November 30, 2007
Tech student Matt Wimmer with a beautiful 8-pointer
Virginia Tech engineering student Matt Wimmer sent me this shot of the awesome eight-pointer he killed last week in Roanoke County.
Matt took the time to write up a great description of the hunt. One of my favorite parts is his description of determining what a "shooter" is. I like to say that if you have to think about whether or not it's a shooter, it probably isn't a shooter. Matt's approach is the same. It's a great story so I'm posting the whole thing here:
"As per our family tradition, I hunted the entire week with my uncle (and my brother once he got out of school) in Roanoke and Franklin Counties. On Monday, it was just me and my uncle and we began our morning in Franklin County. My first bit of luck began when I popped a large doe as I was coming out of my stand to meet for lunch around 12:00. Once we got the deer to the truck, we headed to Vinton to drop her off at Hunters for the Hungry and proceeded to take a short siesta back at the house before heading to a spot in Roanoke Co. around 2:30.
The landowner told us of a large 10 pointer that was running at the base of his property and that's where I planned to hunt. On my way down the ridge, however, I managed to jump a very large buck (looked like a cow with horns!) and it ran away and up the ridge from me. Instead of continuing on to my original spot, I high-tailed it back to the top and tried to cut the deer off.
I had roughly moved 200 yards up the ridge, slowly glassing the woods along the way. Seeing no deer, I decided to go ahead and drop down, hoping that I had gotten ahead of the buck. As I did, a doe jumped up from a mountain laurel thicket off to my left and ambled off in the opposite direction. Standing motionless for 5 minutes or so and hearing no other movement, I then proceeded down the ridge another 50 yards and found a large oak where I would set up shop.
I had no sooner cleared away a spot and put on my jacket and hat that something else started moving around in the thicket.
Having no idea what it could be, I said "what the heck," and blew into my grunt call 5-6 times. The moving continued and whatever it was began making its way down and around the thicket, heading in my direction. Next thing I knew, I was staring at horns (I know they're actually antlers, but horns sounds much cooler). With the landowner having somewhat of a management program in place, my uncle and I had been discussing what was considered a shooter not 45 minutes earlier. I laugh now because he said "don't worry about points. If a good buck walks out, you will be able to tell whether it's a shooter or not. We'll count the points once it’s down." As the buck continued to make its way towards me, my immediate thought was "Shooter! Shooter! Shooter!" I paid no attention to the number of points it had, but knew that it was fairly tall and heavy. The buck stepped out at about 65 yards and had its head high in the air checking the wind and looking for that grunting "buck." I had played the wind perfect and at thirty yards, the buck finally stepped into a clearing and I dropped him in his tracks. I hadn't been in the woods 30 minutes and my uncle had barely even made it to his stand."
Comments
[December 1, 2007 3:36 PM]
Allen LazenbyWOW !!!! Dude that is one to be proud of. Super nice buck. Congrads to ya. from Moe