Took off from Auburn on Thursday afternoon with my buddy Clint to hunt for 2 days in North Carolina at my parent’s house.  My reason for the trip was picking up dad’s equipment for our upcoming Kansas archery hunt next week.  He didn’t want to pack his bow and other expensive equipment on the airplane, so it was a convenient excuse to come home and hunt the last day of archery and first day of muzzleloader season.

We decided to hunt a small 5 acre tract of land that funnels deer to an almost unbelievable extent during the rut.  We’re obviously not managing for trophy deer on 5 acres (although there are some great deer over there), so the option for shooting a small buck especially since it was bowseason was in play.

We positioned ourselves about 200 yards apart and the action began.  At 7:15 I grunted and not 20 seconds later a little 3 pointer is crossing the creek ditch and coming straight to a scent wick I had dipped in estrous scent.

Meanwhile, Clint is having deer cruise all around him.  A spike first, then a doe with her fawn come through.  No buck was following the doe and he tried to get a shot off on her, but she stayed just behind enough limbs to save herself.  She was traveling in my direction until another buck cut her off and chased her right back past Clint’s stand.  In the meantime, he had already had another buck cross the creek below him and cruise through the hardwoods in search of love.

Back to my stand…  20 minutes later I tried grunting again.  This time it took about a minute and 20 seconds, but the same result.  Here comes a 4 pointer.  At this point, I was concerned that I might not be able to get my bow drawn on deer to my east because I don’t have a lot of cover (none at all actually) on the tree I climbed.  I figured trying to get drawn on this lovestruck buck would be a good experiment.  Well, I got to full draw undetected and that old familiar feeling came back to me.  It felt so good that I just settled my top pin and squeezed the release.  I’m not sure if I shot a little higher than I wanted to or if the buck dropped down a couple inches, but the result was the same.  No tracking needed.

Looking back to my climbing tree.  You can see my climber still attached.

Back to Clint’s stand.  I text him to say I had caved in to the call of venison and he says all bets are off now.

5 minutes later, he grunts a spike in from 100 yards away and buck #2 has an arrow in him.

As he lay.

At this point, we’ve seen 6 different bucks and it’s not even 8:00 a.m.  So we decide to sit until 9:30 before getting down to get our deer out of the woods.  We both see a couple antlerless deer in the meantime but the woods seem to be quiet.

At 9:35, I’m only 75 yards from his stand when I look up to see a buck walk directly past his tree and make a beeline in my direction.  It is a trophy….spike!  I mean some looonnnggg tines.  After he cruises through, I approach his tree and start talking only to be cut off by a deer grunting down in the bottom and it turns out to be another small buck dogging a doe.  Absolutely ridiculous rutting action – but where are the big boys?

Long story short, he smoked his little buck at only 5 yards with a Thunderhead.  Quartering away shot smashed the opposite leg into mush.  100 yards of following a heavy blood trail later, buck #2 was recovered and we were on our way out of the woods.

Quick broadhead report on my buck.  I shot the 4 pointer with a 2-blade Rage and it got about 3 inches of penetration through the scapula and fortunately severed the spine.  The broadhead was firmly stuck in the backbone so I didn’t get to inspect it for damage, but I suspect it was pretty well destroyed going through all that bone.

So, a great morning of watching rutting deer.  They were so vocal bleating and grunting all morning long.  Responding to grunt calls.  We pulled an archery double on bucks.  Granted they were little guys, but we’ll never forget that morning.  A great way to open up our North Carolina hunting trip!