Here's a few I took in the 70's. Boy there were a lot of nice bucks in those days, but killing one with a bow was pretty tough when one was as dumb as I was. I just felt all I had to do was cover a lot of ground and sooner or later it would happen. It happened very little for me.
I took this buck in 1970. It was a Fishlake buck. In those days you could fill two tags. Your bow tag and then your rifle tag. This buck was 30 wide, but as you can see not very high. I won Duane Eriksons big buck contest that year with this buck.
I took this buck in 1974 in the La Sals. He had a nice cheater on each side, but you can't see them in this terrible photo. It's the biggest buck I have ever taken. He was almost 34 inches wide.
I saw a group of nice bucks from about 1/2 mile away, just as the sun was beginning to set. So I just took off on the run and when I got close to where they were, I started to sneak. There were a series of ravines running down a hill, just outside the bottom of a quaky grove. I snuck to the first ravine, but not deer, so I moved on, and no deer at the second one so just as I went to look in the third one, a nice buck lifted his head about 5 yards away. He saw me and ran down and across the ravine and stopped broadside and looked at me. I said 30 yards and put an arrow right over the top of his back. When I shot that arrow, two other bucks could not see, ran and one was way bigger than the others, so I switched deer. Thirty yards I thought, and put an arrow over his back. He took a couple jumps and stopped and looked back at me, quartering away hard. I know said he's 30 yards and the arrow flew a bit left, and went right up his popper. He tried to jump, but very stiffed legged just walked slowly down the other side of the ravine. When he got straight across from me he turned 90 degrees and looked over his butt at me. I raised my glasses to look at him, as I knew he was hurt bad. It was a sight I will never forget. The blood was running down his back legs and in the bloods ripples, I could see the orange setting sun. As I starred in unbelief, he fell over dead. I ran back and found my hunting partner and told him I killed a pretty good buck. We went back and when he saw him, he said he's a big buck and you will never kill a better buck than him the rest of you life. HIs words are still true.
In those days CFS had a big buck contest and I won that contest with that buck and got a free shoulder mount for winning.
Its a terrible photo of a really decent buck.
And here's one that sandwiched in between those two. It was a Fishlake buck. Notice the broad head I was using. It's was about the worst broad head ever made, but in those days I thought it was great. I didn't win anything with that buck, but I did fill one of my tags.
Have a good one. BB
J/K Did you happen to weigh him?
