Longtime friend, Joe Reynolds, had never taken a whitetail buck with archery equipment in some 20 years afield. However, he did manage to get a doe with a compound bow and a shot that was so bad it was good. The fatal shot, which was aimed for the typical kill zone of the lungs, was so far off target that it hit the neck and dropped the animal in seconds. Apart from that one errant arrow and other missed opportunities, and including a careless moment with his crossbow landing him in the emergency room to get his thumb sewn back on, his archery hunting experiences had been rather uneventful.
As a member of the seasoned-citizen ranks, Joe made the switch to a crossbow, when they were made legal for general use in archery season. The Parker bow would propel its bolts at 352 feet per second with impressive accuracy, but had yet to be tested on a whitetail deer; late afternoon with only minutes of available light remaining a week ago, that all changed.
The call came over the two-way radio, “I just shot a buck!” He explained that the arrow had hit its mark at 42 yards and was confirmed with an audible “thwack!” The lighted nock disappeared, as it entered near the shoulder and the potential prize accelerated in high gear and vanished into the woods.
We agreed to wait it out so as not to push the animal into the next county. Gathering some flashlights and a field dressing kit, that had been assembled in advance, we set out to solve the mystery at 9pm. Finding no clues at the scene of the incident, we began to search a perpendicular path of the deer’s flight, where Joe had seen it last. Again, we found no sign.
Joe had a good idea of the approximate line the deer had traveled, so we used our lights in an attempt to locate a blood trail. Evidence escaped us, as we continued the valiant effort – the effort to discover that red light at the end of the bolt. Nearly an hour had passed before that blinking light got my attention on the ground ahead. We had gotten our first clue.
The bolt had finally worked loose and most likely was separated from the deer in some brush but other than a few drops of blood on the ground, we had nothing else to follow. We stuck to some well-worn trails and about 30 minutes later found more blood that had leaked from the wound channel. I began randomly searching with the intense beam of an LED flashlight, when I saw the unmistakable white under-belly of the big buck.
We fastened the drag strap to the tall 8-point rack
Joe Reynolds’ Shiawassee County, Michigan Archery Buck
and began the arduous task of dragging Joe’s first archery buck into the open where it was loaded into the bed of a waiting truck.
Had crossbows not be legalized in Michigan, I’m sure Joe’s archery hunting days would have been finished years ago. But, the aid of a lighted nock, a modern crossbow, and a good dose of persistence had translated into a memory that will be replayed through the years.
