Great job! I blew a great opportunity over the weekend myself. I'm a big believer in staying aggressive as I know from experience that you may only have a 2-3 second window during the rut to make a killing shot on a big boy. I'll typically hold my bow in my brace arm almost all day.
Well, after hunting on stand for a few hours Friday morning in a brisk, cold chill, I hung my bow up for a few seconds to rotate my wrist a few moments and reach down to my hanging backpack and retrieve a swig of water from my water bottle. When I look up, there's a 150 class, high tined 8 pointer standing broadside at 25 yards from my stand. Those two critical seconds that I just talked about???
Yeah, those went "Poof!!!" as my mind was in processing mind. Oh, my hands did reach up instinctively for my bow and I managed to get my release hooked unto my loop but not before this deer trots off to another shot angle further off to my left. I draw and let an arrow fly. To my horror, I see my arrow descend and then make a quick uphill tick and proceed safely over this buck's back. He spins around and then hops off, stops to look around and then meander off. No amount of grunting or bleating would bring this ol boy back again. When I went down to retrieve my arrow, I saw the branch that my arrow hit.
This wasn't a normal shooting lane that I use but learned my lesson well. As bad as I felt that I had missed my shot, I didi take solace that I didn't hit him in a bad spot. Saw a few smaller bucks on Saturday morning but nothing that presented a good shot angle. Will bring out the heavy firepower during this weekends shotgun opener.
Glad to see that you connected on a nice buck Petey!