By: Ted Nugent
Okay, let us all just admit it, that when it comes to deerhunting, no matter the quintessential, penultimate Herculean effort we put forth to strategize, plan, manipulate and intellectualize our ambush decisions in order to kill the beast, good old Mother Nature and nasty old Murphy always have the final say.
And of course that is why we love/crave it so much.
But on occasion, sometimes, when luck is on our side, such dedicated planning connects the predator dots, the backstrapper planets align, and God shines His miraculous love down upon us.
No matter when such luck occurs, we take it, cherish it and appreciate it beyond measure, celebrating the extensive time, energy and effort investment, nearly forgetting about all those nerve wracking skunking days, and the world is all good.
Though I don’t necessarily believe in omens, I will indeed take each experience in my life to the fullest, considering all the unlimited variables at play, and simply just thank God for making it all happen.
And so it was on January 1st, 2019, what I considered to be the opening volley of the best year of my life, that if indeed omens do exist, I will take this one to heart.
SpiritWild VidCamDude Bobby Bohannon and I went to my favorite north wind stand on my home SpiritWild Ranch in Texas, the very productive StoneShack Double Bull blind.
It was dark, cold and nasty, perfect winter deerhunting conditions, and we were cocked, locked and ready to backstrap rock doc!
Having just bid farewell to my New Year’s Eve hunting party buddies after four days of crazy fun hunting, this stand location made the most sense after the increased pressure on my grounds.
With all the running around, guiding, tracking, exploring and increased human holiday traffic, I chose this setup with a feeder to throw corn at 4pm.
4pm came and went with no feeder trigger so I frustratingly decided to relocate to another favorite north wind treestand.
With bewitching hour closing in, it was an iffy decision at best, but I went with my gut hunch and we climbed aboard for the last hour of January 1st daylight.
Temperatures continued to descend and the freezing drizzle picked up slightly with no deer to be seen the next 40 minutes or so.
Then a big, healthy button buck cautiously approached the corn and Primos Swamp Donkey feed I had put out, and within a few minutes a pair of fidgety yearling six pointers joined in.
More young bucks came and went, all of them extremely alert and spooky, testing our stealth and patience.
I think there were 9 different young bucks feeding and moving about when all heads jerked up and I instinctively went into hyper kill mode.
From beneath the thick, overhanging cedar and scrub branches emerged a gorgeous 4 year old stud of a buck with a fine, wide 8 point rack of headbone.
My Mathews was already in my hands ready to launch when the big buck spun to his left and gave it to me.
The arrow was gone with a life of its own and the glowing arrow nock vanished right there where all the orange tape squares on my Morrell targets had imprinted on my inner psyche a million arrows before.
Well, you know what happened then.
As always, it was out of body insanity happiness. It always is and always will be.
We filmed an easy bloodtrail in a beautiful forest to the magnificent beast and rejoiced his beauty and spirit. It was getting dark but I’m sure my Cheshire grin lit the place up!
My happiness meter was spinning wildly!
As the greatest hunting season of my life throttles on with months of incredible deerhunting ahead of me, maybe my first day of deerhunting in 2019 will forebode another amazing year for my 70th year of celebrating the greatest sport and lifestyle known to man.
I just wanna go hunting. It makes me feel so good. I just wanna go hunting, Try to find me in the woods!