Neither unusually hot temperatures, cactus nor dumb decisions could stop me from tagging my first whitetail of the season. Yes it was hot last week. Yes I had to crawl several hundred yards to make the shot. Yes I made a dumb decision and actually thought too much about this buck.
Despite temperatures at nearly 80 degrees I was able to put an ambush in place to take this great buck last week. The hunt started at daybreak and after glassing several nice bucks this buck popped out of some brush less than 300 yards away. He started to feed and I debated shooting him while watching him through my spotting scope. After some short thought I decided to shoot, but it was too late. He was chasing another buck and the hunt was on.
I followed the buck into another deep draw and spotted him off and on for the next four hours as he chased does and jumped fences. At noon he jumped back onto property I could hunt and after losing his does he bedded in a deep, dark hole to get away from the hot temperatures. I used his afternoon nap to crawl slowly into shooting position and let my Under Armour clothing dry in the hot sun after being soaked from perspiration.
After several hundred yards of crawling I found a small knob and waited. I waited for nearly five hours, but when the buck got up, he almost gave me the slip. I caught him sneaking out a back door and after ranging him with my Nikon rangefinder I dropped the hammer on my TC Pro Hunter. The Hornady GMX 150-grain bullet stopped him within a few steps.
He grossed more than 155 points and I was one happy camper. Nope, the heat nor the cactus couldn’t stop me from shooting this buck, but my own slow decisions almost let this dandy get away.
Geez dude, you need to go on Jenny Craig!