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Lets start out by giving you a little background on why
this is my first Texas deer. The wife and I moved to the Dallas/Ft
Worth area in February of 2002 from Oregon. I grew up in the
Northwest hunting, fishing, camping and just being in the great
outdoors. The land in the Northwest is not all privately owned like
it is in Texas. I have done everything on public land from digging
razor clams in the sand of the Pacific Ocean to sliding down a
snow-covered mountain on a sled in the Pacific Mountain Range.
Anyway, I am now in the BIG state of Texas and in need of a place to
hunt. Well, after talking to a friend of mine from Arizona that has
a lease in South Texas (Victoria area), they had an opening for one
person on 500 acres and I took it.
 That was my first step into harvesting my first deer,
but now I needed a way to attract the deer and my looks are not
going to do the trick. I needed a feeder. Instead of going out and
buying one, I decided to build one from scratch. After talking to a
few people about what their thoughts were about building a feeder, I
went out and bought everything I needed. It took me a few days but I
was very happy with the final product.
 The next step was to pick a good spot on my lease for
my feeder. I walked and drove around the lease noting where the
other 5 members have their stands and feeders. I found the perfect
spot. I could walk to it from the main road. I would not disturb any
of the other hunters in the area so I called this spot mine. I set
up my feeder, put a two-strand barbed wire fence around it so the
horses would not destroy the feeder and eat all my corn. Now it was
time for a stand location, I picked a southwest wind stand location
in a big Mesquite tree. This proved not to be the best location but
it worked in most situations. I almost forgot to put the corn in the
feeder. Problem was I needed a ladder and I did not have one. A
friend of mine made me a nice steel square tubing ladder and welded
it all together for me. Now I can fill my feeder.
This is now the end of July and I left every thing
alone for 3 weeks before heading back south to check and see if
anything is hitting my feeder. I have a video camera mount in my
quad pod so I can video everything that comes and goes. This is my
first time sitting in my stand. The grass is green and tall. The
mesquite trees are very prickly and full. I sat in my stand very
quietly and peacefully until that feeder went off and I about fell
out of my tree. After I calmed myself back down I saw deer about 80
yards to the northwest of my stand. About 5 minutes later the deer
slowly came into eat. I reached over and turned on my video camera
to catch everything I could on tape. I thought to my self this is
cool; just wait until October, one of you will die…
 I did not get to hunt the first two weeks of archery
season because I was in Oregon hunting elk. It is the 3rd
week of Texas deer season and I am sitting in my stand on Friday
afternoon about 5:30. Same thing like always, get there early, let
the woods calm down, yada yada yada… Back to my story… I had the
same 5 does and a small 6pt come into my feeder. I turned on the
video and just watched for 20 minutes. They left and 2 more does
came in and fed awhile. I was just satisfied with watching them at
peace and not knowing I was there lurking just 20 yards away. Well
this went on for the next 4 weeks. I got a lot of video of dear
coming and going.
 This weekend would be different. I made up my mind that
I would shoot the first Doe that came into the shooting lane that
was not a yearling. Well… south Texas got rained on hard for about 2
weeks. I knew my feeder was in dire need to be filled but had no way
to get my truck into it. We had 6 inches of water and mud all over
my pasture with a couple high –n-- dry spots. I am lucky that my
spot had very little standing water around it. I was told by one of
the other lease members that we had a tremendous mosquito problem
out at the lease. I just waived it off and headed out to get in my
stand. I stepped out of my truck and was about carried away and
drained of all my blood at the same time. I hopped back into my
truck and had to decide what I was going to do. As I sat there
contemplating, I was killing the little bloodsuckers that followed
me into the protection of my truck. I did not drive for 5 hours and
rent a hotel room for two nights to just give up and go home. I have
two bottles of ‘OFF’ Unscented - in the door of my truck. I put on
my ‘Scent Blocker Plus’ pullover pants and sprayed my entire body,
well I thought I did. Grabbed my bow, release, my jacket to sit on,
and my fanny pack, which has my knives and video camera. I am ready.
I walk the 250 yards down my clearly marked trail through the mud
and standing water. It was like walking in a river on moss-covered
rock, just waiting for your feet to slide out from under you and
landing face first with bow in hand. I got to my stand without
incident and looked around for sign that animals were regularly
visiting my area. I noticed that everywhere you looked there was
nothing. Nothing but sign everywhere, Hogs have been tearing it
up. For about 15 yards around my feeder not a blade of grass, not
even a weed was standing… There was some deer sign also but not as
much as I would have liked. I climbed up into my 14ft quad pod, put
my bow in its holder so I could use both hands to attach my video
camera, unattached my bow quiver and hung it in the tree next to me,
removed my #2 arrow (#1 missed a turkey) and snapped it on my string
in the ready to shoot mode. All that was left to do is wait and see
what shows up.
At 4:30 I sit waiting for my feeder to go off and scare the heck out
of me again but I am ready this time. 4:35 comes and off it goes but
dang feeder is empty. It spun corn for 2 of the 7 seconds that I
have the timer set for. I sat there thinking, great this is a waste
of time but I am here so let’s just see what will happen. Well time
went by real slow until 5:10. I caught movement to the south of my
feeder in the brush. I reached over and pushed “RECORD “ on my video
camera to capture what ever was coming in. Two young does finally
came walking in. They were not yearlings but looked like 1 ˝ year
olds. With bow in hand, I made the call to go ahead and try to
harvest the bigger of the two. As fate would have it or whatever you
want to call it. The bigger one came out on the other side of my
feeder pen at 25 yards broadside. I slowly attached my release to
the string and raised my bow. Waiting for her to drop her head to
eat the few cornels of corn that came out of my feeder. I looked at
my camera to make sure she was in the viewfinder, bingo she is. I
drew my bow back and started to aim for a spot behind her front
shoulder. For some reason a thought came into my mind about ‘Aim
low, she will try to duck the arrow’. So I held a few inches lower
than I normally would on a bigger animal. So now I am aiming for
about 21 – 22 yards. Holding as steady as I could, I laid my index
finger on my trigger and squeezed it POW the bow goes off, the arrow
flies though the air as she tries to duck the arrow. She ducked so
far that her chest just about hit the ground but it was not far
enough. She ran out of there like a bolt of grease lightning. My
eyes try to follow as she disappears behind a mesquite bush. I
strain my ears to listening for brush breaking but all I hear is a
crash and then silence. I said to my self ‘ I have just shot my
first whitetail and my first Texas deer’. I calmly talked to my
video camera telling what had just happened, so I could relive this
moment forever. I grabbed the camera and rewound the tape. I think I
replayed it twice to make sure she was hit but there was a limb in
the way and I could not tell for sure.
I did not wait the 30 minutes that you should after shooting an
animal. It is now 5:18 and I wanted to get her taken care of and out
before dark. Did I mention the mosquitoes were bad… When I got out
of my stand it was like this big black cloud was circling me and
buzzing at the same time. I walked over to where she was standing
and found my arrow stuck 20 inches in the mud. To my amazement there
was no blood on my fletches. (Did I miss? No way I missed!) Placing
the arrow in my quiver I started to look for blood. (No blood?) Well
I headed for the last place I saw her which was next to the mesquite
bush. Finally after going 20 yards down the same trail as she
traveled, I found blood. Raising my head to look around and saw that
she was piled up just 5 feet from me in the tall grass. I stood over
her and thanked the people that made this all happen. I was stopped
in mid thought by all this buzzing that was going on around me. I
just could not believe my eyes. There were so many mosquitoes that
swatting them was out of the question. I put on my coat to slow them
down from sucking all the blood out of me. I took a few pictures of
just the doe but did not want to stay out there longer than need be.
So I did not set my camera up to take pictures of me with her. I did
a rush job on field dressing her and was contemplating on how I was
going to get her out of here. I first thought was to carry her out.
I put over my shoulder bent back down and grabbed my bow. After
about 30 yards or so I figured this is not going to work. With her
as dead weight flopping around on my back and the mud it was nearly
impossible. I had to drag her through the mud and over the fence the
250 yards back to my truck. I lifted her into the back of my truck
and started to finish the field dressing and skinning. The light was
fading fast, and I had a lot of work still left. I skinned her as
fast as I could but the mosquitoes were interrupting me. I had them
everywhere, at one point I looked down and saw about 20 of them
feeding on my left hand. At that point I kicked it up a notch to
finishing the capping and quartering and placed her in the cooler
for the ride home. I stopped long enough to dig out my wallet to get
my tags. I tore off my doe tag and filled it out, cutting out the
month and day. I thought back and reflected on my family and friends
back home in the Northwest, wishing they were here to relish in the
excitement with me and to thank them for all they have done for me.
On my drive back to the hotel I called most of the people I could
think of to tell them the good news and to thank them for the help
and support that they gave me. Moving to a new state that is 2000
miles from where I grew up was a big shock to me but the archery
community has welcomed me with an extended hand. I thank all of you
for everything and you are all welcome to pull up a chair to my
campfire anytime.
Editors Note:
Please join me in welcoming our newest Field Editor, Jered Kimmel,
to the TexasOutdoorsman.com staff. Jered will be contributing a lot
to our site with his expert tips and knowledge on bow setups and bow
hunting. We are very pleased to have him on our team. Welcome
aboard, Jered!
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