move once again and soon after that I could tell that they see the buck again. Once again I see my nephew draw back and he released the arrow. This time you could hear it hit a branch, then another and another and I knew that one was not going to hit anything. As we make our way to find the arrow, which had broke, we saw blood. I tell them "You hit it".
All of our minds are racing at this point. They tell me they thought the first shot missed low, but it must have hit the buck. They also inform me at this time that it is a big buck. We all had mixed emotions at that point. As we followed the track a little way we realize that he must have hit him pretty good because there was a pretty heavy blood trail (not gushing but consistent drips). We decide to let the buck be in hopes that it would lay down and die. We knew it wasn't the best hit so we waited a good amount of time before starting in after the buck.
In the snow it was easy to track the buck and we just kept following the blood trail (even for me who is color blind). We were heading deeper and deeper into the forest and the buck was showing no signs of stopping. As we continued travel down hill further and further from the truck, we decide to call my other nephew Ness to bring us the frame backs and other bags. We had cell service so that helped the situation. We told him where the truck was and he asked how in the world am I going to find you guys. With no other person would I have had them try to find us, but this nephew loves the woods and just has that instinct in the woods. I told him to track us and I knew he would be able to.
As we continued to track the deer he almost fooled us a couple of times. At one point the deer made a large circle and then doubled back in his own tracks, seemingly trying to throw us off. We were finally able to find a spot where he had fallen to a knee which got our hopes up. We knew he was weak but we also knew we were almost to a slope with no snow. We came to a big opening before a super steep canyon. I had just finished telling Xavier and my brother that "I really hope he didn't start down that" when all the sudden we see him jump in the oak brush about 15 yards from us. My brother and nephew get into position to take another shot and I loose sight of them. I can still see the deer however. After what seemed like an eternity I see my brother and nephew walking back towards me and I say "what are you doing the deer is still right there". My brother looks at me and says "He missed". At this moment I realize my 14 year old nephew is out of arrows. His last arrow had missed high and went sailing off the cliff behind the deer. At that moment no one was sure what to think or do.
Right at that moment I see the deer lay down. It was the best sight in the world at that time. I told them "he is done, he just laid down and is going to die right there". We called my nephew Ness and told him the deer was down but not dead yet. I stood there watching the deer's antlers and they would just keep moving. He would lay his head down and then he would lift it back up. The buck just refused to let go. This went on for about an hour. It is 2 in the afternoon and my nephew shot him around 8am.
All of the sudden the deer stands back up. I could not believe my eyes. All of our hearts just sank. The buck walked around the tree and I told my brother "I am going to find Ness" (I didn't know what else to do). Just as I began to hike back out our 2 mile trail, there was Ness tracking us just like I knew he could.
We head back to my brother and Xavier and they tell us they have not seen the buck come out from behind the tree. We decide to approach the area where the buck had been laying to determine what to do. As we get there we can see a puddle of blood and can't believe that this buck is still alive. As we get closer to the tree my bother stops and says "there he is". The deer was standing just 10 yards away.
Ness had found an old rusted arrow on his way in and we had the broken arrow from my nephews second shot. The rusted old arrow had a nock and a broadhead but no fletching. The broken arrow had lost the broadhead and nock, so we decide to make one arrow out of two. We would take the broadhead and nock off the old one and put it on the broken one. As luck wouldn't have it that the broadhead was rusted on and was not going to come off. With no way to attach fletchings we decide to try to shoot it without the fletching. Ness (who shoots a lot) tells us that he's tried to shot an arrow without the fletchings and "it will fly straight for a while and then just make a random turn". Since the deer is only 10 years Xavier decides to try it. We all cross our fingers as he lets the arrow fly.
The arrow heads straight towards the buck and about a foot away makes a 90 degree turn and heads straight up and over the deer. As you can imagine emotions are racing at this moment. We look at the last arrow with no nock and broadhead and I say "I can whittle a nock out of wood". Ness says "I have those Havalon knife blades and can tie one on the front". We decide to give it another try. The deer has not moved at all and is still just standing there. I whittle a nock and we tie the blade on with fishing line. Ness gets his lighter and shrinks the string to make it tight. I start thinking this may just work. I finish up the nock and we get that secured on there. Xavier aims our MacGyver arrow slightly low since its pretty light and lets it fly at 7 yards. The arrow skins the top of the bucks back and sails over. We were so close we could see the hair fall off where he'd skinned it. The deer moved slightly but not much.
We were totally out of options. We walked closer to the deer trying to decide what to do. We were all standing around the deer it was 3:30pm and would soon start to get dark. As we are all standing around trying to decide what to do, all hell breaks loose. In the blink of an eye the buck charges Ness. The deer hits him square in the chest as all you could hear was all the air go out of Ness. With one jump the deer has my nephew between his antlers and we watch as both fly off a 30 foot cliff. My heart stopped. I was thinking the worst. My brother ran to the cliff edge and was yelling Ness' name. It was the scariest moment of my life.
Seconds later we hear "I am okay, I am okay". My brother and I were overcome with joy but we both knew there is no way in hell that he was okay. He just flew off a cliff with a deer. My brother climbed down the cliff in a hurry and Ness was standing up at the bottom. Ness yells "the deer went this way" and he starts after the deer. I yell at him "STOP STOP I don't care about the damn deer". Ness was on a very high adrenaline rush and we needed to make sure he wasn't gravely injured. We strip him down and by the grace of GOD we find there is nothing wrong with him. He has a tear in his jeans (which we figure came from the hoof of the buck) and a scrap on the back of his hand. We were also worried about possible internal injuries. We decided for obvious reasons to head back to the truck.
As we headed back to the truck I don't know how many times my brother and I asked Ness if he was okay and if there was any pain internally. Ness and Xavier were already joking around about it but my brother and I are not even close to thinking it is funny yet. We still had 2 miles back to the truck and dark had set in. Luckily we got back to the truck tired but otherwise fine. We sent Xavier home with Ness to make sure everything was fine. We called about every 15 minutes to check on him. We told him he needed to call us as soon as he peed or had a bowel movement. He still makes jokes that no one has ever cared so much about his crap.
Everything turned out to be fine. He walked away from it with a tear in his jeans, a tiny hole in his jacket from the antler, and small scrap on the back of his hand from a rock he narrowly missed.
The next day we headed back out to retrieve the deer. Ness decided he didn't want to go as he was feeling a little bit sore (understandably). So me, Xavier, my brother and my wife head back in 2 miles to get the deer. It had been a long night wondering what we were going to find when we got there. As we came to the cliff we see the deer laying at the bottom. Not where we had left him the night before but not far. We were all shocked to find that he had not been dead long and was still warm inside when we started to quarter him out. We found a big bruise on his side where he had hit a rock at the end of the cliff jump and a small mark on his nose. We quartered him out and got all loaded up. We walked back about 20 yards and looked up the cliff, re-capping the incident to my wife. We finally got all loaded up and headed back to the truck. It was a rewarding pack out. A tiring one and one to thank the good Lord for. It was a great ending to a hunting adventure I will never forget.
This was how we found "Cliff" the buck.
This picture was the first time my nephew got his hands on "Cliff"
Another picture taken with "Cliff"
This was the picture of the cliff that my nephew flew off of. My wife was at the top for reference purposes. He landed in the bush in the far right corner.
He landed in the bush and there was a big rocks on either side of the bush that stuck out about 2 feet. Luckily he landed in the bush and not on the rocks.
Here was the buck getting ready to make his trip up the mountain to the truck. We were back on top of the cliff in this photo.
The finished product.
The video of the last shot and the moment right before "Cliff" charged. I stopped filming about 30 seconds before the buck attacked. One of the first questions my nephew asks me was were you still filming when it attacked me.
https://youtu.be/JSph745-1q8
I know the story is a little long, I hope not to long.
Last couple notes.
My nephew says it is amazing how fast you will fall 30 feet.
The thing he remembers most is looking up as he is flying backwards off the cliff and seeing the deer above him doing a flip in midair.
The meat tasted amazing still.
It was absolutely amazing how fast the deer was able to get to Ness. In one jump he has him between the antlers and the next jump they are headed over the edge. He didn't even have enough time to react at all.
We had went out a couple of different times on this hunt and had not been able to make it happen. We were seeing deer but just couldn't get it all to come together. We decided to try a little different spot that morning. There was about 4 inches of snow on the ground and plenty of frost on the trees. We didn't plan on going in the woods too far as we knew my nephew had to be back for basketball practice later on that afternoon. We decided we would make a couple small circles here and there and see what happened.
As we started to make our first circle we knew it had the potential to be good. We started to see sign right off the bat and found a couple of does soon after leaving the truck. It had my nephew very excited to be seeing the amount of sign that we were seeing. As we went in a little further we jumped a buck, I couldn't tell how big he was but knew he was a legal buck. Once he saw us though he was not going to let us see him again. That buck high tailed it and we never saw him again. We were all very hopeful that there was going to be another buck in there. With every step we took though, our hopes of getting close enough were not too high. The snow had froze and had the loud icy layer on the top. It was loud walking but with the amount of sign we were seeing we thought there was still a good chance of finding a buck. We continued to walk and found some more does and they didn't seem as spooked the further in we were.
As we continued to walk, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I swung my head around and saw the butt of a deer moving through the trees. I was not able to tell if it was a buck or a doe, but it looked to have a good sized butt. I told my brother and my nephew and we decided we would go and try to get a better look at the deer. As we start to move to where I saw the deer, my brother and nephew freeze in their tracks. I knew they had spotted a deer, but didn't know anything else. I was about 20 yards behind them. I saw my brother range it and then saw my nephew draw. At that time my heart was pounding out of my chest and I was thinking that this might actually all come together. I watched intently as he released the arrow. Immediately I could tell it was a miss by the way both my brother and my nephew's shoulders dropped. I was completely bummed out, but they started to move once again and soon after that I could tell that they see the buck again. Once again I see my nephew draw back and he released the arrow. This time you could hear it hit a branch, then another and another and I knew that one was not going to hit anything. As we make our way to find the arrow, which had broke, we saw blood. I tell them "You hit it".
All of our minds are racing at this point. They tell me they thought the first shot missed low, but it must have hit the buck. They also inform me at this time that it is a big buck. We all had mixed emotions at that point. As we followed the track a little way we realize that he must have hit him pretty good because there was a pretty heavy blood trail (not gushing but consistent drips). We decide to let the buck be in hopes that it would lay down and die. We knew it wasn't the best hit so we waited a good amount of time before starting in after the buck.
In the snow it was easy to track the buck and we just kept following the blood trail (even for me who is color blind). We were heading deeper and deeper into the forest and the buck was showing no signs of stopping. As we continued travel down hill further and further from the truck, we decide to call my other nephew Ness to bring us the frame backs and other bags. We had cell service so that helped the situation. We told him where the truck was and he asked how in the world am I going to find you guys. With no other person would I have had them try to find us, but this nephew loves the woods and just has that instinct in the woods. I told him to track us and I knew he would be able to.
As we continued to track the deer he almost fooled us a couple of times. At one point the deer made a large circle and then doubled back in his own tracks, seemingly trying to throw us off. We were finally able to find a spot where he had fallen to a knee which got our hopes up. We knew he was weak but we also knew we were almost to a slope with no snow. We came to a big opening before a super steep canyon. I had just finished telling Xavier and my brother that "I really hope he didn't start down that" when all the sudden we see him jump in the oak brush about 15 yards from us. My brother and nephew get into position to take another shot and I loose sight of them. I can still see the deer however. After what seemed like an eternity I see my brother and nephew walking back towards me and I say "what are you doing the deer is still right there". My brother looks at me and says "He missed". At this moment I realize my 14 year old nephew is out of arrows. His last arrow had missed high and went sailing off the cliff behind the deer. At that moment no one was sure what to think or do.
Right at that moment I see the deer lay down. It was the best sight in the world at that time. I told them "he is done, he just laid down and is going to die right there". We called my nephew Ness and told him the deer was down but not dead yet. I stood there watching the deer's antlers and they would just keep moving. He would lay his head down and then he would lift it back up. The buck just refused to let go. This went on for about an hour. It is 2 in the afternoon and my nephew shot him around 8am.
All of the sudden the deer stands back up. I could not believe my eyes. All of our hearts just sank. The buck walked around the tree and I told my brother "I am going to find Ness" (I didn't know what else to do). Just as I began to hike back out our 2 mile trail, there was Ness tracking us just like I knew he could.
We head back to my brother and Xavier and they tell us they have not seen the buck come out from behind the tree. We decide to approach the area where the buck had been laying to determine what to do. As we get there we can see a puddle of blood and can't believe that this buck is still alive. As we get closer to the tree my bother stops and says "there he is". The deer was standing just 10 yards away.
Ness had found an old rusted arrow on his way in and we had the broken arrow from my nephews second shot. The rusted old arrow had a nock and a broadhead but no fletching. The broken arrow had lost the broadhead and nock, so we decide to make one arrow out of two. We would take the broadhead and nock off the old one and put it on the broken one. As luck wouldn't have it that the broadhead was rusted on and was not going to come off. With no way to attach fletchings we decide to try to shoot it without the fletching. Ness (who shoots a lot) tells us that he's tried to shot an arrow without the fletchings and "it will fly straight for a while and then just make a random turn". Since the deer is only 10 years Xavier decides to try it. We all cross our fingers as he lets the arrow fly.
The arrow heads straight towards the buck and about a foot away makes a 90 degree turn and heads straight up and over the deer. As you can imagine emotions are racing at this moment. We look at the last arrow with no nock and broadhead and I say "I can whittle a nock out of wood". Ness says "I have those Havalon knife blades and can tie one on the front". We decide to give it another try. The deer has not moved at all and is still just standing there. I whittle a nock and we tie the blade on with fishing line. Ness gets his lighter and shrinks the string to make it tight. I start thinking this may just work. I finish up the nock and we get that secured on there. Xavier aims our MacGyver arrow slightly low since its pretty light and lets it fly at 7 yards. The arrow skins the top of the bucks back and sails over. We were so close we could see the hair fall off where he'd skinned it. The deer moved slightly but not much.
We were totally out of options. We walked closer to the deer trying to decide what to do. We were all standing around the deer it was 3:30pm and would soon start to get dark. As we are all standing around trying to decide what to do, all hell breaks loose. In the blink of an eye the buck charges Ness. The deer hits him square in the chest as all you could hear was all the air go out of Ness. With one jump the deer has my nephew between his antlers and we watch as both fly off a 30 foot cliff. My heart stopped. I was thinking the worst. My brother ran to the cliff edge and was yelling Ness' name. It was the scariest moment of my life.
Seconds later we hear "I am okay, I am okay". My brother and I were overcome with joy but we both knew there is no way in hell that he was okay. He just flew off a cliff with a deer. My brother climbed down the cliff in a hurry and Ness was standing up at the bottom. Ness yells "the deer went this way" and he starts after the deer. I yell at him "STOP STOP I don't care about the damn deer". Ness was on a very high adrenaline rush and we needed to make sure he wasn't gravely injured. We strip him down and by the grace of GOD we find there is nothing wrong with him. He has a tear in his jeans (which we figure came from the hoof of the buck) and a scrap on the back of his hand. We were also worried about possible internal injuries. We decided for obvious reasons to head back to the truck.
As we headed back to the truck I don't know how many times my brother and I asked Ness if he was okay and if there was any pain internally. Ness and Xavier were already joking around about it but my brother and I are not even close to thinking it is funny yet. We still had 2 miles back to the truck and dark had set in. Luckily we got back to the truck tired but otherwise fine. We sent Xavier home with Ness to make sure everything was fine. We called about every 15 minutes to check on him. We told him he needed to call us as soon as he peed or had a bowel movement. He still makes jokes that no one has ever cared so much about his crap.
Everything turned out to be fine. He walked away from it with a tear in his jeans, a tiny hole in his jacket from the antler, and small scrap on the back of his hand from a rock he narrowly missed.
The next day we headed back out to retrieve the deer. Ness decided he didn't want to go as he was feeling a little bit sore (understandably). So me, Xavier, my brother and my wife head back in 2 miles to get the deer. It had been a long night wondering what we were going to find when we got there. As we came to the cliff we see the deer laying at the bottom. Not where we had left him the night before but not far. We were all shocked to find that he had not been dead long and was still warm inside when we started to quarter him out. We found a big bruise on his side where he had hit a rock at the end of the cliff jump and a small mark on his nose. We quartered him out and got all loaded up. We walked back about 20 yards and looked up the cliff, re-capping the incident to my wife. We finally got all loaded up and headed back to the truck. It was a rewarding pack out. A tiring one and one to thank the good Lord for. It was a great ending to a hunting adventure I will never forget.
This was how we found "Cliff" the buck.
This picture was the first time my nephew got his hands on "Cliff"
Another picture taken with "Cliff"
This was the picture of the cliff that my nephew flew off of. My wife was at the top for reference purposes. He landed in the bush in the far right corner.
He landed in the bush and there was a big rocks on either side of the bush that stuck out about 2 feet. Luckily he landed in the bush and not on the rocks.
Here was the buck getting ready to make his trip up the mountain to the truck. We were back on top of the cliff in this photo.
The finished product.
The video of the last shot and the moment right before "Cliff" charged. I stopped filming about 30 seconds before the buck attacked. One of the first questions my nephew asks me was were you still filming when it attacked me.
https://youtu.be/JSph745-1q8
I know the story is a little long, I hope not to long.
Last couple notes.
My nephew says it is amazing how fast you will fall 30 feet.
The thing he remembers most is looking up as he is flying backwards off the cliff and seeing the deer above him doing a flip in midair.
The meat tasted amazing still.
It was absolutely amazing how fast the deer was able to get to Ness. In one jump he has him between the antlers and the next jump they are headed over the edge. He didn't even have enough time to react at all.
