By: Ted Nugent
I knew it was a perfect morning. Cold, overcast, dank, dark, solid, gentle west, southwest breeze and I was in a perfect tree at the edge of a perfect cattail marsh that I hadn’t hunted yet this fall. You know the feeling. I could smell it in the air. My predator instinct was at full mast and giddy!
Geese gurgled, splashed and squawked in the nearby pond, along with the occasional mallard quack and wood duck whistle.
Crows sounded off in the distance, a dog barked and a tractor cranked to life way yonder. The American bowhunters soundtrack was right on schedule. I even heard that lovely far away train whistle.
Able bodied SpiritWild VidCamDude in training Ethan Wiskur was at my side, cocked, locked and ready to rock doc! As a serious Michigan bowhunter his bad self, Ethan was in full-on stealth/kill mode and loving every soul cleansing minute of it. We sat there poised like deadly statues, ready to perform our predator duties for God.
Chipmunks, red squirrels and big, fat fox squirrels scurried about heather and yon, and birdlife was abuzz with winter preparations.
It was definitively soothing to say the least.
Sitting in one of my alltime favorite deerhunting ambush sets, I was slightly let down that we had not seen a single deer in the first two hours of our vigil. I know damn well it is all about “right place right time”, but still I was truly expecting more action.
Barely a flicker of nearly invisible white got my predator eye way off around 90 yards to the north, and we had game on!
My Bushnells showed me the rear half of a deer descending the ridge toward the marsh, but it was another fifteen minutes or so before the big doe was visible again below us.
Now there were two big swamp donkeys ever so slowly meandering and browsing our way taking their good old time.
After a nerve wracking long wait, the lead doe turned right to ascend the slope to my left, and when she paused at 12 yards with her head behind a tree, my 50-pound Mathews Halon came back gracefully, pin settling on her crease, and THWACKO! Thar she blows!
This terminally smacked she-deer exploded behind us on a deathrun while the 2nd doe flinched and watched her go.
Magically there appeared a 2nd arrow on my bowstring, and as doe number two tiptoed to my right still staring at the vaportrail of her buddy, I came to fulldraw for the 2nd time in less than a minute and repeated my bowhunting mystical flight of the arrow ballet, and backstrapper #2 was screaming up the ridge with a thoroughly disconnected pumper.
Ethan and I both celebrated a bowhunter dream, tracked the two beauties and filmed a loving, reverential double recovery for killer Spirit of the Wild TV.
As wonderful as that exciting double bowkill was that morning, we had no idea that the afternoon hunt would be a repeat of this bowhunter’s dream, for miles away at another marsh edge, after another long, patience testing wait, I again made two perfect arrows on two awesome big does.
You can well imagine the joyous celebrations that went on at the Nugent camp that evening over delicious, fresh tenderloins and stories of unimaginable bowhunting luck on back-to-back double strappers.
Well hang in there pilgrim, for we ain’t quite done yet with the over the top, not to be believed bowhunting miracles just yet!
You got it, that next afternoon following a great morning duck hunt with the hounds, Ethan and I went to a favorite woodlot surrounded by foodplots and agriculture.
Again, it started out slow, but after a while we saw a great buck nosing in on a trio of does coming off the greenfield and when one of the does skirted our treestand, the old stag moved in on a scattering of sugar beets and shellcorn for a quick in between breeding snack, and that my sweet Charlotte, is all she wrote!
Never in the history of projectiles has there ever been a more beautiful arrow than my zebra Gold Tip shaft slicing deadcenter into the clear and present crease behind the big buck’s shoulder, and in an instant, he dashed wildly for 40 yards, turned a quick 360 and pitched over onto the forest floor!
Good God in heaven, we have the happiest guitar-slamming bowhunter on earth right here!
With a good hour before the end of shooting light, I contained my explosive excitement the best I could as I nocked another arrow.
Could I? Will I? Dare I?
Well, you guessed it, for about 45 minutes later two does and two yearlings cautiously made their way towards our stand, and wouldn’t you know it, another big, fat forest donkey gave it to me at twenty yards, and phenom of phenom, my sixth arrow in two days found its mark and the heartshot doe barely made it fifty yards before coming to rest at the edge of our woodlot.
With devastated crops and carnage on the roads, I have a large number of doe tags that need to be filled each season, and here I had five does and a fine buck all brought to bag in just two glorious bowhunting days.
My constant practice and constant scouting homework had paid off big time this time, and I celebrated my very first triple-double in my life. I wonder what would have happened had I not gone duck hunting that morning?