My buddy, Jeremy, had been down at my house all week and we'd been working non-stop prepping the concrete driveway and other various landscape projects. We decided to have a little fun and hit my local pumpkin patch, where a 6-7 bucks had been routinely working the fields each evening.
We hadn't hunted together in some time and decided to sit in my blind together and just enjoy the evening. 99% of bow hunting is done solo, so this was a fun change of pace and the comedy show that is Jeremy.
Who needs a face mask when you have fresh wet mud from your buddies boot.
Like clockwork, this buck came out right at the last light of day at an angle only Jeremy could shoot out of the blind. He was only planning to shoot a doe, but I gave him the green light and he put a deadly shot on this buck at 25 yards.
We did the right thing and went back to the house to wait our obligatory 30 minutes. I made a cup of coffee. Jeremy took a shot of Jameson. We relaxed. When we walked back outside, it was pouring down rain. I mean pouring. We shot this buck in a huge field and this was a major problem. We grabbed our lights and headed out. Fast forward through a long 45 minutes search, but all tracks were washed out and we didn't find a single drop of blood. All washed away. With nothing to track and in pitch dark, we were reserved to hopefully tripping over the downed deer. We went back to the house knowing the search was futile. Jeremy took another shot. I cracked a beer. We were soaked and this totally sucked.
As I anxiously sipped my beer, I said let's take Cooper and see what he can do. Cooper is my 9 year old lab. He's an expert on birds and I've trained him to find antler sheds, but he's no blood hound and I've never tried him on a downed deer....but we were desperate.
We slogged back up to the field and Jeremy headed to the back of the property to circle back through the field. I took Cooper and went the other way......90 seconds later, and Cooper was standing over the buck. I've never seen anything like it. It was unreal. I called after Jeremy who hadn't made it very far and we were soon celebrating in the downpour
Cooper was King Pup this night with an excess of treats, table scraps, tons of love and half of bowl of beer.
