Friendships are truly valuable to me. Chuck is one of my friends who I grew up with. He’s a lifelong military man who works hard and play even harder. He’s also a very good hunter who recently got back into bow hunting. I know he hasn’t had much time to get out over the years, so when he sent me this story I knew I had to share it. I hope you enjoy it!

Chuck with his hard earned 11 pt. Tennessee whitetail buck.

It was an afternoon hunt, I have seen nothing all day. The legal hunting day ends at 7:00 pm. It’s 6:06 pm and while on my cell phone (texting), this buck came running through the woods. He basically caught me with my pants down and completely unprepared.

He came to a dead stop about 5 feet from the bottom of my tree. He looked left, then he looked right. I figured I had no chance of placing my phone back into my pocket, stand, grab my bow off the hanger and take a shot. To my surprise he moves closer to the bottom of my tree to eat acorns. At this time I place my cell phone in my pocket, stand up and grab my bow. The buck is directly under me. I pulled back aiming directly down the left side of my stand. Not an ideal angle! The only option I had was though the spine into the kill zone. I was worried about making an ethical shot at this point. I figured I could catch the kill zone as long as I did not hit the spine. But as I released, the arrow drove directly through the spine and into the chest.

The deer dropped on the spot before trying to make the attempt to move. He managed to screw himself over to the right side of my stand. After opening him up I realized that while the shot went through his spine, it was also a double long shot, and included the heart. It was a clean kill.  

What I thought was initially an 8-point buck, turned out to be an 11-point with the help of 3 kickers. He is a small 11-point and after taking this deer to the processor,  I actually felt a little bad. As this was my first hunt in the state of Tennessee, I quickly learned that my deer was probably only a couple years old. There were several deer in line for processing that made my deer look like Bambi. As it turns out, this county in Tennessee is known for its large whitetail bucks. The processor said deer with a large spread, big beams and big brow tines come in all day long from this county. Glad I can take two more bucks this season because now I’m holding out for a wall hanger!