By Dalton Flinn
On a steady walk through the early November hardwoods, forty yards and coming fast. Thirty-five, he breaks up hill. Thirty, down. Twenty-five, up. Up and down, back and forth, he is closing the distance fast. My mind is racing trying to predict his next move as he trots through the woods with no real sense of direction. Heart pounding, bow in hand, I wait for my opportunity at my biggest whitetail to date. Two years of history with this deer and it all boils down to a few seconds to make my shot count.
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During the summer of 2018 I had high hopes for the upcoming bow season. I had new stands hung and some great looking food plots on their way. As July turned to August and August to September, I had no shooters on camera and was beginning to feel the pressure until a card pull during the first week of season proved otherwise. A nice 3.5 year old twelve point showed up in the daylight in one of my new food plots. He looked to be 125-130 with lots of character. He was sporting a three-inch kicker off his right G2, a sticker on his left G2, a point growing straight in from his right beam. But the characteristic that gave him his name was the long scissor-shaped crab claw on his right antler. From that moment on, Scissors would be at the top of my hit list.
On a steady walk through the early November hardwoods, forty yards and coming fast. Thirty-five, he breaks up hill. Thirty, down. Twenty-five, up. Up and down, back and forth, he is closing the distance fast. My mind is racing trying to predict his next move as he trots through the woods with no real sense of direction. Heart pounding, bow in hand, I wait for my opportunity at my biggest whitetail to date. Two years of history with this deer and it all boils down to a few seconds to make my shot count.
>>>============>
During the summer of 2018 I had high hopes for the upcoming bow season. I had new stands hung and some great looking food plots on their way. As July turned to August and August to September, I had no shooters on camera and was beginning to feel the pressure until a card pull during the first week of season proved otherwise. A nice 3.5 year old twelve point showed up in the daylight in one of my new food plots. He looked to be 125-130 with lots of character. He was sporting a three-inch kicker off his right G2, a sticker on his left G2, a point growing straight in from his right beam. But the characteristic that gave him his name was the long scissor-shaped crab claw on his right antler. From that moment on, Scissors would be at the top of my hit list.
I hunted Scissors all season with countless trail camera pictures but no sightings. My luck changed on November 11th when I shot a different buck who I had one picture of in the summer and had reappeared for the rut. He was a tight framed eleven point with good mass and a small drop tine on his right side. Although he wasn’t Scissors, I couldn’t be happier.
After I had filled my 2018 tag, I took some time off and returned to the woods in the late season searching for a doe to fill the freezer. On the evening of January 31st, 2019, the temperature was in the negatives, freezing me out of the woods that morning. I was planning on staying in for the night but decided last minute to go sit for the last couple hours. As the evening went on, I could hear what sounded like several deer, crunching through the snow coming up the hill from my right. As they came over the hill one by one there were about a dozen total. As I stand waiting for a doe to come into range, I see a deer coming down the logging road straight towards me. As it gets closer, I can tell it’s unfortunately a buck. As it closes the distance I can see that it is none other than Scissors himself. He looked much smaller now, missing three tines from battling it out for does during the rut. Unfortunately, I was forced to pass him at fifteen yards because I had already filled my buck tag.
As the 2018-19 deer season came to an end, I hoped to get out in the woods in search for his sheds with my dog, Pam. My dog and I put on the miles and wore out our feet looking for his sheds with no luck. After giving up on finding his sheds, it was time to start preparing for the upcoming fall. Stands were hung, new plots were planted and existing plots were improved. When a long summer of scheming came to an end and September was here, I was left with the best food plots I have ever planted, and yet still no shooters on camera. I knew Scissors would probably show up right when season started like he did the previous year but was still feeling discouraged.
Much like in 2018, a trip around the property and a card pull changed my attitude completely. Scissors emerged from whatever cave he decided to live in all summer, and returned to my property on September 18th, as a four-year-old stud! Over the summer he had packed on roughly twenty inches of antler, grown a much darker, chocolate rack with tons of character and a big, scissor shaped crab claw. Immediately my mind was a whirlwind of schemes to try to get this buck in front of me during the daylight hours. With no daylight pictures yet, I opted to wait and let him get more settled into the area and closer to daylight before trying to hunt him. He quickly became regular in the area I leave feed for the deer, eating like a pig during the early season. He eventually became daylight for the first time that fall on the morning of October 1st on a camera in that spot, followed by a few other days that week. This location is where I just leave the deer alone and don’t hunt because I didn’t want to kill him over bait. The wind swirls bad in this spot so I decided to make it my designated feeding area to keep the deer happy and comfortable. After this card pull when I saw that he was moving in the daylight quite a bit, I decided to start hunting for him. With it being this early in the season, I still played it safe. Hunting the edges and afternoon food plot sits were the strategy. Quickly I learned that the deer were more interested in my new clover field than the food plots this time of year. Most of my sits focused around this clover field because of that observation. For the next few weeks I stuck to this strategy of staying close to the clover, only hunting good winds and low impact stands with no encounters of Scissors.
On October 28th, I found myself sitting in the food plot stand where I had killed my 2018 buck. Temperatures were in the mid-sixties pressure was low around 29.10”. I tend to hunt this stand quite often because I can hunt it with any south wind and usually get in and out without alerting deer making it a good, low impact stand location. As the evening progressed, a spike and several does had made their way to the back corner of the clover field, 100 yards from my stand across the field. The wind was perfect during the beginning of my sit but went dead calm during the last hour. This resulted in my wind drifting out into the field instead of down the hill behind me. Fortunately, I take extreme precautions with my scent control and also run an Ozonics unit. The deer smelled the air for a few seconds, but quickly calmed and started feeding again. I continued to watch these deer feed at the other end of the field when suddenly they all scattered. Scissors came running out of the woods and into the group. He immediately threw his nose in the air and looked my direction. Unlike the other deer, it took him several minutes to calm down. Once he was convinced there wasn’t a human in the area and calmed down, I tried everything I could to get him to cross the field. I tried grunts and a snort wheeze, but he was perfectly comfortable across the field with the other deer.
On October 28th, I found myself sitting in the food plot stand where I had killed my 2018 buck. Temperatures were in the mid-sixties pressure was low around 29.10”. I tend to hunt this stand quite often because I can hunt it with any south wind and usually get in and out without alerting deer making it a good, low impact stand location. As the evening progressed, a spike and several does had made their way to the back corner of the clover field, 100 yards from my stand across the field. The wind was perfect during the beginning of my sit but went dead calm during the last hour. This resulted in my wind drifting out into the field instead of down the hill behind me. Fortunately, I take extreme precautions with my scent control and also run an Ozonics unit. The deer smelled the air for a few seconds, but quickly calmed and started feeding again. I continued to watch these deer feed at the other end of the field when suddenly they all scattered. Scissors came running out of the woods and into the group. He immediately threw his nose in the air and looked my direction. Unlike the other deer, it took him several minutes to calm down. Once he was convinced there wasn’t a human in the area and calmed down, I tried everything I could to get him to cross the field. I tried grunts and a snort wheeze, but he was perfectly comfortable across the field with the other deer.
That night I went through a thousand scenarios in my head of things to do different, new stands to hang and new mock scrapes to make to get an arrow into this buck. Ultimately, I just decided to keep after it and hunt the way I was. At some point I would pick a stand with the right wind and he would show up.
As the rut started to heat up, Scissors became less predictable and more sporadic on all cameras on the property. One card pull I got pictures of a nice 8 returning from last year, hitting one of my mock scrapes made with Smokies Deer Lures. Following that, Scissors came to the scrape and spent fifteen minutes pawing out the ground and thrashing the overhanging licking branch. Scissors was definitely an aggressive buck, and this had me feeling very confident.
On November 6th, it was about fifty degrees with the barometer hanging low around 29.30” I was sitting once again in the food plot stand where I had last seen Scissors from in late October. I wasn’t in the stand very long when around 4:10pm, I looked to my left to see a large rack turning inside a low hanging dogwood branch. The 8 that had returned from last year was making a scrape fifty yards down the hill from my stand. I watched him fight with the branch, paw the ground, and urinate on his tarsal glands. I grunted at him a few times to try to get him to come into the plot in order to get a better look at him. He looked up and headed into the woods behind me. Licking his nose franticly as he circled down wind of me trying to smell what buck was in the area. I couldn’t decide if he was a shooter and wasn’t presented with a shot anyways. He stopped down wind but luckily again my Ozonics unit saved me and he just went on his way down the hill.
During the first week of November Scissors started to become more regular on the other side of the property in one of my existing food plots and a new food plot for that year. In a week I got three daylight pictures of him in those plots at various times of the day. In one picture it was very obvious that he was chasing a doe, hard. With this information I decided it would be best to hunt in the new food plot for an all-day sit. Late that morning I saw one doe, followed by a long, boring sit with no other sightings. To add to this discouragement, I sat the following morning to see, yet again, a single lone doe. At this point the, “it’s not happing this year” thoughts start flowing through my head.
As the rut started to heat up, Scissors became less predictable and more sporadic on all cameras on the property. One card pull I got pictures of a nice 8 returning from last year, hitting one of my mock scrapes made with Smokies Deer Lures. Following that, Scissors came to the scrape and spent fifteen minutes pawing out the ground and thrashing the overhanging licking branch. Scissors was definitely an aggressive buck, and this had me feeling very confident.
On November 6th, it was about fifty degrees with the barometer hanging low around 29.30” I was sitting once again in the food plot stand where I had last seen Scissors from in late October. I wasn’t in the stand very long when around 4:10pm, I looked to my left to see a large rack turning inside a low hanging dogwood branch. The 8 that had returned from last year was making a scrape fifty yards down the hill from my stand. I watched him fight with the branch, paw the ground, and urinate on his tarsal glands. I grunted at him a few times to try to get him to come into the plot in order to get a better look at him. He looked up and headed into the woods behind me. Licking his nose franticly as he circled down wind of me trying to smell what buck was in the area. I couldn’t decide if he was a shooter and wasn’t presented with a shot anyways. He stopped down wind but luckily again my Ozonics unit saved me and he just went on his way down the hill.
During the first week of November Scissors started to become more regular on the other side of the property in one of my existing food plots and a new food plot for that year. In a week I got three daylight pictures of him in those plots at various times of the day. In one picture it was very obvious that he was chasing a doe, hard. With this information I decided it would be best to hunt in the new food plot for an all-day sit. Late that morning I saw one doe, followed by a long, boring sit with no other sightings. To add to this discouragement, I sat the following morning to see, yet again, a single lone doe. At this point the, “it’s not happing this year” thoughts start flowing through my head.
November 11th, a great time to be in the Ohio deer woods. The rut is at its peak, deer are moving, and I’m going back to bed. I planned on hunting that morning, but the light and variable winds mixed with my discouragement convinced me it was a good day to sleep in. It was a warm day with low pressure, so I planned to stay home and work on things around the house that afternoon. Thankfully my good friend Luke Fabian called and told me how dumb I was for thinking I shouldn’t hunt that night. After all, it is November 11th. So, I took his advice and headed to the woods.
I decided to hunt the clover stand because the wind was going to make a major direction change halfway through my sit and I could hunt either wind from that stand. On my way in I busted a deer out of the clover field, but I just continued to the stand and hurried to get set up. Around 2:40pm I was fully set up in my stand. Less than twenty minutes later, I heard a noise to my left and saw a big rack moving up through the woods towards the clover field forty yards away. When he stepped into an opening, I knew it was Scissors. He was running around like crazy with his nose to the ground looking for a doe (probably the doe I busted out of the field on my way in). Once he got close to the field edge, he turned back around and headed to the bottom field. I came to full draw and looked for an opening. After realizing I wasn’t sure of the distance and didn’t have a real shooting lane, I let the bow back down. He turned and started walking straight away from me. Before I could grab my grunt call, he turned back up the hill, hit field edge and started heading my way. I got ready on the shooting lane into the field where he should pass by at fifteen yards as he cuts back down the hill. He worked the fence line towards my stand and was going to walk five yards underneath me. I aimed the camera straight down at the fence and got ready. The whole time he worked this fence he had his nose to the ground and was spastically jerking his body up and down the hill trying to figure out if he wanted to go down the hill into the woods or up the hill into the clover.
As Scissors closed the distance, I drew back for a second time and waited for him to pick a direction. He decided to cut down the hill on a trail twenty yards away. I followed him down the hill in my sight pins and tried to stop him. He was so focused on finding a doe he ignored me. I had to try two more times before finally yelling at him to get his attention. He locked on the brakes right behind a four-inch sapling lining up with his vitals. I knew if I didn’t shoot him now, he was going to bolt so I put my twenty-yard pin an inch over from the tree and let it fly. My arrow barely missed the tree and landed right behind his shoulder, sending an immediate splash of blood out of him as he turned to run away. I heard him run fifty yards and then the woods went silent. I felt super confident about my shot and immediately called my Dad, Skylar and Luke to tell them the good news. I waited in the stand and soaked it all in for a few minutes before heading home.
Once Luke showed up, along with my Dad, the three of us headed out to see if my optimism was right. We started at the point of impact and I explained how it all happened. I thought I got a pass through but there was no arrow where I shot him. We found some bright red blood and started the trail. Twenty yards down the trail I found my arrow, with the broadhead missing and half of the arrow covered in blood. I continued on the trail switching back and forth from looking for blood and looking for a body when Luke spoke up from behind me. I’ll never forget when he said, “hey buddy, he’s right over there!” and looking up to see the buck named Scissors finally dead only sixty yards from where I shot him. I hurried over to put my hands on him and was in disbelief. He was a true stud of a deer and I couldn’t be more thankful to have put my arrow in him.
I decided to hunt the clover stand because the wind was going to make a major direction change halfway through my sit and I could hunt either wind from that stand. On my way in I busted a deer out of the clover field, but I just continued to the stand and hurried to get set up. Around 2:40pm I was fully set up in my stand. Less than twenty minutes later, I heard a noise to my left and saw a big rack moving up through the woods towards the clover field forty yards away. When he stepped into an opening, I knew it was Scissors. He was running around like crazy with his nose to the ground looking for a doe (probably the doe I busted out of the field on my way in). Once he got close to the field edge, he turned back around and headed to the bottom field. I came to full draw and looked for an opening. After realizing I wasn’t sure of the distance and didn’t have a real shooting lane, I let the bow back down. He turned and started walking straight away from me. Before I could grab my grunt call, he turned back up the hill, hit field edge and started heading my way. I got ready on the shooting lane into the field where he should pass by at fifteen yards as he cuts back down the hill. He worked the fence line towards my stand and was going to walk five yards underneath me. I aimed the camera straight down at the fence and got ready. The whole time he worked this fence he had his nose to the ground and was spastically jerking his body up and down the hill trying to figure out if he wanted to go down the hill into the woods or up the hill into the clover.
As Scissors closed the distance, I drew back for a second time and waited for him to pick a direction. He decided to cut down the hill on a trail twenty yards away. I followed him down the hill in my sight pins and tried to stop him. He was so focused on finding a doe he ignored me. I had to try two more times before finally yelling at him to get his attention. He locked on the brakes right behind a four-inch sapling lining up with his vitals. I knew if I didn’t shoot him now, he was going to bolt so I put my twenty-yard pin an inch over from the tree and let it fly. My arrow barely missed the tree and landed right behind his shoulder, sending an immediate splash of blood out of him as he turned to run away. I heard him run fifty yards and then the woods went silent. I felt super confident about my shot and immediately called my Dad, Skylar and Luke to tell them the good news. I waited in the stand and soaked it all in for a few minutes before heading home.
Once Luke showed up, along with my Dad, the three of us headed out to see if my optimism was right. We started at the point of impact and I explained how it all happened. I thought I got a pass through but there was no arrow where I shot him. We found some bright red blood and started the trail. Twenty yards down the trail I found my arrow, with the broadhead missing and half of the arrow covered in blood. I continued on the trail switching back and forth from looking for blood and looking for a body when Luke spoke up from behind me. I’ll never forget when he said, “hey buddy, he’s right over there!” and looking up to see the buck named Scissors finally dead only sixty yards from where I shot him. I hurried over to put my hands on him and was in disbelief. He was a true stud of a deer and I couldn’t be more thankful to have put my arrow in him.
I was reminded of something I had said earlier in the season that no matter how good of a deer hunter you are, no matter how much work you put into the off-season, no matter how much money or energy you put into it, you still have to be in the right stand at the right time and get lucky. If I would’ve eaten one more thing for lunch, taken a little longer to get ready, or spent more time deciding where to hunt I would’ve missed my chance at Scissors. I definitely put in the work for this deer over the past two years but ultimately I needed a little luck to get within bow range of this giant named Scissors.
