Double

By Buddy English

It was the end of October and the North Dakota deer bow season had been open for nearly two months. Although, I had had many opportunities, I still had not wrapped my tag around an antler. My personal goal was set high this year in hopes of bagging a real wallhanger and I had located a few bruisers in my hunting area. My hunting partner, Tuk Koslik, on the other hand, was new to bowhunting and just wanted to fill his tag. I had planned to help him do just that.

We had decided to try an evening hunt at a wildlife refuge (open to bowhunters) close to home. It received a lot of hunting pressure from the local military base, but I knew few hunters would venture in as deeply as my friend and I. The plan was to stay mobile with me calling in hopes of luring in a curious buck. As the peak of the rut was less than two weeks away, I had elected to try some aggressive buck grunts in conjunction with some rattling.

We set-up in a good area with many scrapes and a few good rubs to start things off. Tuk was positioned approximately thirty yards in front of me where he could cover several well-used trails that ran through the area. Thirty-five minutes later, after my second rattling sequence, we decided to move further up into the coulee. As I reached Tuk's position, he spotted something moving in our direction. Fourty yards away and closing fast was a nice six-point whitetail on the very same trail that we were crouched!

At fifteen yards, my friend picked the perfect moment and drew his bow like a seasoned professional, when the buck\rquote s head disappeared behind a tree. At ten yards, the buck stopped to contemplate the two strange shapes in the middle of the trail. In anticipation of this very moment, my grunt tube was at the ready. I quickly calmed the buck with two soft hucks and he continued slightly quartering towards us. At five yards, his vitals finally exposed, Tuk let the air out of him with a double-lunger that sent him on an eighty yard death sprint. My friend had his first buck and his first bowkill! After field-dressing, we decided that it was still early enough to continue hunting. We set-up thirty yards deeper into the coulee to try again.

It was about twenty-five minutes after I rattled that I noticed some movement in the distance. Thinking that it was just a squirrel or a bird, I proceeded to start my second sequence. Moments later, I was amazed by what I saw. A young mule deer buck appeared out of the bushes. (Mid-central North Dakota is not known for its mule deer. In fact, I have hunted that same area for three years and never so much as glimpsed a mulie!)

With hunting time growing short because of other trips scheduled, and the rare opportunity to take a mulie in this region, I quickly decided that I would take the forkhorn if he presented me with a shot. (We can take either species with a North Dakota bow tag.) He was moving parallel on a trail fifty yards from us when my grunt tube stopped him in his tracks. As luck would have it, the tree that I was crouched behind shielded him from my view. I now had to rely on hand signals from Tuk to predict his next move! Grunts would not bring this buck in and I knew it was time for a change in tactics when he started moving directly away from us. I quickly exchanged my bow for my antlers and tickled them together lightly in hopes of changing his mind.

Boy did it! The mulie instantly swapped ends and double-timed it back in our direction! When he reached twenty yards from us my Delta Snuffer-tipped Easton was there to greet him. After a short, forty yard bloodtrail, my hunting partner and I were celebrating our first "Double" during archery season!