Bowhunting from ground blinds with curtains has one drawback: Curtains.
True, many homemade blinds don’t have them, or the windows might have sliding doors or Plexiglas. And some of the store-bought models have “shoot-through” mesh.
Wade Johnson’s blind has regular, thicker-weave mesh over the openings, material that has to be moved out of the way in order to see clearly or to shoot. That material almost cost him the buck of his dreams last season in Arkansas.
When his Most Wanted whitetail stepped with range in 2018, Wade thought he’d made the perfect shot. It wasn’t until later, when he saw the color of the blood, that he realized the arrow’s path might have been less-than-perfect.
He had no idea his broadhead had clipped the mesh until after he’d tracked the deer unsuccessfully and put two dogs, hours apart, on the trail. When the second dog, Katie, found the dead deer, Wade saw the rip en route back to his truck.
The arrow had hit the animal farther back than he’d intended.
Employing a second dog was the least Wade could try. The demolition derby driver and mixed martial arts fighter is not accustomed to throwing in the towel.
He’d been hunting the deer he nicknamed Lifetime since 2015, when it was a mainframe 5x5 with a trio of kickers. He retrieved numerous photos of the buck, but he saw it only once as it crossed the road in front of his vehicle.
The first time he saw it with a bow in his hands was the hot, mosquito-whining afternoon of Sept. 29, 2018. The heat and a wrong wind caused him to carry along cover scent and an Ozonics device.
“After sitting there briefly, I took out my phone to check the weather and played video games. The bucks on this land generally don’t move until an hour before dark,” he told John Phillips, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine.
The next thing he knew, this buck was standing a mere 30 yards distant. He loosed an arrow as it strolled past at 21 yards.
“I was so concentrated on putting my pin sight where I wanted my arrow to hit that I never saw the blind window,” he said.
He and his cousins followed the trail for 100 yards before stopping. That night, someone with the Arkansas Blood Trailing Network brought a dog.
That search yielded nothing, but a second dog picked up the trail about 2 p.m. the next day.
“According to the Garmin, the deer had traveled 609 yards. The shot had been low and back from where I’d aimed,” Wade said. “I had clipped the liver.”
Wade’s White County, Arkansas, buck has a BTR score of 200 4/8 inches.
— Read Recent Blog! Punching One of the Dancers: Bryan Weaver's buck has a BTR score of 192 2/8 inches.