Friday, January 6th marked the 3rd Annual Dungan-Polk hunt held in Columbia, MS on the banks of the Pearl River. Here's an account of the weekend's events as I witnessed them.
I arrived in camp around 3:00 pm on Friday just in time for the evening hunt. Everyone had just drawn for stand locations and been briefed on harvest guidelines. Harvest guidelines were simple: mature bucks only and bow hunters were allowed to harvest a mature doe. Les and Jeff run trail cameras extensively on the property and had identified numerous "shooter" bucks at the beginning of the season. Experiencing a better than average season thus far, they went into the weekend with only two shooters remaining (Burt & Lucky). Naturally, it was likely there were other shooters on the property that they had not photographed. However, there was one other that Jeff had shot with his bow on December 23rd and not recovered. Jeff was pretty sure this buck was one they named Crow. They had not photographed him since this incident and assumed the worst.
I quickly grabbed my gear and headed to get into Les' truck. On my way, Eddie Polk cruised by and instructed me to "get the Buff Pad fired up, I'll have a story for you later tonight"! Les, Romney and I headed to the south end of the property while the remainder of the guys spread across the rest of the property.
The afternoon hunt was pleasant. Temperatures were in the 60's and I was actually swatting mosquitos in January! My particular stand was close to a state highway which was so loud it covered a report from a rifle inside the property. Upon returning to the truck, Les relayed the news to me and Romney...Eddie had shot! As we rolled into camp, Jeff approached the truck and provided more information regarding Eddie's kill. According to the last text Jeff received, what Eddie initially reported as an 8 point turned out to be a six point. As we walked up to the camp fire, Jeff joked about having to call a tribunal at the fire and exstinguish Eddie's torch! The joking, ribbing and teasing was fixing to reach an all time high. Soon the truck pulled up carrying Eddie and his deer. Everyone hurried to the truck to have a look.
Well, as it turned out, the joke was on us. Eddie had indeed killed a fine buck. In fact, he had harvested the buck they named Burt, and was messing with Jeff about shooting the six point. But as we would soon find out, this was just the beginning of the twist to this harvest.
Burt's antlers were measured carefully and found to gross a total of 118 inches. Eddie filled us in on the details of the hunt. Simply put, a doe stepped out and moved across the plot with Burt trailing not too far behind. An obvious neck wound indicated the shot placement. Plenty of photos were shot and then it was time to move to the skinning rack. The buck weighed in at 170 pounds. Kevin began the process of skinning the buck and made quick work of an otherwise long process. During the procedure, Kevin had found the mushroomed rifle bullet in the offside shoulder.
He had just removed the back strap and was working on the neck just in front of the left shoulder when his knife struck some sort of foreign object. Upon further inspection, it was a 3 inch portion of an arrow shaft tipped with a two-blade Rage broadhead!
This was the buck Jeff shot just a few weeks prior on December 23rd! We immediately began inspecting the buck's cape again and realized the wound that was so obvious on the buck's neck was from the broadhead. Dried blood around the wound validated our assumption. "So where did Eddie hit the buck...or did Eddie even hit him", Jeff quickly asserted.
We closely inspected the animals cape but couldn't find a bullet hole. It wasn't until we looked at one of the photos we had taken of the buck after the shot that we noticed a spot of blood about two inches above the larger wound. Sure enough, we looked on the cape and found his bullet hole just above the broadhead wound.
Even so, that didn't stop Jeff and a few of us from questioning Eddie about "what really happened". Several hypothesized that the buck wasn't chasing the doe at all, but simply staggered into the plot where Eddie was able to finish him off. We had quite a time listening to Jeff and Eddie go back and forth about who gets to claim the buck.
In all seriousness, we were amazed at what these animals are able to tolerate. This is the second buck in a year that I've seen shot high in the neck/shoulder area and carry on as if nothing happened. So what's the take away from all this: when bow hunting - aim low and stay away from the shoulder; when hunting River Bend - carry a video camera on every hunt so you'll have proof of your harvest.
As for cousin Eddie, he finally admitted that he walked up on the buck and finished him while he was spinning in circles trying to bite his tail.
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