Team Effort

November 6, 2007

Every out of state hunt begins with a good ole’ road trip.  Our eighteen-hour bowhunting trip to Northeast Nebraska was no different.  My brother Kevin Howell, team member Van Foster and I loaded down the truck and trailer and headed north to the Missouri River bottoms of northeast Nebraska.  We decided to stop at our farm in southeast Arkansas to get any needed gear and spend the night. 

The next morning we were on the road by 5:00 a.m. and north bound once again.  With the anticipation of the next weeks hunt and seeing new country made the remaining thirteen hours pass much easier.  We arrived at camp around 8:00 p.m. Friday night.  We quickly unpacked our gear and hit the sack for some much-needed rest.

We came to a consensus to spend the first day scouting and putting up stands.  Even though this was my first time to deer hunt this piece of property, I had turkey hunted the property the past two seasons looking for turkey.  This gave me a good idea where I wanted to begin our scouting efforts.  After selecting our stand locations and putting up our sets, we were ready to hunt.  Van and I stuck with our first set for the first three days of our hunt.  We were hunting where we found some huge buck signs.  We saw some does and small bucks but nothing to write home about.  My brother was hunting a couple of ridges over from us and he was seeing fifteen to twenty deer per hunt four or five of which were bucks.  We knew we were in the wrong area so we decided to try another spot that we had found during turkey season.

The largest cold front of the season came through Monday night.  Tuesday morning we were awakened by 40 mile per hour winds.  We decided to sleep in and get on the stand early that afternoon.  The winds died down to 5-10 mph and the high would only reach 43 degrees.

A good friend of ours Mark Miley was gracious enough to let us borrow his 4X4-golf cart for transportation.  For reasons unknown the batteries were receiving too much juice and causing the battery terminals to melt.  Thankfully, the batteries had posts as well.  We were able to drive to Wal-Mart and get the parts we needed to fix the problem.

We thought we had the problem solved.  We headed to the woods around 1:00 p.m. and three quarters of the way to the back of the property, the cart suddenly stopped.  We got off and checked the batteries and to our surprise, another battery terminal had melted!  We knew what we needed to fix the problem.  The only thing was that the parts we needed were 25 miles away in Sioux City, Iowa.  I volunteered to walk out and drive to Wal-Mart to get the parts we needed to fix the cart.  Van continued on foot to the stand location. 

Three hours later I was back at the cart.  After fixing the battery, I sat back and waited for Van to complete his afternoon hunt.  When Van finally got back to the cart, I could tell something serious had happened.  Van told me that he had the largest buck he had ever seen in his life at twenty five yards and could not make it happen.  The fifteen point came through chasing a doe and once he reached his shooting lane, he was unable to stop him.  Besides seeing the giant fifteen point, Van also saw two tens, an eight and a twelve point that would push 145 Pope and Young.  We knew we were in the right spot.

After picking up my brother we headed back to camp.  During our drive back we ran over a tree limb and the cart abruptly stopped.  We could not believe it!  We took a look at the batteries but could not find anything wrong.  We looked under the cart where the stick had hit and again could not find anything wrong.  We decided to come back the next morning to take a better look.  Van and I had set up our Double Bull Blind closer to the road so we opted to hunt there the next morning.  After the morning hunt we made it back to the cart and were able to fix the problem once again.  That afternoon we made it back to our “honeycomb hide out” but only saw small bucks and does.

That particular area we were hunting was a horseshoe ridge top.  We were set up in the south corner of the horseshoe.  There was an uncut cornfield a quarter mile to our west.  The does were bedding up in the bottom to the east of us and staging on the ridge tops feeding on acorns before heading to the cornfield.  Obviously the bucks knew this and were cruising the ridge tops searching for hot does.  During the morning the does were traveling back through heading to the bottoms to bed up for the day. 

The next morning started out slowly but soon picked up.  We had a few does and small bucks filter through but no “shooters” tagging behind.  At around 8:30, I spotted a single doe top the ridge.  I could also see that there was a buck following close behind.  I finally realized that the buck was a shooter and gave him a few grunts on my Primos Buck Roar.  The buck suddenly jerked his head up and looked in our direction.  The buck then focused his attention back on the doe.  The doe was heading our direction on a trail that would lead her right through my shooting lane.  Suddenly the doe turned and started heading into the bottom.  I knew we were losing them so I hit him with a couple more grunts and the buck turned and bolted in our direction heading down the trail which would lead him into my shooting lane.  When the buck got within forty yards of us, he stopped running and began walking in our direction.  Just before he reached my shooting lane he walked behind a red oak, and I quickly reached full draw with my Mathews bow.  The buck stood behind the red oak for fifteen to twenty seconds which seemed like fifteen to twenty minutes.  He finally took a step, which placed him in my shooting lane.  I stopped him, settled my pin on his shoulder and released my arrow.  Smack!  The broadhead hit its mark.  The buck bolted then suddenly stopped and began walking until he disappeared over the ridge.

We decided to stay in the tree and hunt a couple more hours.  Around noon, we climbed down and began looking for my arrow and blood trail.  Upon finding my arrow it was apparent that I did not get a complete pass through and more than likely only got one lung.  We decided to let the buck lie over night before picking up the blood trail.  The next morning we hunted until 10:00 a.m. and then climbed down to pick up the blood trail.  After following the blood for fifty yards or so it began to get spotty.  Eventually we lost the blood trail and were unable to pick it back up.  Van and I decided that the buck has hit hard enough to keep him from going up hill.  There was a ditch in the bottom of the draw and we felt that the buck would travel this draw rather than going up the other side of the ridge.  We put together a game plan where I would remain in the draw and Van would walk along the shelf looking down into the ditch.

We had walked several hundred yards when I looked up and saw Van waving his arms and motioning to the bottom as if there were a buck bedded down in the ditch.  I stopped in my tracks, and sat back as I had a front row seat as to what would happen next.  Van quickly went into stealth mode.  He backed out and made a big loop to a finger, which lead to the bedded buck.  As he got close, he knocked an arrow and eased to the edge of the ditch.  All of a sudden I heard a big crash and I could see the buck bust out of the ditch and run across to the next shelf.  I glanced back at Van and saw him draw back his Mathews bow.  I glanced back at the buck just in time to see the arrow find its mark.  Van made an unbelievable shot at 45 yards.  The arrow entered his rear and traveled through his body cavity.  The buck ran about fifty yards and crashed.  I was not sure if that was the buck I had shot the morning before or if it was a different buck bedded down in the bottom.  After Van watched the buck crash, he looked back at me and motioned me to come over to the ridge he was on.  As I went to take a step, I looked down and saw a drop of blood on a leaf next to my boot.  That’s when I realized that he was indeed the buck that I had shot.  We gave the buck a few minutes then slowly walked up to take a look him.  He was an eleven point that looked to weigh around 200-220.  After a quick recovery interview and a couple of pictures, we made the long ride back to camp.