By Luke Austin, Sarver, Pennsylvania

I moved to this new area in June, I used to live about 10 miles south of this area (suburbs) and I moved up here to find lots of fields and woods. It was a Thursday evening after wounding a buck that Tuesday and never finding it I decided to hunt a new area by my house.

My 2007 Archery Buck from the Ground!

I didn’t get to my spot until 4:00 pm. I found a large tree to sit behind knowing I didn’t have time to go across the street to get my climber. I was happpy to find this new area with rubs everywhere and next to large corn fields.

I was thinking I will sit it out and get in a tree in this spot early the next morning, but little did I know my season would be over. I spread  some doe urine and started grunting about every 7 minutes.

It was now 4:40 and I had two doe coming right in to me. I said to myself, “alright where is the buck at?” I’m on the ground and the doe are 20 feet to the left of me and getting closer. Next thing I hear is a deep grunt in front of me, I turn my head very slowly to look and all I can see is a rack walking right at me. My heart was racing, the doe smelled me but didn’t see me and spooked a little bit. The buck was about 100 yards away so I let out one more grunt so the buck wouldn’t spook, and it worked. This massive rack was now 15 yards to the left right were the does were standing and now we were staring right at each other.

Quite a year for my friends and I

He was looking at me bobbing his head like he wanted to fight. I did not blink or move a muscle. Behind me was the corn field. He stopped looking at me and walked into the corn field while he was facing away I slowly stood up. Now this deer could either go right or left into the field…left = no shot , right = broadside 20 yards. He turned right as I had my bow drew back. I let my Easton ACC with Sidewinder Broadhead rip. The deer ran away from me in the field, I could see blood and I got the biggest rush of my life when I watched this trophy drop 60 yards away. I screamed in joy and ran as fast as I could to the buck. I looked at the rack and started counting.  WOW this is bigger than I thought It was a typical 10 point but had 11 points.

I then called my brother to walk up the road and help drag it out. We got it out with my 2 good friends who both harvested trophy’s a week earlier. This was my biggest buck by far, and harvested it no more than 1/4 mile away from my house which made me even more proud of this trophy. This was the best day of my life.