Losing Streak Ends

Patience Pays off for Determined Hunter

By Mike Ziebell

         Have you ever noticed that when someone tells you they can almost guarantee you will kill a deer on a hunt, it never goes that way? My hunting career has been pretty much one guarantee after another. I’d had several close friends tell me they could get me a whitetail buck, and after 19 years of trying, I was still waiting.

         I started hunting when I was 16. My uncle was a hunter, and he had bought a bow the previous year and was looking for someone to hunt with. I decided it looked easy enough, so I bought a bow, too. In my first four years of bowhunting, I had two years of no luck and two years when I shot a doe. Bowhunting was not as easy as I thought.

         After I shot my second doe with a bow (I was 19), my success went into hibernation. For the next 12 years, I could only dream about when my next deer would arrive. I waited and waited. It was not like I did not have opportunities to hunt. My “streak” did open several doors to some great hunting land my friends had access too. I had been invited on several “pity hunts.” My friends each thought they would be the one to finally break the streak. Time after time we tried, and time after time, I proved I could ruin any piece of hunting land.

         Scientists decided to study why I brought on such bad luck with hunting. I was asked by several publishing houses to write my memoirs. Well, not really, but I decided it might be good to share my story with everyone. If I could help at least one hunter, my struggles would be worth it. Well, OK, that’s not true, either. To me, the whitetail buck was like the mythical unicorn. You hear people talk about them, but I had never actually seen one on stand.

         Now, some of you might think that I jinxed anyone I came into contact with. I know some people I have hunted with would probably agree. However, I learned this was not true. My wife had never bowhunted before she met me. I taught her how to shoot a bow, and in the four years she has hunted with a bow, she has shot two does and a buck. Well, I guess I must have passed what little good hunting luck I had to her. At least someone in our family could bring home venison.

         That brings me to this story. For the past five or six years, my friends at Whitetail Institute have invited me to hunt with them. Every year, I had to pass because of my work schedule. Well, that and the fact I did not want to ruin their hunting land with “the streak”. This past year, I decided my luck might have changed, so I took them up on the offer. We would hunt at Little River Plantation in Georgia. My friend Bart told me there would be a good chance of seeing a really good buck on the property. He also told me that it would be a rifle hunt.

         We arrived at the plantation late in the afternoon and had just enough time to make sure our guns were still sighted in. Then, we went to the lodge for dinner and settled in for the next morning. The lodge was an amazing place — a hunter’s dream. The log-cabin feel and mounted bucks that adorned the walls were enough to get even the most seasoned hunter excited. We ate dinner and talked about the next morning’s hunt. Then it was off to bed. Visions of whitetails danced in our heads — at least in mine, anyway.

I saw deer during my first four hunts, but didn’t see the one I wanted to shoot. On my next hunt, I was in a tower stand nestled in a grove of pines. There was a small Imperial Extreme food plot to one side of the stand and a field on the other. I had plenty of time to think about what I would do when that buck came out. As night approached, the hunt was shaping up to be yet another uneventful session. I was just getting ready to leave the stand when I noticed a figure walking out of the food plot to my right. I couldn’t believe it — it was a buck. I grabbed my binoculars to get a better look. The buck knew what he was doing. No matter how hard I tried, I could not see him clearly enough to be certain about his size. I put my binoculars down and grabbed the gun. I turned the scope as low I could and tried again to count the points.

         The increasing darkness made it impossible to be sure, so I let him go.

         I thought, “If you cannot tell for sure how big he is, you have no right to pull the trigger.”

         I shared my story with the rest of the hunters at the lodge that night. I was disappointed, but again, homemade pie and sweet tea eased my troubled mind.

The next morning saw a heavy fog and light mist move into the area. The guides were scratching their heads, trying to find a good spot for me. I had a sneaking suspicion they were feeling the pressure of the streak. They broke from their huddle and had a plan. I was going to sit in a tower stand overlooking another Imperial Extreme food plot. They were sure that would work.

         My adventure actually began before I got to the stand. I was dropped off and told to follow the field road for about 100 yards or so. On my right, I’d see an opening in the trees that would be big enough to drive a truck down. The stand would be there on the left side. I followed the road and found the opening but could not find the stand. I started to walk down the side of the food plot, and I knew that was not right. I turned around to walk back when I saw the tower plain as day. It had been on the right side. Oh well, no harm, no foul. I climbed up in the stand and settled in to wait. I leaned the gun up against the side of the stand and then waited for day to break.

         As the light began to creep in, the layout of the Imperial Extreme food plot began to emerge from the fog. The field was in the middle of a large forest. This was looking better and better all the time. I was sitting in the tower and I could not help but admire the beauty of the surrounding landscape. This was really the first morning I had stopped and looked around. All the other times, I had been too busy looking for that buck to come out and had really missed the view. I was admiring the scenic view when I heard a loud thud.

What was that? My range-finder had fallen out of my pocket and landed on the floor of the stand. At that moment, I wondered if there was anything else I could do to ruin the hunt. I picked my range -finder up and put it back in my pocket. I decided to zip up my coat pocket to make sure it did not try to escape again. About a half -hour later, a small doe came out of the woods about 40 yards away on my left and fed across to the middle of the field. She then turned and walked away from me toward the end of the field. She cut the rest of the way across the area and disappeared in the woods on my right. At least I didn’t scare all the deer off.

         About 15 minutes later, the same doe appeared from my right and fed into the field again. This time, she was at the far end of the field and she was not alone. She had a big mature doe with her. The does took their time and fed slowly across the food plot. The mature doe would stop occasionally and look into the woods behind her.

         I was getting a little nervous. I could imagine that buck coming out from the right side of the field and following the doe. Nothing came out. As the does approached the left side of the area, the younger doe turned and was feeding back toward me. I watched her come up the field, and I noticed that the larger doe had stopped and was now looking straight ahead of her into the woods to my left. Then she started wagging her tail and walked into the woods. I was sure I would not see her again. She reappeared in the field after only 15 seconds, walked toward the middle of the plot and started eating again.

I realized there was a huge-bodied deer following her out of the woods. I could tell by my naked eye that it had to be a buck. I raised my binoculars to get a look at him. His body was huge compared to the two does in the field. His coat was almost chocolate brown. I could not tell for sure how many points he had, but I could tell the distance from his right beam to his left beam was a long way apart.

         It took me about a second to decide he was the one I wanted. I put my binoculars down and raised the gun. Carefully taking aim, the buck appeared in the scope. Slowly and gently, I squeezed the trigger. The gun went off, and the buck did a small mule-kick and disappeared into the woods to my right. The does followed the buck and disappeared. I was positive I had made a good shot, but I wanted to make sure. I put the safety back on the gun and set it in the corner. That began the longest hour of my life. I wanted to make sure I did not spook the buck and push him farther into the woods. So I waited in the stand. I tried to replay the shot in my head. I also was working on world peace, quantum physics and whatever else I could think of to keep my mind off my watch.

         When the hour was up, I slowly climbed down from the stand to look for blood. I walked to the end of the field and looked for any sign. I could not find any blood. I looked all over the end of the field and did not see anything. All of a sudden, I saw a deer walking through the woods at the end of the field. I thought I had just done what I had wanted to avoid. But the deer did not run. It walked away from me and out of sight.

         I did not know for sure what it was, and with the lack of blood, my heart sank. I decided I would walk to the right edge of the field and see if I could find anything. That is when I found the blood. It looked like someone had dumped a can of paint out as they walked. I decided to sit and wait for another half-hour, just in case the deer I had just seen was the one I hit. My heart was beating pretty hard in my chest. Just then, I heard something in the field behind me. As I turned, there was a smaller buck standing no more then 30 yards behind me in the Imperial Extreme food plot. He quickly turned and trotted off into the woods. This was already the most amazing hunt I had been on, but I had not found the buck yet.

         After 30 minutes passed, I got up and started to track the buck. The blood trail was really heavy, and as I crested a small hill at the end of the field, I saw the tail of the buck. I still had no idea of how big he really was. When I reached him, I could not believe my eyes. He was a 7-pointer. One of his brow tines had broken off.

That was not the amazing part. When I roughly measured his inside spread, I guessed it would be around 20 inches. His rack was dark brown, and he had very good mass. All I could do was sit next to him and thank God for what he had just blessed me with. When the guide picked me up, I told him of my hunt, and we went to see the buck. One of the other hunters riding with him told me he was not good at tracking deer, but even he could have followed that blood trail.

         We followed the trail back into the field and found where I had hit him. I ranged from that spot back to the stand: 139 yards. The shot went right through the buck’s heart, and he went only 40 yards before he died. When we got back to the plantation, we measured his inside spread at 21 inches and rough-scored him at 135. This was without the missing brow tine. Everyone there asked what I had done. Frankly, at that point, I was still not sure that it had really happened. You always hear about a buck that is so wide that his rack sticks up above the side of your pick-up. Well, to my surprise, I had my very own.

         The old saying, “Good things come to those that wait” could not have been truer. This was the first whitetail buck I had killed, and I will have to work hard to top it. I would like to thank my friends Wade Atchley and Bart Landsverk for not letting me say no to the hunt again. I am indebted to them for life. They gave me the most amazing moment in my hunting career. I also want to thank my friends at the Whitetail Institute for their great food-plot products and for inviting me on the hunt. I am not ready to say the streak is dead, but I think it’s on the way out.