November 8th 2007 will forever be etched in my memory. We had been hunting for 3 days and the gang was dwindling. Some of the guys had to work so we were down to 5 and dogging bushes was getting tough. Wednesday was a dry day and faces were getting longer and longer on all of us as a sense of discouragement slowly set in. The deer found the holes between doggers and watchers rather easily and we were getting worried about the rest of the day. Heck, we even contemplated quitting for the day and going our own ways to tree stands. Instead we decided to concentrate our efforts on smaller bushes, hoping that we’d push something out and get lucky. It turned out to be an excellent decision.
It was about 10am and a cold one at 3 or 4 degrees C with clear skies and a steady annoying east wind when we almost reluctantly headed to the backyard of one of the guys we hunt with. We were going to push a small bush, and by small I mean the size of a football field, in the hopes of finding a buck that he’d seen there over the summer a few times hiding from the more heavily hunted larger bushes in the area. We lined up three guys on the east side of the property in a huge hay field. (The area on the right where I point to in the video) There was a large bush on the east side of this field that looked like a perfect place for a deer to run at the time especially given the east wind. Deer typically will run away from doggers going into the wind rather than with the wind. I wasn’t overly concerned about the south side of the bush (where I point to in the video below) because there really wasn’t anywhere for a deer to run that way. Boy was I wrong. Nearing the end of the push, when I could actually see one of the doggers (Pat), I heard him call out on the CB that something just got up ten feet in front of him and it was “something huge”. This caught me off guard because I was almost ready to unload and thinking about which bush to push next. What happened next is nothing short of extraordinary. A buck with a huge rack ran straight south into a corn field along the fence line. He was in full throttle and about 150 yards away from me. I thought about not shooting but I figured I had a chance since I knew my gun was perfectly lined up and that he was in the open. I lead the deer by about 12 feet in my scope, took a deep breath and fired. He jumped up and his knees buckled a little so I knew he was hit. He only made it another 100 feet and then stepped broadside and fell into the plowed corn. He was down and out.
I started jumping up and down and couldn’t believe what had just happened until Leo reminded me that I should collect myself and reload in case something else came out. When we approached him it was like a dream. The size of this buck for the area was astounding, even from 200 yards away. The rack was thick and long. He turned out to be a ten point weighing in at 244lbs field dressed. I brought it to Imbeault’s butcher shop in Valleyfield today where he quickly drew a crowd. They had already processed over 1000 deer this year and he was the biggest yet. He was also the biggest buck seen by the gang I hunt with in the 20 years they’ve been hunting this area.
I’m headed to Leroux’s Taxidermy in Sainte-Justine tonight because this one is going on the wall. This has truly been one of the most intense experiences of my life; buck of a lifetime? Maybe, maybe not, but one thing is for certain, he gave me the thrill of a lifetime.
244lbs (field dressed) 10 Point Lancaster Buck
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